I try not to bring out the cliches too often–let alone two in one headline–but it all seems very fitting in this case. Right Media CEO Mike Walrath was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2007 award last night at a very fancy gala in Times Square. Per E&Y, the award is given to “entrepreneurs who have demonstrated excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.”

We’re proud of Mike, and we agree that the recognition is more than warranted. He continues to drive this business well beyond the norm of online advertising, and he hasn’t been afraid to ruffle a few feathers along the way (probably obligatory for changing the status quo). But one thing neither one of us would contest is the fact this award is equally a recognition of all 200+ of us–each manager, technologist, assistant, salesperson or executive as forward-thinking, efficient and hungry as the next.

So congratulations to Mike, and to all of us. Cue violins.

Do you use a blog system — like Word Press — or a CMS system — like Joomla? These are two totally different approaches to designing and deploying a “website”…but when it’s done, it will still be a website that’s just waiting to be monetized!

Aficionados of both of these systems have come up with unofficial plug-ins for getting Direct Media Exchange up on your blog or website lightning quick. If you are curious about Right Media and our Direct Media Exchange platform, here are some new ways to have it running ads on your website…

(Note: These are unofficial plug-ins and are unsanctioned by Direct Media Exchange nor Right Media, so use them at your own risk.)

Joomla Direct Media Exchange Plugin

Joomla user and developer Mohd Ghouse Ahmed contributed this extension recently that streamlines getting ads up on your Joomla developed websites.

Here’s the link:

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2405/Itemid,35

Word Press Direct Media Exchange Widget

Travis Johnson, Lead Developer here at our Right Media Office in Eugene, has created this widget on the side for getting Direct Media Exchange ads up on your Word Press blog in a jiffy.

Here’s the link:

http://www.eightfivethree.com/2007/05/17/ad-tags-widget/

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Good stuff! And if you know of other plugins or widgets related to Direct Media Exchange, feel free to leave us a comment and share them with us. Thanks!

Wayne Lin was one of the publishers we video interviewed during our San Francisco California Roadshow for Direct Media Exchange. He overcame some unique challenges while first trying to monetize his site a number of years ago; he also reaped unique successes by choosing to address a little recognized (but huge) market niche: Chinese and Chinese speakers living outside of China.

This month’s featured publisher is Wayne Lin and his site is Wenxuecity.com (also known as ChinaGate.com).

Vince Panero: Can you tell us about your website/s? How would you describe your focus/business model? And are there any particular issues exclusive to your site that you had to overcome to make the advertising model work?

Wayne Lin: Established in 1997, Wenxuecity.com is one of the largest overseas Chinese community portals in the world. We cover the issues and hot topics that are most important to our readers. We cover the significant trends that affect the lives of those who make-up overseas Chinese communities around the world.

Like all other websites, we went through those dotcom crash years without any ad income, but we had also built up our readership very substantially during those years.

VP: Did you get into this with the idea that you would make ad dollars from this site? How did you initially monetize your site? What problems did you encounter utilizing these early methods?

Wayne Lin: Yes, our website is purely a content website, and we had an ad revenue model in place from day one. In the first few years, we had a very tough time getting major ad network approval due to our website being a non-English one. Later we proved that our demographics are mainly Chinese living in USA and Canada; 100% of our readership are Chinese living outside of China. Today we are serving an average 500 million ad impressions per month.

VP: Why did you start using Direct Media Exchange as your ad management platform of choice?

Wayne Lin: We experienced most of the major ad networks over the years and could not find smoothness in an ad management platform until Direct Media Exchange came in the picture. This gave us the opportunity to run and manage multi-networks on one platform; it’s much more easy to use compared with all the other networks that we’ve used before.

VP: What statistical changes have you seen since you started using it? For example, have your eCPM and revenue increased?

Wayne Lin: Yes, we averaged a 20-30% increase in revenue from the first month that we switched to Direct Media Exchange. It allows us to easily switch around multi-networks with back-up placements. We also have the ability to set-up our own eCPM minimum price to let all networks compete for our inventory. With these features, our bottom line definitely improved substantially.

VP: What do you like most about Direct Media Exchange? Are there helpful parts of it that other ad management interfaces simply don’t offer? And how does it address the specific needs of your website’s unique niche?

Wayne Lin: I like Media Guard the most because it allows us to set our own preferences to filter out certain type of ads. Also, the various reports from Direct Media Exchange really help us to adjust our ad delivery and pricing very efficiently.

I especially would like to mention the geographic reporting; it helps us analyze our readership and how it reacts to ads in different geographic areas. This is definitely useful for our website since we have readers coming from more than 100 different countries.

VP: Do you have any tips or tricks that you think others using the exchange might find useful?

Wayne Lin: With the increase in revenue, and increase in control over impressions, Direct Media Exchange was able to help us streamline management of our ad networks and increase both real and potential revenue at no cost and risk to us. Therefore, I highly recommend that other publishers spend some time getting familiar with the Direct Media Exchange platform. Play around for a while and you will find ways to improve your revenue very easily and efficiently.

VP: Do you have any final thoughts on this “exchange concept” (network transparency and competition, the utility of having just one login, etc.)?

Wayne Lin: I am expecting DMX will have more and more quality networks join in and eventually benefit the publisher even more.

VP: Wayne, thank you for being part of our exchange.