Advertising FAQ

What kind of advertising can I buy directly from Treehugger?

We offer the following advertising options:

1.Graphical banner advertising in our daily online magazine
2.Graphical banner advertising in our daily and weekly email newsletters
3.Logo, bug and video bumper advertising on our weekly TreeHuggerTV segments
4.Sponsorship of our weekly TreeHuggerTV Radio segments
5.Sponsorship of custom contests, site areas, tools etc.

Please note that we don't sell direct for monthly budgets less than $500.

Further details:

Graphical banner advertising:

Our pricing is Cost per Thousand (CPM) based. We simply offer our clients a number of impressions that fits their budgets and needs. Our banner inventory is fairly standard and offers units such as the leaderboard (728x90), skyscraper (160x600), floater (300x250) and buttons (125x125 and 120x90). Please contact us for rates.

Newsletter Sponsorship:

Our newsletters feature a number of standard banners (468x60 for $20CPM) and one floater (300x250 for $25CPM). The daily is sent 5 times a week and the weekly is sent once a week.

TreeHuggerTV Sponsorship:

Permanent 5-8 second bumper at the beginning of each video, 10-15 second bumper at the end with click through feature to your website and bug throughout.

An example of advertising in TreeHuggerTV can be found here, and a TreeHugger News example here.

Sponsored Contests, Areas and Tools:

We're willing to work with our partners to develop programs that tie closely to their brands and that will generate excitement and traffic from our readers. These typically cost a minimum of $5,000 as they require significant time and effort.

What kind of advertising can I buy indirectly from Treehugger through their partners?

Blogad Graphical and Text Ads:

Blogads offers a unique type of advertising featuring a graphical banner up to 150x200 in size and an additional 300 characters of text (can include links) below it or simply a graphical banner ad (150x600) without text. They sell for a fixed price for time periods of 1 week, 2 weeks and 1 month. Ads bought via Blogads are placed in the right column of TreeHugger just below the fold. To order one or find out more, please click here.

Adbrite Text Ads:

TreeHugger has two locations below the fold in the right column where text ads can be bought. This is a self-serve site and can be a fast way to get a text advertisement up and testing the market. They are usually live within 24 hours as long as they fit TreeHugger´s criterion. The headline is 30 characters and the body text is 50 characters. They offer 1, 2 and 4 week buying options. It´s Easy! Click
here to get started.

Adbrite premium (higher up on the page) prices are:
1 week: $150
2 weeks: $250
1 month: $450

The second zone (lower down the page) prices are:
1 week $80
2 weeks $150
1 month $260

Graphical Banner and Text Advertisements via Google Ads

TreeHugger has a number of locations for Google Ads on our extended pages (an extended page is the page dedicated to one specific post, click on any post title on treehugger.com to see an example). There are a number of text ad options as well as graphical banners (468x60 and 150x600) available. This is a self-service site. Click below to sign up to buy or learn more.

Google Ads for TreeHugger

What is TreeHugger's reader profile?

TreeHugger attracts ecologically-engaged, creative, urban professionals who are willing to pay a premium for nicely designed goods and services made with the environment in mind.

Our largest group of readers:

• Are in their 20s and 30s (47% are 21-30 years old; 31% are 31-40 years old)
  
• Are students, designers, technologists and journalists
  
• Are either men or women (50/50)
  
• Are comfortable financially (25% earn over 90K annually, over 60% earn over 45K)
  
• Are looking for green products and services (85% report that they will spend “somewhat more” to “a great deal more” on green goods and services)

TreeHuggers are a young, influential, and affluent demographic who make significant purchases
online and turn to TreeHugger to find products and services they can trust.

What are TreeHugger's recent Stats?

Our most recent traffic stats for November, 2007 via Google Analytics and Sitemeter show 4,204,066 pageviews and 2,338,318 unique visitors.

What general creative approach should we take with our ad designs?

We have a design savvy audience who are into modern, sleek, minimal design so it´s best to shoot for an aesthetic that matches this. Try to not pack too much text into the ad. Use high quality illustrations and pictures.

If animated, please don't make ads excessively jerky, rather shoot for subtler fades between images.

If there are environmental or fair trade attributes to the product, these should be highlighted as they will appeal to our audience.

What are TreeHugger´s Ad Specs?

Below are our ad specs for each size ad. Note that we need very specific sizes that are defined in pixels. We also need specific formats. And we need the size of the files to be a maximum k such that the site can still load in a reasonable manner. These are all very important details in order for us to get your campaign up in a timely manner.

TreeHugger loves to run multiple variations of ads for a period, check the performance on them and then select the best performers to run for the rest of the campaign. This optimization can help our clients get the best results from their ad dollars. Please feel free to try multiple graphic and text approaches. Often this can have huge effect on the clickthrough rate. Note that TreeHugger has a talented and inexpensive designer available to help on ad design.

LEADER BOARD:
SIZE: 728X90
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 60K

MINI AD:
SIZE: 120X90
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 30K

AD: BANNERS NEWSLETTER:
SIZE: 468X60
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 40K

AD: BUTTONS
SIZE: 125X125
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 40K

AD: SKYSCRAPERS
SIZE: 160X600
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 60K

AD: FLOATER
SIZE: 468X250 or 300x250
FORMAT: GIF, JPG, PNG, FLASH.
MAX SIZE: 60K

Valid URL: Please be certain that a valid click through URL is encoded in the flash file.

Compatibility: If browser compatibility issues emerge we will have to pull your ad and request for a new one with no reimbursement for missed impressions so please ensure that your ads are well designed.

Geotargeting: Geotargeting works very well, but not perfectly. If you're in a large company with leased servers that are located outside of the area, there is a chance you won't see the ads in your area despite them being geotargeted there. This does not mean the campaign is not working and you can rest assured that it's likely working for 95%+ of people in that area. You can also always access our ad server stats to determine how well the campaign is delivering. If this happens, do contact us and we will investigate promptly.

How many TreeHugger Newsletter subscribers do you have?

What do "above the fold" and "below the fold" mean?

"Above the fold" refers to what the typical reader will see on their screen when they visit TreeHugger without scrolling down. It refers to the top part of the website. "Below the fold" is simply the rest of the page or what you see when you scroll down. The reason it is relevant is that ads placed higher on the page tend to get better results. It is important to note that TreeHugger adjusts its rates down for placement below the fold and as such, good value can be had even if placement is not above the fold.

What is a page view?

A Page View is a key way that web traffic is measured. A pageview occurs when a user's browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc) requests a web page. In other words, if you visit a website's homepage, that counts as 1 pageview. When you click on the homepage to go to another page or section, that is 1 more pageview.

A page typically has more than one advertisement on it therefore each pageview consists of multiple impressions.

What are unique visitors?

Unique visitors are the number of different people who visited a site over a certain time period, typically 1 month. It's meant to help you understand how many people will view your advertisement. The larger the number, the more popular the site.

What is an Impression?

An impression is when an advertisement displays on a webpage viewed by a reader. It is meant to represent the number of times an advertisement is viewed by a reader. Since there are typically multiple ads per page, each pageview will generate multiple impressions.

Impressions are important as most online advertising is sold this way. TreeHugger sells by Cost per Impression (CPM).

What is a "Click Through"?

A click through is when a reader clicks on an advertisement and is taken to the advertiser's website.

What is "Click Through Rate"?

The click through rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click through.

It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. For example if a banner was clicked on 40 times after being displayed 1000 times, the banner would have a click rate of (40 ÷ 1000 = .04 ) or 0.4%. This is also commonly know as a banner's click rate. These can vary greatly depending on the design of the ad, the fit to the audience and the nature of the offer.

TreeHugger typically sees click through rates from 0.1% to 0.4% and 0.4% to 1.5% for a high-performing campaign. (These numbers are comparable or better than top-performing click-through rates, where 0.4% is considered excellent performance.) It is important to note that in addition to click through, advertisers benefit from getting their brand in front of a large, influential audience (branding).

TreeHugger loves to work with clients who can provide us with a number of variations of the ads they run such that we can see how each banner performs and then optimize their campaigns. Additionally, we have a talented and low priced designer who can help clients with their ad design needs.

What is Cost per Click (CPC)?

Cost per click (CPC) is a model where advertisers only pay for each click on their advertisement. TreeHugger doesn't offer this option as we believe that in addition to driving traffic to client's sites, we also offer significant branding value and this value is not recognized through CPC campaigns.

What is a "Landing Page"?

The page on a web site where one is taken after clicking on a advertisement. While this can be any page, it is often a page designed to expand on the service or product mentioned in the initial advertisement.

What is CPM?

Our ads are sold based on CPM. CPM means Cost per Thousand impressions. The cost of placing an ad on TreeHugger is simply the number of impressions divided by 1,000 and multiplied by the CPM. CPM is not based on how many people click on an ad, that is called CPC (cost per click) and is not something that TreeHugger offers.

Here´s an example: If our traffic is 3,700,000 page views per month, and a graphic ad has a rate of $1 CPM, that means that an ad with 100% of the exposure for 30 days would get 3,700,000 impressions. When you divide this by 1,000 and multiply by a CPM of $1, you get a total of $3,700 for the month.

Sound confusing? The basic idea is that we charge clients for how many times their ad is shown. And our rates are very competitive. And our clients have access to the ad server stats so are able to check on their campaign.

Sometimes advertisers don't have the budget to buy all impressions for a particular space over a certain time period. So what we do then is sell the space by impressions, and put the ad in rotation with other advertisers.

Following the 1$CPM example, if your budget was $1,000, we would be able to serve you 1,000,000 impressions for that location for the month and the remaining 2,600,000 impressions would be filled with TreeHugger house ads and other advertiser´s ads. Reloading the page a few times would show your ad and the others in the same space.

If you give us a budget, time frame and location you are interested in, we will figure out how many impressions we can provide you. This will depend on what we have sold at that point.

What is a URL?

This is a nerdy word for website address. It´s officially an abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. For example our sites URL is http://www.treehugger.com. Can be pronounced "you-are-ell" or "earl".

What is ROS?

Run of site (ROS) means a banner will appear everywhere on a web site as opposed to run of category (ROC) where ads would appear only on pages within a specific category or section. TreeHugger generally only offers ROS.

Some online advertising resources

Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:

• Meet Tamara Giltsoff of Abundancy Partners
• Regain Your Inspiration to Cook: 5 Cookbooks For Bringing Out Your Inner Chef
• How Much of Your Pantry is Genetically Modified?
• The Secret to Greener Take Out? Being Prepared
• 5 Eco Newsletters You Should Subscribe To
• Tired of the Local Menu? 7 Ways to Experience Seasonal Food 2.0

Drought

Consumerism

Green Entertaining

Congress