SEM Tools > Sponsored Links Networks > Contextual Contents/Text Ads
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Deliver your website directly to interested websurfers
No clickthrough required - StumbleUpon shows your site directly to interested websurfers who have already expressed an interest in similar sites.
Target the exact audience you want - Target your visitors by their personal interests, location, age and gender. No text-ad needed!
Get valuable feedback from real people - See how many people rated your content "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down".
Managing Campaigns on StumbleUpon
4 easy steps to promoting a website
1. Submit your website for quick approval
2. Use our easy tools to target your site to interested stumblers
3. Track immediate feedback and approval from the StumbleUpon community.
4. Perpetually refine your campaigns based on what you are learning!
StumbleUpon Content Guidelines
Entertaining and informative content works best. Our members crave information. They will go out of their way to give you valuable feedback if you provide them with an entertaining, enlightening, or informative experience.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use StumbleUpon to promote a commercial product or service. In fact, some of the most popular sites in StumbleUpon market new and exciting products. Some of the most popular videos are actually adverts themselves. Here are some examples of sites that have performed very well:
Some content doesn’t work well with StumbleUpon. A hard-sell offering little introduction or supporting information will seem out of place to StumbleUpon’s community members. Remember that they’re using the service to find something new, something different. Pages that contain little more than a list of ppc or affiliate links also will not perform well.
We may reject campaigns at our discretion based on the quality of the page. Remember that you are not submitting a banner ad, nor do you need to go out of your way to get the visitor’s attention - you already have it. Attention ploys such as blinking text and gawdy animations will simply cause the visitor to skip past your page. The best thing you can do is submit an informative page, and encourage people to rate your site as "I like it". That way your site will continue to spread through the community above and beyond what you have actually paid to distribute. Items in the following list are grounds for immediate rejection:
- No illegal content
- No pages containing or linking to viruses, trojans, spyware, or malware
- No pages that initiate the install or download of software automatically upon viewing the page
- No pages that automatically popup more than 1 extra window
- No pages that produce an HTTP error code
- Pages must be submitted with a topic that accurately describes the page
- If you are submitting a site that is not in english, please contact us first
Some content doesn’t work well with StumbleUpon. A hard-sell offering little introduction or supporting information will seem out of place to StumbleUpon’s community members. Remember that they’re using the service to find something new, something different. Pages that contain little more than a list of ppc or affiliate links also will not perform well.
StumbleUpon Advertising FAQ
Where will my content appear? When a person clicks the "Stumble!" button on their StumbleUpon toolbar, we send a personally relevant website to them, displaying it in their web-browser. Members love the service as they feel a real sense of discovery - much like they felt the first time they ever used the internet. Content delivered to people is targeted to their personal interests and demographic profile.
When you use StumbleUpon to promote your website (or other content), we send your site directly to people who match your targeting criteria, and specifically to those who have expressed an interest in similar sites before. We display your content directly in the user’s browser - not as an ad, but as the sole and entire focus. Each unique URL is displayed only once to each member.
How can I get Viral Marketing from StumbleUpon? - The more popular your site, video, photo, etc, the more people will see it. Using the StumbleUpon toolbar, members rate content "thumbs-up" (really like it) or "thumbs-down" (not for them). The more people who vote "thumbs-up", the more quickly it will spread. Well designed and targeted content often starts to spread virally through StumbleUpon. The more people who see it, the more they pass it on to their friends (both within and outside of StumbleUpon).
Do I need to create an ad? - No. We send visitors directly to your website (or photo or video). StumbleUpon doesn’t serve pop-ups/unders, banners or other invasive forms of advertising. At this time we have contextual text ads on StumbleUpon.com (provided by Google AdSense), but it is not possible to purchase these directly.
You can create a specific page/video/etc for StumbleUpon. Make it a fun, entertaining, or informative experience for people who love new and exciting stuff.
What am I paying for? What do I get? - Premium inclusion in StumbleUpon starts at 5 cents per targeted visitor. We show your site directly to StumbleUpon members (a demo is available here). Targeting by personal interest, history of rating similar sites, location, and demographics (age, gender) determines who will see your site. There is no ad impression or click-through. Rather than using intrusive forms of advertising (like popup ads), we display your entire page. Your page will be the only content displayed in the user’s web-browser. Your site isn’t wrapped inside a frame or presented as an ad within another page. You have the visitor’s full attention.
How is this different from PPC, pops, banners...? - Paid keyword search is an excellent way to get targeted traffic. StumbleUpon opens up a new opportunity to reach targeted audiences. We recommend using StumbleUpon to complement keyword search campaigns. One advantage of StumbleUpon is the sense of discovery our members feel when they use the service. It’s a different mindset than search. Rather than looking for something very specific, our members are in an open state of mind, eager to learn and experience.
Unlike pop-ups/unders and banners, StumbleUpon takes people directly your content (webpage, video, photo, blog...). What people see is not an ad - it is your full site, unobstructed by any other content. No new creative is required (you don’t need to create a text ad), no clickthrough necessary, and you get immediately feedback (thumbs up or down) on your content from your visitors. This makes a StumbleUpon campaign one of the easiest ways to improve your traffic and get website feedback.
Why doesn’t StumbleUpon do pops, banners...? - We feel that a lot of online advertising is obtrusive and takes away from the user experience. We wanted to create something that benefits both the advertiser and the visitor. Yes, you can acquire sales by displaying thousands of popups and annoying countless people in the process. The StumbleUpon experience is all about discovering new and interesting content, whether paid or organic. Either way, it has true value to the person visiting that content.
How does StumbleUpon prevent click-fraud? - StumbleUpon doesn’t syndicate paid listings to third parties - the primary source of click-fraud in pay-per-click networks. We also don’t have any mechanism by which someone can force your site to come up as a paid result, so a competitor can’t drain your account.
Is StumbleUpon right for my business? - StumbleUpon is an effective way to reach a large, enthusiastic audience. People who use StumbleUpon are excited about the websites, photos, videos, and blogs that they discover here. They’re eager to try new products and explore new services.
StumbleUpon works best for businesses with something valuable to offer, presented in an informative or entertaining way. You can target a narrow group of people or seek exposure to a broad audience. As a new and unique marketing channel, StumbleUpon is becoming a valuable part of many business’s promotional strategies. Get started today.
How can I target a specific audience? - In addition to StumbleUpon’s built-in behavioural targeting, you can target campaigns by:
- Category - more than 500 to choose from.
- Location - country, state, city (US & Canada)
- Demographics - age, gender
What kind of traffic volume can I expect? - StumbleUpon delivers over 2 million "stumbles" per day. These are spread across a broad range of web-pages, videos, photos, podcasts, blogs.... The volume of visitors we can send to your site depends on two main factors: how many member we have who are interested in sites like yours, and how tightly you choose to target the campaign. For example, if you limit a campaign to a specific age group, you can expect less traffic than if you leave age unset.
In the future, we will offer the ability to predict traffic for each desired set of targeting criteria.
How can I increase how much traffic I get? - If you have targeted campaigns that you would like to receive more traffic, try these approaches:
- 1. Edit the campaign to loosen or remove age targeting
- 2. Loosen or remove location targeting
- 3. Remove gender targeting
- 4. Make a new campaign targeted to another relevant topic
For targeting by age, we only know the ages of a portion of our users. If age targeting is not vital, or if you want to target a broad age group, you may be able to reach substantially more users by removing that targeting. We have proportionally few members under 18 years and we don’t allow people under 13 to sign up.
Can I set spending/traffic limits? - Yes. You can limit each campaign to a maximum number of visitors per day. You can also set a global maximum dollar spend per day. When a limit is met, no more traffic will be delivered until the following day (Pacific Standard Time). There is no minimum spend - you can spend as much of as little as you want.
My Google Analytics / Urchin stats don’t match. Why the difference? - Analytics packages like Google Analytics, Urchin, Webtrends, etc., use javascript to track traffic. You may see a difference between the traffic reported by these services and the traffic reported by StumbleUpon.
A large portion of our Firefox users have added the NoScript add-on to their browser. This is one of the top-10 most popular extensions for Firefox. This extension blocks any javascript calls that the user doesn’t approve of. Blocking javascript causes Urchin, Google Analytics, Webtrends, etc to not work. These tracking services never see the traffic because NoScipt blocks it.
You may see a larger difference in reported traffic than with other advertising services because StumbleUpon has a much higher proportion of Firefox users — and in particular, a much larger proportion of people who use browser extensions — than a typical audience. In essence, StumbleUpon’s early-adopter user-base is much more privacy and security conscious than the typical internet user, and they block tracking services as a result.
It is possible to verify that you are receiving the correct amount of traffic. If you have access to your actual weblogs (e.g. Apache, IIS, etc), you can see how many times StumbleUpon has sent people to your site. You will need to use a unique URL when advertising with us, so you can look for that URL in your logs.
Can I use tracking code? - Presently, StumbleUpon is unable to recognize that multiple URLs differentiated with tracking code (but having the same content) are actually the same page. This causes users to see the same page multiple times (once for each tracking code used), which can become undesirable and encourages thumbs-down ratings.
You can identify traffic from StumbleUpon by looking for either of these referers:
- http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=...
- http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.html
What frequency caps does StumbleUpon use? - Each unique URL is displayed at most once to each member of StumbleUpon. The same member will never see the same URL twice. If you want to increase exposure, create a new campaign with a different URL. Providing a few different pages on the same theme is a great way to drive your message home. Try to make each page interesting of its own right, with some unique content, even if overall the pages are fairly similar. For example, if you have a DVD or book store, you could make different campaigns for each genre.
Can I promote multiple URLs? - Yes, you may promote as many different URLs as you wish. They many be on the same or different domains. To promote a new URL, you can create a new campaign.
Can I create multiple campaigns? - Yes, there is no limit to the number of campaigns you may have. You can use the same URL in multiple campaigns (but with different targeting parameters). Or you can use the same targeting criteria but with different URLs. Or any other combination.
How long does it for a new campaign to start? - New campaigns usually start receiving visitors within 24 hours.
How can I tell if my campaigns are performing well? - The great thing about StumbleUpon is that our members vote on content that we send to them. Using the StumbleUpon toolbar, you can click either "thumbs-up" to endorse a site (and spread it to like-minded people), or click "thumbs-down" to indicate that it’s not for you. As a website owner, blogger, advertiser, or media buyer, this is potentially very valuable information. You can see what percentage of people rated your content positively, what demographics are performing best, and even read specific written feedback from members.
What kind of reporting is available? - For each campaign, we provide data and graphs showing daily visitors and ratings ("thumbs-up" / "thumbs-down" ). We plan to add much more in-depth reporting in the future.
How can I target multiple topics/demographics? - Choose the topic (category) that you feel is most suitable for the content you wish to promote. For each additional category or demographic group that you would like to target, create a new campaign. In the future we plan to allow multiple topics/demographics within a campaign.
The benefit of creating one campaign for each category is that you can compare the performance of each. Some categories will naturally produce better results than others. Focus more effort on those and perhaps discontinue those that aren’t as successful to increase the effectiveness of your targeting.
Can I stop or pause one of my campaigns? - Yes. Simply hit the ’Pause’ button and this campaign will be put on hold. At any time you can resume the campaign by clicking the ’Resume’ button in this column.
How can I rename my campaigns to better organize them? - Simply click the ’Rename’ button and a pop-up will let you assign any label or keyword to this campaign. Campaigns can be renamed multiple times if targeting criteria for them is modified.
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