One of the ongoing side projects for the past few months has been to develop an in-house ad server for Newgrounds, so that we can better manage our third party advertising and eventually sell some of our ad space directly. For the entire life of Newgrounds, we have dealt with low-end ad rates. Part of that is due to advertisers being "scared" of user-generated content, but a lot of the blame falls on us for being a team of artists and programmers rather than sales people and biz-dev guys.
This past year, I've removed a lot of ads that I didn't like on the site and I'm working on removing even more. Ultimately, I want to ditch the pop-ups. We're getting paid less for pop-ups than other large sites are getting for their banner ads. It's frustrating.
I've decided it's time to make an open call: I'm interested in knowing who out there can help us manage our advertising. This would have to be someone with experience in Internet advertising, someone who can wow us with their vast knowledge and ability to monetize the site without making it ugly.
This isn't a job for someone who "thinks" they can do it. We need someone who will step in and sell. We want to class up the joint with attractive ads that are relevant, load fast and pay real advertising dollars instead of pocket change. We aren't selling out; we finally want to stop selling ourselves short. We want to bring in more artists, more programmers, more sponsorships and bigger contests.
If you are a PROFESSIONAL in the Philadelphia area with REAL EXPERIENCE, REAL KNOWLEDGE and the ability to SELL, please email me with your resume. If you are one of those douchey sort of sales people who we wouldn't want to hang out with in the office, please refrain.
