Free is always good right? Not necessarily. So there is no free lunch right?  That's not always true either.  So what am I babbling about?

A practice quite common in the online media world is giving out free banner impressions. Publishers do this for various reasons. Sometimes they are not able to sell all banner inventories to advertisers and rather than running self promotion banners, it looks better on the properties if ads from real advertisers are shown. Other times they just like to under promise and over deliver so every time advertisers and agencies think they are getting a good deal.

So what's wrong with this you say?  What's the harm in getting more exposure if it's free?

Well, as a brand guardian I'd ask how it will affect my brand's image in the heart of the consumers.  Do we have sufficient creative executions to keep the consumers interested or if this will increase my frequency of exposure to a point of image degradation?

I am sure we've all experienced this as consumers.  We see an interesting banner and take notice the first few times, even clicked on it once to check out the flashy landing page.  Then we go to the same site or another site the next day and see the same ad again.  Now we've "experienced" the landing page and simply ignore the banner. But the banner seems to have it's homing missiles locked on to us and every site we visit, we see the same banner or variations of it.  That's when we get annoyed and swear we'll never buy from this company, even though the landing page was kind of quirky. (you know we are talking about you… Get Your Legal US Green Card….)

So what is a marketer to do when a publisher offers free impressions?  Shall we say no "thank you I've had enough?"  Sometimes that might exactly be the right answer to give, but honestly it's free, who can resist when it's FREE right?  So here are some tips on things to think about if you do want this "free" lunch without having to pay too high a price.

1.) Establish a frequency threshold - Monitor and put a cap on your average unique frequency, you don't want this going too high as people will very likely get bored with seeing your ad the 10th time they load it up.

2.) Keep your eyes on the ball - You know those impressions and click targets you set for yourself and the agency?  Make sure you hit both of them and don't get blinded by the skyrocketing impressions numbers.  Don't let the ever decreasing click through rate (CTR) leave you short of your click goals!

3.) Rotate, retarget, make it interesting -  You have this extra inventory, why not make good use of it?  Invest a bit more in the creative and have variations of the banners!  Better yet, make use of your ad server and do some retargeting / cascading ads where the consumer will see a sequence of message instead of the same old ad again and again. (e.g.: the 3rd time the same person sees my banner with a holiday package to Hawaii, I'll show them an ad with a package to Bali instead - if they are not interested in a long haul vacation, perhaps a closer destination will interest them)  Lastly do make your ad interesting, who knows, people might never get tired of seeing your ad!  

I am sure you've noticed by now my recommendations involve either more labour, time, or money.  If nothing is done when eating this free lunch, then very likely you'll pay with your brand's reputation. 

In sum, there is no free lunch afterall but hey if done right, free impressions can "almost" be free.