Artcyclopedia

 
 

Artcyclopedia's AdSculptor Technology

  • Place customized ads on any artist page(s)
     
  • Advertise online affordably
     
  • Increase your visibility
     
 
Auction Houses                Galleries                Museums
 


 

For Auction Houses:

Increase bids.   Increase prices.   Reduce unsold lots.


You have the infrastructure in place: brand recognition, a steady flow of consignments, a list of previous bidders and their interests that you may well have been developing for centuries, and a website which allows visitors to browse through the auctions and bid online. But there's a critical piece of the puzzle missing: how do new customers find your auctions?

Conventional auction sites rely primarily on visitors seeking them out on a regular basis. Unfortunately, very few people will have the persistence to return every few weeks and sift through your online catalog, and that's one reason why auctioning fine art online is such a hit and miss affair.

The solution: Increase your visibility - so much so that you can turn it into a strategic advantage over your competitors: Reach out to your ideal audience with inexpensive, short-term and highly targeted notices on our website.

If you have a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, for example, place a notice on our Sir Thomas Lawrence page and reach an audience composed entirely of people interested in this particular artist. Or, if you have an Impressionist sale coming up, in a single step you can place a notice on the page of each Impressionist artist in our database.

AdSculptor ads are easily customized: a simple online form allows you to provide the text, a thumbnail image if you wish, and your company logo. And if you have a large number of ads, we can use automated tools to place them on your behalf.

How does it work?



 

For Galleries:

Sell your inventory.   Sell your expertise.


You've invested thousands (maybe millions) in a great website. You can call on decades of experience in your field of expertise. You have several important works available for sale. Now, what are your online marketing options?

Banner ads are out: too expensive and unfocused. Search engine submissions bring in some free traffic but hardly enough to generate a critical mass.

How does it work?



 

For Museums:

Promote your exhibitions.   Improve attendance.   Draw more visitors to your site.


How does it work?



 

Artcyclopedia, Inc. is pioneering a new form of Internet advertising, integrated with the content of individual pages. This advertising model is a win-win for advertisers and for the audience:

For advertisers, AdSculptor announcements are:
  • Targeted. Place your ads exactly where you want in order to reach your ideal audience. Pablo Picasso's page. Hudson River School artists. Sculptors. Wildlife artists. If you're an auction house holding a Pop Art sale, you can use our site to reach an audience composed exclusively of people interested in Pop Art.
  • Flexible. Announcements can be text-only, or mixed text and graphics. It's a simple matter to customize each announcement for the specific page on which it will appear.
  • Inexpensive. You pay only for announcements delivered to your targeted audience. Advertising on most artist pages would work out to less than $1 per day. Plus you can place the announcement yourself, with no creative cost overhead.
  • Open to anyone. If you have a web site, you can set up a link there; if not, you can just as easily publish your email address, phone and fax numbers, and/or street address.
  • Easy. After registering, just fill out a simple one-page form to place an ad. And you can specify an expiry date, so there's no need to return and pull the ad when it's no longer required.


For site visitors, AdSculptor announcements are:
  • Novel. People are filtering out banner ads, both mentally and by using browser add-ons to prevent them from being displayed. Our announcements are distinctive, yet fully integrated with the rest of the page content.
  • Relevant. Our goal is to have all announcements be relevant and useful. If you go to the Claude Monet page, we feel it adds value to see information about relevant museum exhibitions, Monet works for sale, upcoming Impressionist auctions, and so on.
  • Tasteful. We maintain a uniform look and feel for all announcements. No Java, flashing banners or pop-up ads.
  • Non-Invasive. We don't build profiles of our site visitors. We don't need to - ads are targeted by relevance, not on the basis of demographics.
If you are interested in learning more, please browse through the Frequently Asked Question list below. For further information, or to get started, contact:

John Malyon
President
Artcyclopedia, Inc.
(403) 547-9692




 
 
Frequently asked questions:
  1. Can I see a sample announcement?
  2. Who are you?
  3. Why should I use your system?
  4. Who would benefit from advertising here?
  5. How much does it cost?
  6. What kind of reporting is provided?
  7. How do I know the number of ad views and clickthroughs reported are accurate?
  8. What kind of clickthrough rate can I expect?
  9. What if the artist I am looking for is not in your database?
  10. Where do the ads appear on the page?
  11. How does the process of creating and placing an announcement work?
  12. What if I want to display my banner instead of a custom ad?



Can I see a sample announcement?

Here is a non-functioning example which ran earlier on our Gustav Klimt page:

Visit ArtMagick's Gustav Klimt page! We have a biography, samples of his artwork, free Klimt e-cards and links to Klimt merchandise.

ArtMagick
Your source of visual intoxication!


And here are links to several pages which, at the time of this writing, have ads on them:
Pablo Picasso
Edgar Degas
Andrew Wyeth


Who are you?

The Artcyclopedia is the leading guide to museum-quality fine on the Internet. We have been lauded by professional researchers and art lovers alike. If you want to know what others think of us, we have assembled a variety of reviews that have been published about our site.


How much does it cost?

There are two pricing models available:
1. Pay per ad view: You only pay for ads actually delivered to visitors to our site. The cost is $25 U.S. per 1,000 ad "views" ($25 CPM). Minimum purchase is $25.

2. Exclusive sponsorship: You pay a flat annual fee to be the only sponsor for a given artist's page. This ensures you premium placement on the page and guarantees that nobody else can advertise on that page for the duration of the contract. Please contact us for a quote, as pricing is on an artist-by-artist basis. The minimum cost is $50 U.S. per year.

What kind of reporting is provided?

We have a complete online reporting system capable of tracking every ad shown to a visitor and every click-through to your site, on a daily basis.


How do I know the number of ad views and clickthroughs reported are accurate?

We encourage advertisers to incorporate a logo or a thumbnail image of a work of art into their ads, and to keep those images on their own server. That way they can monitor the number of times their ads are displayed (if they have access to log reports for their site). Advertisers can also design a unique URL for their ads very easily, so that they can monitor how many visitors come from the Artcyclopedia each day.
Note that because of caching, network traffic, and other issues central to the design of the World Wide Web, these figures will never exactly match the Artcyclopedia's internal reporting. We have no choice but to charge advertisers based on our own numbers, but we will be happy to investigate serious discrepancies.

For a fairly detailed and technical explanation of how we measure ad impressions and clickthroughs.


What kind of clickthrough rate can I expect?

It is important to realize that the raw clickthrough rate often does not correlate well with an ad's success in communicating its message or generating sales. We have run ads whose goal was to "qualify" visitors so that only high-quality prospects would click through, and the response rate was in the area of 1% (about equal to the average banner ad clickthrough rate). Other ads geared towards creating the maximum possible number of clickthroughs have achieved better than a 10% response rate.

Our general belief is that the unique characteristics of our ads will keep the clickthrough rate substantially higher than could be achieved by a banner campaign with similar objectives.


What if the artist I am looking for doesn't have a page on your site?

Our site serves the online community as a guide to more than 6,000 painters, sculptors, photographers and fine craftsmen represented in leading art museum sites. Virtually every well-established fine artist is in our database, but "popular" and lesser-known artists may be absent if their work isn't viewable online at any of the sites we have indexed. We may be able to add an artist to accommodate you, but in most cases it will not be practical for us to do so.


Where do the ads appear on the page?

Ads don't appear at the top of the page, but instead are located between different categories of links. The reasoning behind this is that surfers are conditioned to ignore banners and other message which appear at the top of the screen, but will pay much more attention to messages integrated into the key informational area of the page.
Note that if there are a very large number of links in the first section, which sometimes happens with the most famous artists, the first section is automatically broken into two parts to ensure that paid announcements are not buried too far down the page.

How does the process of creating and placing an announcement work?

Step 1: Register as a new advertiser, choosing a userid and password.

Step 2: Wait. There is a manual step involved in activating your account. This is usually done quickly, but can take up to one business day.

Step 3: When you are notified that your account has been activated, proceed to the advertisers' area. From the Account Maintenance Menu, begin with "Company Description". The contact information you enter here will be formatted and appended to every ad you place. Your company description can be in one of the following formats:

      Web Link (If you have a web
presence, this is probably the
best choice for you):
     
The Artcyclopedia
Calgary, Canada
The guide to museum-quality art on the Internet!
 
Email/Phone Contact Info:
The Artcyclopedia
Calgary, Canada
The guide to museum-quality art on the Internet!
Contact: J. Malyon
Email:
Phone: 403-547-9692
 
Offline Address Info Only:
The Artcyclopedia
The guide to museum-quality art on the Internet!
Contact: J. Malyon
51 Tuscany Hills Terrace N.W.
Calgary AB    T3L 2G7    Canada
Phone: 403-547-9692
 
Logo:
 
Step 4: From the Account Maintenance Menu, go to "Add a New Listing". This is where you can create an ad and decide on which page(s) you would like it to be placed. The basic information you can provide is:
  • Announcement text
  • Specific artists or groups of artists on whose pages you wish the announcement to appear
  • Thumbnail image, or logo (optional)
  • Specific page the ad should click through to (optional)
  • Expiry date (optional)
That's it! Repeat step 4 for as many notices as you wish to create.

All additions and changes you make should be effective by the next business day.

If you want to change or remove an ad, you can do so by going to the "Review Existing Ads" option of the Account Maintenance Menu.


What if I want to display my banner instead of a custom ad?

We feel that people using the Internet have been desensitized to banner ads, and will tend to ignore anything that looks like one. However, if there is a demand for this capability, we can make the minor changes needed to accommodate banner ads.












 
ARTCYCLOPEDIA

Top 30 Artists
Articles
Art News
Art Museums Worldwide
Masterpieces
Links
About Us
Advertise