part of the Virtual Library

Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

© Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta

Last update: 2010-03-03

Advertising in the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology has become the major reference of the Internet in its topical areas, delivering in-depth high quality information in 570 technical articles. Internet search engines, particularly the large ones such as Google and MSN, highly rank this encyclopedia for a wide range of search keywords. Mostly for this reason, the encyclopedia is receiving thousands of visits on each working day, and the page hit numbers are still rising.

As a consequence, the encyclopedia has become very interesting as a place for focused advertising.

Figure 1: Google rankings of the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology, applied to the heading keywords of all encyclopedia articles. For as many as 70% of the articles, an entry between the first and third position of the Google results page is achieved. For less than 10% of the keywords, there is no hit among the first 20 positions (ranking 0 in the graph).

Two options are available for companies providing photonics equipment, such as lasers, optical fibers, or nonlinear crystals:

Banners

On the right-hand side of the encyclopedia pages, you see a gray bar which has space for a limited number of banners. These are displayed in the same way on all pages of the encyclopedia, and of the Photonics Spotlight. In this way, they are displayed well over 100'000 times per month.

As an example, take RP Photonics' own advertisement banner, shown to the right of this text.

Some details:

• The banner width is 234 pixels, corresponding to the usual half banner size. The height can be freely chosen.
• The banners are assembled by RP Photonics based on text and/or graphics files (e.g. company logos) provided by the customer.
• Direct html links can be included in the text or associated with images.

Why your company should have such a banner:

• It's effective: you reach a huge number of specialists in the field.
• It's cost-effective: you save a lot of money, compared with print advertising.
• It's simple: your efforts to get this advertising started are minimal.

Links on Encyclopedia Article Pages

Many of the encyclopedia articles are directly related to certain products, such as certain kinds of lasers, optical fibers, or crystal materials. As a single article is often used many hundred times per month, it is a very interesting place for listing manufacturers and distributors who can provide corresponding products. RP Photonics now offers vendors to place links to their own website (together with some hints concerning available products) in boxes on the pages of encyclopedia articles. This opportunity is also open to sellers of books, journals, software, etc., as long as these products have a strong relation to the topic of the article.

For example, the link box for an article about solid-state lasers could look as displayed on the right-hand side.

The basic conditions are:

• Each box with links appears directly below the heading of an article, so that it is immediately seen when the corresponding page is displayed.
• The displayed information about a vendor contains a link and some information on available products.
• The (moderate) cost is based on page hit numbers in the time before the contract. The price stays unchanged for rising page hits, while there is an opt-out right for the customer in the case of significantly falling page hits.

Have a look at the available keywords and the number of page hits which these have recently received.

Why your company should use such links:

• It's effective: you reach specialists who are interested exactly in this area. (Do you know a better targeted kind of advertising?)
• It's cost-effective: you save a lot of money, compared with print advertising. (A single print ad will usually cost much more than a link in this encyclopedia for a whole year.)
• It's simple: your efforts to get this advertising started are minimal.

General Principle: Maximizing User Value

The encyclopedia's value for the users has the highest priority. Therefore, advertising is limited to an extent where the valuable free technical content stays very dominating. Certainly, the encyclopedia will not develop to the state of certain other commercial websites or trade journals, which are cluttered with advertisements, partially even of rather annoying character. This determination will preserve the attractiveness of the encyclopedia for a large user group, and also serve the interests of the limited number of advertisers (see below).

Value for Advertisers

The attractions for advertisers are obvious:

• Readers are made aware of the fact that company X is selling products of type Y. This is particularly important for companies with a wide product range, where general company visibility is not sufficient.
• The articles are read by users who are very specifically interested in a certain topic. Compared with advertising in trade journals, the reached group is smaller but much better focused.
• The general visibility of a manufacturer or distributor is also increased.
• The links may improve the search engine ranking of the manufacturer.
• Last but not least, the strict limitation of the extent and character of advertising (see above) also serves the interests of the advertisers, who's banners and links get a greater chance of being recognized.

Conditions

Interested customers should inquire RP Photonics about the exact terms and conditions. These are made as simple as possible, i.e. easy to understand and to handle. Also, advertisers receive significant help in assembling their banners; they only need to provide the text and (if required) some image file for a banner, not necessarily a complete banner.

See also: list of available keywords and page hits