Buyer's Guide … the one with the Encyclopedia!

The RP Photonics Advertising Package

You can have free or paid entries in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, but with our advertising package you do much better. Here, we explain the features and the cost of the ad package.

If you need to learn first why the RP Photonics platform is the premier place for marketing photonics products, read our marketing intro page.

Our 3.5-minute video explains the features and benefits of our advertising package:

Details of the Advertising Package

Here are the advertising package features in detail. We recommend that you focus on the crucial point (1); the others are also nice but far less important.

(1) Improved Display of Your Products

For each product category, you can display a product description – text with links to product-specific pages, plus an image, which will be shown in three places:

  1. on your company profile page (see below)
  2. on the page listing suppliers for a specific product (example: laser diodes)
  3. even in the related encyclopedia article, if there is one (example: laser diodes)

This gives you not only by far stronger exposure, but also results in many times improved referral traffic to your website.

Note: We require only one description for each product category – not one for each individual product model, which would mean vastly more work!

Click here to learn why displaying product information is so important.

Displaying product information, particularly in the list of suppliers of specific products, is very important:

  • A user is often confronted with a very long list of suppliers of a certain product category – too long to check every supplier in detail.
  • The first round of selection – making a short list of suppliers for closer inspection – is normally made based on published product descriptions (typically few sentences), where these are available: these allow the user to quickly determine whether that supplier seems to have suitable products.
  • Product descriptions (with images) can be published only with our advertising package, and that is the key advantage. Note that the product descriptions then also appear on your supplier profile page and, as far as available, even in suitable Encyclopedia articles. Through links in the product descriptions, users directly get to the relevant pages on your website – highly convenient for them, and you won't lose them on the way.
  • For all suppliers with free entries only, users would need to visit their websites and search the relevant information there (always starting from the homepage) to determine whether they might have something suitable. That is often too tedious.

For a decision on the advertising package, you may fully focus on this feature, as it is by far the most important, and proceed e.g. learning about the cost below.

(2) Enhanced Company Profile

Every supplier has a profile page (minisite) giving an overview of the company and its products. With the advertising package, that looks much nicer and gives more comprehensive information:

  • Your profile can present your company logo, slogan and a company description. The description can be several sentences long and can contain links to specific pages on your website.
  • We can display an image (up to 1200 × 800 px) – for example, a photograph of your main building, an exemplary exhibition booth, a collection of products or just a nice illustration.
  • You can also display links to your social media pages (Facebook, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Vimeo) and a quality certificate (e.g. ISO 9001).
  • You can list several company news items – each one with a title, linked to a page e.g. on your website.
  • As a manufacturer, you can list your distributors, or as a distributor, you can list the companies you represent.
  • We will announce your participation in upcoming exhibitions, if you tell us about them.

You also get far more visibility in the list of all suppliers.

With a free entry only, the table of products on your supplier profile page displays alternative suppliers for those products. If you have the advertising package, your product descriptions will show up there – and your company appears on other supplier profiles as an alternative supplier!

(3) Enhanced Presence in the RP Photonics Virtual Exhibition

With the advertising package, you get a much enhanced booth in the RP Photonics Virtual Exhibition – more precisely, one such booth in every hall of the exhibition (for a specific top-level product category) where at least one of the products of the corresponding category has been registered for your company. The booth has a much increased size; it displays your logo and images.

The mini-profile which pops up when somebody clicks on your booth symbol is also substantially improved.

Further features are special promotion buttons on your virtual booth: for company or product news, or for a company video. When somebody clicks on such a button, we display some additional information and a link, e.g. to a page on your website. You can use such features throughout the year and occasionally change their details.

(4) White Paper or Video Promotion

One white paper or video promotion is included in the advertising package. We place a preview in the corresponding Encyclopedia article, so that it is seen by exactly those people who have an interest in the specific topic!

(5) Advertising Banner

The advertising package includes a skyscraper banner which can be displayed in the right column of the Buyer's Guide pages (see the right side of this page as an example – many are our own ads).

Whenever a page of the Buyer's Guide or the Encyclopedia is called, the web server randomly selects one of the banners.

More details of banners …

All banners resulting from advertising packages have the same display probability. The total display probability of those banners is limited to 50% for the Buyer's Guide pages, and to 10% for the Encyclopedia pages. Currently, there are 46 such banners, and each one obtains a 1.1% display probability on Buyer's Guide pages. With typically well over 20,000 page views per month of Buyer's Guide pages and well over 200,000 on Encyclopedia pages (see the statistics), each banner obtains over 217 views per month on Buyer's Guide pages and over 435 on Encyclopedia pages.

Banners are graphics with the following characteristics:

  • width: 234 px, height 500 to 600 px
  • animated GIFs are allowed, as long as the animation is not too distracting (to be determined by RP Photonics)
  • HTML link connected to the banner: URL can be freely determined by the advertiser

Our additional service: we produce your banner graphics from your inputs. For example, you may send us an image and some text which we will place on the image, together with your company logo. We can also cut off superfluous margins, rescale images etc. It may thus be sufficient to send us materials from other areas which we adapt to meet the above described characteristics.

It is also possible to obtain additional such banners, possibly with higher display probability and for a limited time; see our page on advertising banners for details.

(6) Website Statistics

When you advertise, you probably want to monitor the results. Therefore, RP Photonics provides substantial statistical data to customers with an advertising package. They obtain a website link, containing a secret password, with which they can access the statistical information at any time. The data is regularly updated at the beginning of each month.

The provided statistical data include at least the following:

  • Traffic by pages: number of page views and referrals to the supplier's website – for the company profile, for each supplier page for a product of the supplier, and for each Encyclopedia article in which an ad of the supplier appears. These data are the sums from the beginning of the current advertising period to the previous month.
  • Traffic by months: number of page views and referrals by month for up to 36 months (possibly even beyond the beginning of the advertising). The information includes data for the company profile and sums for all supplier pages and for all Encyclopedia articles.

We are happy to demonstrate to our customers how much our website is used, and how much value is added in the form of branding and lead generation.

We strongly encourage you also to check the statistics of your own web server, so that you can find out how much traffic you get from us as compared with other websites – for example, from other buyer's guides.

What is the Cost of the Advertising Package?

Simple Rules

The cost per year:

  • basic price: 2500 € (2500 CHF, 2750 USD)
  • add 80 EUR (80 CHF, 90 USD) for each product category up to 50
  • add 50 EUR (50 CHF, 60 USD) for each further category (beyond 50)
prices of ad packages
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Enter input values with units, where appropriate. After you have modified some values, click a “calc” button to recalculate the field left of it.

After the advertising period (normally one year), we will ask you whether you want to prolong your advertising. There will be no automatic renewal – we always ask for your explicit consent.

Trial for Limited Time

If you are not yet advertising in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, we suggest the following:

  • Try it out either for 6 or even only 3 months.
  • Thereafter, make your final decision based on the statistical data and your overall impression.

The vast majority of advertisers who tried that then decided to stay with us – often for many years.

Free Trial With Product Descriptions

We currently offer a free trial – not of the whole advertising package, but of its key feature: publishing product descriptions (see above, item (1)). You can have that for three product categories during two months.

Note that with this trial you will not enjoy various other benefits of the advertising package, such a much improved company profile page. But you will see the major lead-generating feature at work for some of your product categories.

Startup Discount

We offer a startup discount of 25% if your company has been registered only up to 25 months before the date of order.

Additional Information

Get started!

Here are the simple steps to get it done:

Learn about the RP Photonics offer.

Another page explains why RP Photonics is the clearly leading partner for digital marketing of photonics products.

Our offer is simple: our advertising package lets you use all features and generate a lot of referral traffic to your website. This is what is described on this page.

Any remaining questions or concerns?

You are welcome to talk directly to Dr. Paschotta (RP), who has developed the whole system and understands how digital marketing in photonics works. He will be happy to evaluate your needs and will diligently assist you.

Of course, you can also send your questions by e-mail to .

Fill out your form.

You can most conveniently deliver the inputs for the advertising package through a form, although we also accept materials sent by e-mail to .

If your company is listed already, you will find it in the selection box below, which directly takes you to the form:

Otherwise, please use the registration form for new suppliers.

Further steps – we get started fast!

When you sent us the information for the advertising, the further steps are:

  • We will ask you to informally confirm your consent with (a) our user-friendly Terms and Conditions and (b) the cost (by e-mail).
  • Once we have sufficient data (in particular, the product descriptions and images), we will display at least a preliminary form of your enhanced entries. Your referral traffic will rise steeply!
  • In the following few days, we can together complete and fine-tune your entries, e.g. utilizing additional features of the advertising package.
  • When everything is set up, we will send our invoice (for payment via bank transfer).
  • Some time before the advertising period is over, we will ask you about the renewal for the next 12 months. You can then decide based on your overall experience and the obtained statistical data.