By Danny Wirken

Corporate Overview

For over three decades, the Casale group of companies has been the industry leader in online marketing providing high-performing online marketing campaigns. It has consistently earned client satisfaction. Banking on its online marketing expertise, it established the online media unit, Casale Media, based in Toronto, Canada. Barely a year after its launch, it has been billed as one of the world’s largest and fastest growing online media network, proof of its popularity among publishers and advertisers. Casale Media presently reaches over 140 million unique visitors worldwide via the World Wide Web monthly and represents a network of over 6000 of the webs most sought after publisher properties. In the United States alone, it has attained 81 million users or 54% of the total U.S. online population. Casale Media takes pride in delivering superb advertising content, maximum revenues for its publishers, smooth and hassle-free ad delivery management and superior technology to analyze and optimize the value and utilization of online media campaigns.

Program Details

Casale Media started out with pop-based advertising. Other ad formats were later included. It currently offers leaderboards (728×90), skyscrapers (120×600), rectangles (300×250) plus the popups (open in a new window on top of the current window viewed) and popunders (open in a new window underneath current window).

The pops are of higher quality and smaller sizes compared to pops offered by other networks. Seldom does Casale Media open up a full website in a popup window. Campaigns average out to $3 - $6 CPM gross and a net from $2.10 - $4.20 after the 30% cut of Casale Media. As opposed to performance-based models, CPM (cost per thousand) rates guarantee publishers income for each ad displayed, whether the visitor clicks it or not. The advertiser pays a price for each 1000 displays of a banner ad. In-page ad formats pay out at levels at par with Fastclick - $0.40 - $0.50 for leaderboards, $0.30 - $0.45 for skyscrapers and $0.60 - $0.80 for rectangles.

Unlike Fastclick, Casale Media does not list CPC rates, the performance-based pricing model for advertising sales wherein publishers are paid dependent on the number of clicks on a specific ad. If a campaign is CPC, Casale lists the average CPM and then the publisher’s effective CPM for that campaign. This is much better as it highlights which CPC campaigns actually perform. Casale also sets a minimum CPM rate for campaigns. This way, a publisher can send impressions (the number of times an ad has been displayed) through their default system to another network with a better CPM than his minimum.

The Casale Media program has still other advantages. For one, it gives publishers complete control over which ad campaigns to run in their sites. They can select campaigns they want to run and where to run them. They can exclude ads that don’t complement their websites’ audience. Casale provides the easiest way to filter any ad that a publisher would not like to show on his website or may contain mature material like gambling and pornography and misleading banners such as error boxes or those that contain superfluous animation.

Statistics interface is real time. Campaign performance results are updated every second. This allows the publishers to view vital statistics on campaign performances in real time (sales, downloads, clicks, visits, etc.). Daily and monthly charts are shown on the main log-in screen with earnings and impression summaries. Statistics are available by date and site. Publishers can apply with multiple sites under the same account with statistics tracked individually for easy viewing.

A notable point is Casale Media’s ad code options. Publishers are given a load of javascript to place in their pages or single javascript URL to use for popunders. This is a very convenient feature, no complex default mechanisms. Casale has a very suitable default ad code; although it’s standard ad code is quite lengthy. It does have a single line ad code that can be easily used as a default with other ad networks. Publishers have used Casale as a back-up to other networks like Fastclick and ValueClick. Casale does not leave it to the publishers to do frequency capping of popunders with javascript, but has an automatic setting to configure how often visitors will see the ads. Its ad code by default limits popunders to one per person every 12 hours to lessen annoyance factor on the part of visitors.

A downside to its default mechanism has to do with how ads are served. It gives the idea that any default ad is being loaded from a page on Casale’s servers. Any ad network that does hostname validation might deem the ads improperly invoked. Because Casale puts the ads inside an IFrame, publishers cannot run wide skyscrapers as a default for their regular skyscrapers. Still another flaw is that while publishers get to configure quite a number of options for their default mechanisms, there isn’t any way they can add more for a particular site or format combination. Setting up a default campaign, say, for all US-based leaderboard traffic cancels out the creation of another campaign to handle other countries.

Payment

Casale Media pays its publishers 70% (an industry high) of the advertising revenues received by Casale for advertising placed on the publisher’s website. Casale Media retains the 30% of the revenue for services rendered. Payments are given to publishers within 30 days after the end the month (Net 30). Publishers are paid only for months in which earned revenues exceed $25 for the month. Revenues not paid will be credited to the publisher’s account and paid later when accrued revenues meet or surpass the $25 minimum payment ceiling. If the publisher wishes to change the $25 limit, he can do so on the Casale Media website. Earnings are displayed throughout the publisher’s account, including the combined total of both site and referral earnings. Publishers may choose to be paid via check or PayPal service. Publishers are guaranteed timely payments, very reassuring, indeed.

Referral Program

Casale Media’s referral program pays for publisher referrals. A publisher earns 5% of the referred publisher’s earnings every month. Referral earnings are displayed through the publisher’s account interface. Truly a bonus especially if a publisher has many webmaster friends.

Application

New publication applications are processed by Casale Media’s review staff immediately. Answers are available within 24 to 48 hours. Publishers get flexible options and do not have to sign any contract. One just has to agree to a Publisher Agreement and Privacy Policy. Best of all, there is no cost involved in becoming a member.

Visitor Feedback

Casale Media is highly recommended – high CPM earnings, superior ads, streamlined default system, real time statistics. Overall feedback has been very favorable. Additional ad formats including “overlays” and capped interstitials are eagerly awaited. Definitely, it is “the network that everybody loves”.