About:
LaunchBit is an ad network for email. We help advertisers reach their target demographics through email channels, and we help email publishers monetize their emails. LaunchBit was started by high school best friends Jennifer Chin and Elizabeth Yin in 2011. Join us – we’re hiring! Send us an email at hello [at] launchbit [dot] com if you're interested in learning more about joining our team.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Say I want to reach designers, how does this work, and how involved is it?
Great – LaunchBit is a self-serve platform. You can get up and running from our homepage, today. Select the demographic(s) you want to reach, upload your campaign, and enter your credit card information. It’s that simple.
Do you accept all ads?
No, before your campaign goes live, we make sure that it’s reader-friendly. LaunchBit believes in high-quality advertising, so we do not allow ads for pornography, drugs, illegal activities, weapons, etc. Our quality team also flags ads that we believe are "spammy-looking." Lastly, we give our publishers additional filters to allow them to control what ads go into their publications.
How will I know if my ad is up and running?
Once you complete the steps to take out a campaign, you should assume that you're all set. You will receive a confirmation email when your campaign goes live along with a LaunchBit account which will enable you to check your stats. Please note that it may take a day or so for our team to approve your campaign.
Ok, but I'm not seeing any impressions in my dashboard...?
It may take a couple of days before you start getting into newsletters. Newsletters go out in spurts, so you'll likely see spikes of impressions rather than a constant, continuous number of impressions. Also, please make sure to upload both ad formats that we support. This gives you the opportunity to get into our full list of email newsletters that reach the demographic(s) you select. If you only upload one format, this severely reduces your total pool of impressions.
How does payment work?
We accept most major credit cards: Visa, Mastercard, AMEX. We have a cost-per-click (CPC) auction system, which means that you bid whatever max CPC makes sense for your business. Based on the demographic(s) you are trying to target and the competition from other companies trying to reach that demographic at that time, you are allocated a certain number of impressions. This means that with a higher CPC bid (relative to competing companies), you will win more impressions. With a lower CPC bid, you will win fewer impressions. You can always change your CPC bid up or down in your account to tweak your campaign. We charge your credit card on the 1st and 16th of every month. When you choose to end your campaign, we'll charge you the balance 7 days after that.
Do you have a minimum spend requirement?
We ask that you set a minimum monthly budget to $500. This is enough for us to help you test whether LaunchBit is a good channel for you. We will not exceed this budget, but it may take nearly a month to get close to meeting this budget. Some newsletters go out weekly, bi-monthly, or even monthly, so your impressions may come in big spurts.
What if you get me impressions in the first couple of weeks and I want to stop my campaign?
You can stop your campaign at any time, but it can take up to 7 days from the moment you stop your campaign to reconcile your bill. We pay publishers for clicks up to 7 days from the time they send their newsletters.
What if I have a product deadline/launch?
Email us: hello [at] launchbit [dot] com. We're working on a better way to handle this, but we should be able to get you the impressions/clicks you need for your launch. :)
So, can I choose the email channels I want my campaign to go in?
Yes and no. We allow advertisers to specify email channels they do not want their campaign in but we do not allow you to select specific email lists. We’ve found that we are able to dramatically increase performance for our advertisers by testing lots of different lists and then use our algorithms to optimize for the better email channels.
Why should I do email advertising? There are so many channels I can market into. What is this good for?
Email advertising is best for lead generation. It’s particularly great for increasing the size of your company’s mailing list, which has been shown over and over to be a great source for repeat sales. We are particularly good at collecting email leads for sweepstakes/contests, webinars, daily deals, and new product launches.
How does your targeting work? Are ads allocated based on contextual matching?
That’s our secret sauce... :) Our ads are based on demographic targeting. We don’t take into account content from emails themselves.
Do you offer conversion tracking?
Not yet...but it's a feature that most of our advertisers request daily...stay tuned...
I see that you add Google Analytics tags...can we add our own? How does that work
By default, we set these tags: utm_campaign = LaunchBit, utm_medium = email, utm_source = LaunchBit, and utm_content = publisher name (where publisher name is the name of the actual email publisher). If you want to override these with your own tags, you can.
What about other source tags? Such as http://www.blah.com/?uid=12345&mid=459673?
Yes, as long as your links are valid links, we can accommodate them.
Is there a file limit size on uploaded images?
Yes, 20kb.
What are your ad formats?
We have 2 formats: 1) 190 characters of text + 125x125px and 2) 468x60px banner image. Please upload both in order to maximize your opportunity to get into the greatest number of newsletters relevant to the demographic(s) you select.
What if I don't have all those ad formats?
We recommend that you start your campaign with the text format and then add a banner as your campaign goes along. There are inexpensive banner-making services that can help you out as well. 20dollarbanners, for example, can help out for a low price.
I have more questions!
Feel free to email us at hello [at] launchbit [dot] com with any other questions you have!