Some brick-and-mortar concepts don’t translate well to the virtual world. Others do, with a few modifications. When husband-and-wife team Mark and Parney Galione decided to transfer their real-world advertising talents to cyberspace, they kept the best of what they’d learned over several decades at traditional print and broadcast media agencies and added twists tailor-made to suit the needs of adult Web-based businesses.
CyberCat Inc. (www.cybercatinc.com) was the result. Founded eight years ago, CyberCat never was intended to be a huge, impersonal ad agency. Instead, according to president and chief executive officer Mark Galione, the company remains relatively small by design, in order to offer each client personal interaction and intimate attention to detail.
“Probably the easiest way to describe us is as an online advertising agency,” says Galione, “but the way we approach it is different. You may not have brick and mortar around you [in the virtual world], but it’s still a business, and we approach it as such.
“We keep in mind the interests of surfers, site owners, and advertisers,” he continues. “The best strategy is the one that offers benefits to all three of those groups.”
CyberCat’s philosophy seems to be appreciated. The company has maintained most of its current Website clients for the past four to five years, Galione says, and some – like The Hun’s Yellow Pages – have been utilizing CyberCat’s uncommon services since Day One. The company typically bills between $650,000 and $750,000 per month on 700-900 invoices for its Website clients.
Essentially, “We take away all the advertising worries from a Website owner,” Galione says by way of explanation. “That way they can make a better Website, which gets more traffic, which means more sales for advertisers, which means more advertising revenue for the owners. We do all the banner programming and management, and we keep backup copies of all banners in case something happens to the advertisers’ servers. Everyone occasionally experiences a glitch with their server, and this way we can stick our copy of the customer’s banner into the rotation so they don’t lose any impact. All they have to do is let us know there’s an ‘issue,’ and they’ll have a response within 30 minutes in most cases. We’ll also change their banners as often as they’d like.
CyberCat Inc. also routinely spends up to $20,000 per month promoting the Websites they represent. “Although the site owners work very hard at maintaining their sites and growing them, it is advantageous for us to promote them in association with ourselves so people will know there is one-stop shopping,” Galione says.
“We don’t work 9 to 5,” he continues. “That’s what customer service is all about, and customer service is the reason our customers and clients are involved with us.”
“Customer service” means different things to different people. To CyberCat’s customers and clients, it not only means a personal relationship with the ad agency’s owners – who remain in the trenches on purpose – but also less esoteric things like on-time payments, quantifiable results, and expert consultation on marketing and site design. From the beginning, CyberCat has disbursed funds to client Websites like clockwork: Everyone gets paid on the 5th of every month. “We’ve never been late, and we’ve never missed a payday,” Galione says. “Partly, that’s because all of our advertising customers pay up front before their banners are entered into the rotation. All of them are on monthly contracts, and they get renewal notices on the 15th of the month. If they don’t renew, their ads don’t continue.” According to Galione, 95-98 percent of all advertisers renew their contracts from month to month. That’s not only testimony that company vice president and chief customer service representative Parney Galione is doing something right; it’s also a bonus for CyberCat in a completely different way: “I am inherently lazy,” Galione admits, laughing. “I want the advertisers to stay with us so I don’t have to get a new customer!”
To keep things fair for all advertisers, any who miss their monthly payment go to the end of the priority line, just like they would in the brick-and-mortar advertising world. Also like the brick-and-mortar world, all business dealings are cemented in writing to prevent misunderstandings. Unlike the real world, however, all advertisers pay the same price for the same ad placement. Ad costs vary according to the volume and type of traffic on the site where the ad is placed, the position of the ad, and whether the ad is horizontal or vertical.
“The first vertical banner online was ours, on The Hun,” Galione says with no little pride in the trend-setting accomplishment. “We were also the first ones to sell text links, also on The Hun.
“Right now, we serve as the exclusive agent for five companies. The only way to place ads on their sites is to go through us. That serves two purposes: Our clients get the best exposure to people who will really benefit from placing ads with them, and we don’t ‘garbage up’ their pages.”
“Garbage-ing up” Web pages with too much advertising is almost a cardinal sin to Galione’s way of thinking. In an attempt to garner additional revenue from their traffic, too many well-intentioned Webmasters fill every spare inch of their pages with ads for other Websites. Such an approach usually does more harm than good, Galione says: It not only dilutes the value of each advertiser’s investment, but it also confuses – and sometimes even enrages or disgusts – surfers, who will quickly abandon a “garbaged-up” site regardless how good its legitimate content might be.
It’s no mean feat to be accepted as a client or advertiser by CyberCat. Because the agency is small, it is very selective about the Websites it represents and about the advertisers it allows onto those Websites. Initial consultations for both groups involve Website and traffic evaluations.
“We have a responsibility to our advertisers to make sure the Websites we represent have legal content and clean traffic,” Galione says. “Our rules are not set in stone, but generally we want a client Website to have a minimum of one-half million uniques daily, and as long as it’s making the advertisers money, we’ll keep it. As for advertisers, we want their content to be legal, too. Advertisers have to be willing to conform to any and all dos and don’ts established by the client Website, and they have to provide their own graphics. That’s one thing we don’t do: creative. What we do do is help them plan out where the best ad buys are based on their desires, their content, and their budget. We try to talk them out of a buy we don’t think will work for them. If they don’t derive value from their advertising dollars, nobody benefits.”
Occasionally an advertiser won’t derive significant benefit from a buy, Galione admits, and that’s when the friendly, personal relationship CyberCat’s staff maintains with each client and advertiser becomes especially important.
“We want our people – all of them – to make money,” Galione says. “That is our obligation to them. If we need to, we’ll run ‘make-goods’ [run the ad again at no charge]. That’s very uncommon in this industry. Before we go there, though, we sit down with the advertiser and consult about Website and traffic issues that might be causing them to lose the benefit of their advertising. In fact, we’re happy to do that with all of our clients and advertisers whenever they have a concern. As a matter of practice, I avoid looking at sites routinely in order to maintain a surfer’s mindset. Parney, the spine of our sales department, and Nina [Shoals, CyberCat’s account representative] are always looking at the sites to make sure they conform to applicable rules, but I try to maintain a distance from them so that I can offer advice about impulse buying and marketing psychology. It makes a difference.”
Galione admits that although there’s significant money changing hands through his agency, that’s not the only thing that keeps him excited and involved from day to day in a field some might see as cutthroat. “We’re having a really good time, and it’s being very fair to us,” he says candidly. “It’s no fun having a business if all you have is business. We honestly like the people we deal with. We become friends with them, and we see each other socially as well as professionally. That makes it even easier to do a good job for every one of them.”
CyberCat currently handles The Hun’s Yellow Pages, The Hun’s Thumbs Up, The Hun’s Overflow, Worldsex, AL4A, SleazyDream, and JJJ’s. The company is accepting new Website clients and advertising customers, and Galione and company welcome the opportunity to show Web-based operations of all types and sizes how a good advertising plan can benefit their businesses.
“If they’re making money already, they can make more with us,” Galione says. “If they’re not making money, they can come to us and we’ll help them.”
