Thanks for your interest in advertising with Small Wars Journal. Please review the following options, and contact us at advertise@smallwarsjournal.com.

Served Banner Ads

Our primary online advertising is through ad placements served by Google AdWords. AdWords offers you many feaures to set up and manage campaigns. You can target your advertisements to Small Wars Journal, or set up sophisticated campaigns across the internet based on key words, demographics, etc.

  • Ad pricing is controlled through the Google marketplace and your bidding. Don’t ask us! We can’t help.
  • Use the AdWords “placement targeting” feature to target your advertising to Small Wars Journal, or set up your campaign to take on the whole e-world. For more info, see AdWords help center’s about placement targeting.
  • Google offers lots of help. There are lots of features to confuse you so it can look daunting at first, but it is all in there and it works well. And you get access to powerful tools covering an extensive Google Ad Network.
  • If you're new to AdWords and want to set up an account specifically to advertise on Small Wars Journal, here’s the basic workflow: start here; select Standard Account or you won’t get the targeting options you need; create a dummy ad just to get started; activate your account; once inside, you’ll have the option to create a new placement targeted campaign.

Custom Online Banner Ad Placements

We will consider custom ad placements, embedded in our pages for the duration of their run. At the moment, we can only consider them on a flat rate based on projected CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). If you are interested:

  • Look at the site, and find spots that will work for you without requiring a major page redesign from us. That’s just too hard. FYI, our side banners on the main site are 160 pixels wide.
  • Make your own estimate from 300,000 page views per month and $4-6 CPM, depending on size, to see if you want to proceed.
  • Send the image or text of a proposed ad and the specifics of your desired placement, run time, etc. to advertise@smallwarsjournal.com.
  • We will reply and see what we can work out.

Please note:

  • We will estimate a flat daily rate for page views, based on an average of our last two months performance. We can provide our stats if you’re interested.
  • Search the net for “standard CPM advertising rate” and you’ll get everything from $1 to $50. But there’s a lot of support for $8-12 as a fair price for a banner ad on a targeted site. We are exceptionally targeted, and asking a ~50% discount from that. We do want to be fair and provide good value, but AdWords works just fine, we can’t make this too hard, and we’re way too busy to be low-balled.
  • You need to provide all the graphics, art work, etc. The ad will be hosted on our site. Payment by major credit card.

Other Custom Placements

Developing other options for our advertisers has been on our “To Do” list for some time. In particular, we will accommodate:

  • “Print” advertising in upcoming editions of SWJ Magazine.
  • Sponsorship of specific forums within Small War Council.
  • Sponsorship of elements of the main site, such as a section of the reference library.

We will be expanding all those areas soon, and will work to develop attractive on-the-shelf options for advertising partners. In the interim, if you have something reasonable in mind, please describe it and we can probably respond quickly to it.

Reasonable Free Self-Promotion

You are welcome to sign up on the Small Wars Council discussion board and make a post introducing your efforts. That's free. We have the Miscellaneous Goings On forum for just this sort of thing, or perhaps another forum will be particularly relevant. Do not be the least bit concerned about doing this for appropriate items. But heed the following to keep it reasonable:

  • Please be relevant, not just shameless.
  • A pointer and a summary of why it is of interest to our members makes a post welcome. Advertising or rehosting under a façade of a referral are not.
  • You’ll note the forum rules speak to disclosure of commercial interests. Please do so.
  • Pick one relevant forum, and launch one thread. Don’t shotgun. That’s spam, and our members and moderators take a dim view of that.
  • It’s fine to engage with members on your issue, within reason and with appropriate disclosure. And fine to put, for example, a link to your blog or your company in your profile signature. But don’t make gratuitous all me, all the time posts.