I’ve been advertising Property Center for about a month now, and I must
say that targeted ads are the way to go, for me.  I have a pretty
limited monthly advertising budget so every dollar counts.  At this
point, I have been using the major online ad networks (Google, Yahoo,
and msn) as well as a private ad network (FM Publishing).  I also contacted
specific websites with hopes of targeting their user base. 

The major ad networks and FM Publishing are awesome.  They allow a person in
my position to set a limit of how much to spend and where to place
those ads.  The search engines do it via keywords, while FM Publishing
allows you to pick specific sites in their network.  The search engines
go one step further by allowing you to pay only per click, rather than
impression, as FM Publishing does.  Both programs give you decent
information about how your ads are performing.  I’m personally amazed
at how many people actually legitimately click ads.

I haven’t had the same type of luck with the specific websites that I
contacted directly, however.  They seem to be stuck with older
advertising models and required a substantial advertising investment. 
Unfortunately, that is out of my capabilities at the moment, so I
continue to rely on blogs and newer advertising models.  I believe that
sites that are still using older models (give us $5-10k and we’ll
create a custom program for you) are really missing the boat on
advertising revenue.  I think they could make much more money by
allowing each advertiser to customize their specific ad program and
spend any amount that they want on it.

I personally think that just getting people talking about your product
is one of the best forms of advertising that you can do.  So it’s
definitely useful to keep up with newer techniques like using digg and
del.icio.us.  Also, I truly think that private ad networks like The
Deck and FM Publishing will become more popular over time.  They show ads
specifically targeted to the visitors of the websites in their
network, rather than a couple pages that might contain keywords.  Also,
the private ad networks take the overhead out of managing individual
advertisers.  Rather than sites having to implement their own
advertising program framework, they can just join an ad network and
instantly serve relevant ads to their users.

Btw, if I could advertise w/ The Deck, I would.  I just don’t think that specific advertising network would reach my target audience, unfortunately.