My Advertising Network Roundup

About two or three times per year I rotate through all of my advertising networks to see how they are performing.  I think it’s a good idea to test all your ad-networks every once in a while to make sure you aren’t missing out on any potential earnings - a network that performed poorly six-months ago might do much better today (not usually, but you never know).

These are my results, listed worst to best, for the year - with the last test finishing up just a day or so ago.  Note that due to the various TOS’s, I do not include any actual CTR, ePC, eCPM or earnings data:

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BidVertiser: very low CTR and even lower earnings.  A waste of my valuable page real-estate.

Adbrite: I put the most time and effort into testing Adbrite because I have read of many other publishers that were getting good results.  But for me, it just did not work out.  I tested both text-only and banner units and after ~100,000 impressions, earned only a few dollars.  It seems that most publishers generating good earnings with Adbrite are using their “full page” ads which to me seem to be the #1 way to piss-off/drive away potential visitors.  Adbrite also has “in text” ad-units, but I did not test them.

Chitika: Chitika’s new “Premium Units” performed fairly well.  These ad-units only display to search-engine traffic and target ads based on the keywords used when searching.  This type of keyword targeting results in very relevant ad-units and very good CTR.   You can configure the Chitika Premium Units to display another ad-network such as Adsense or YPn for display to non-search engine traffic - otherwise direct/non SE traffic will not be shown any ad-units.  Chitika also has an “in text” unit which when tested earlier this year performed well.  Some publishers do not like the “in text” type ads, but I don’t have an issue with them - although I only display them to anonymous vistors, not registered members.  With Chitika you also get a dedicated account manager for support which is a big plus.

Yahoo Publisher Network: YPn was a real surprise this time around (this is why I test a few times a year!).  I have done nothing but badmouth YPn over the last several months, but now I’ll eat my words and take it all back.  This time YPn gave well-targeted ads, fair CTR, and decent ePC.   YPn also has support!  When I had a question regarding the Yahoo Publisher Network TOS, my email was replied-to in less than 24 hours, and when I had a follow-up question a YPN representative called me by telephone to avoid more email confusion.  YPn also has a toll-free phone number for questions/support..  Yahoo Publisher Network gets my “comeback of the year” award!

Kontera: If I was comparing only the last 2-months of the year, Kontera would be the clear winner.  But since i’m comparing the overall performance of the entire year, Kontera comes up a strong #2.  Kontera’s in-text ad-unit performance started out slow this year generating about 50% of what Adsense generated on a daily basis.  But beginning around September/October Kontera was earning 80%-90% of what Adsense was doing, and by December, Kontera was generating approximately 200% of what Adsense was (that is more than double Adsense on most days!).  Kontera’s other strong-point is support.  With a dedicated account manager that you can contact any time by phone or email (and actually get a response) this puts them far ahead most of the other ad-networks.  Some publishers do not like the “in text” type ads, but I don’t have an issue with them - although I only display them to anonymous visitors, not registered members.  Many publishers have also complained that Kontera slows-down their page load times.  If you experience this, be sure that you have your code loading at the very bottom/last of your page right before the /BODY tag.  I have never experienced this issue, and I check/test almost daily.

Adsense:  Still king over the entire year, but if I was comparing only the last few months, it would fall to Kontera as #2.  Excellent ad-inventory and near-perfect targeting no matter what your niche/content makes Adsense hard to beat.  Combine that with (usually) good/high ePC and Adense is still #1.  The Adsense support team does well in answering support-requests (usually in 48 hours or less), but you don’t get a dedicated account manager unless you are in the “UPS club” (a really, really big, Premium publisher).

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Remember: Just because an advertising network performed good/bad for me does not mean you will get the same results.  Whenever anyone asks me, I recommend trying everything and sticking with what works (seems almost obvious, eh?)..  I also recommend trying different networks every several months as I do to make sure that you are using the best-performing network - you never know when you might be pleasantly surprised.

Affiliate Links: This post contains affiliate/referral links.

Increase Your Earnings By Diversifying

If you’ve been following my Twitter Tweets for the last few days you would know that for me and many other publishers Adsense earnings have been in the toilet for the last week or so.  It’s normal for Adsense earnings to fluctuate, but recently earnings and ePC have been at all-times lows, probably due to uncertainty in the economy these days.

How You Can Protect Yourself Against Adsense Fluctuations

I’ve seen it posted in the forums over and over -

“…You have no control over Adsense earnings…”

“…there is nothing you can do about low Adsense earnings…”

“…give up, get a real website…”

Although all these statements are technically true, there is one thing you can do to not only protect yourself from Adsense lows, but to also increase your overall earnings:  DIVERSIFY

At GrownUpGeek.com, we diversify our earnings by creating multiple income streams:

By spreading our earnings over these multiple sources of income we not only increase our overall earnings, but we also protect ourselves from the pain and discomfort of a low-income day if any one income source goes into the toilet *cough*adsense*cough*.

So what is right for your website?

At most websites selling premium memberships or premium content does not make sense, and affiliate sales can be difficult and take a lot of work & effort to be profitable (it hardly even works for us).  So for most websites (and lazy publishers like me) this leaves In-Text advertising, which is also the easiest to setup and start using.  In-text advertising such as Chitika Linx and Kontera are contextually based advertising systems that create those little underlines on certain words and phrases on your website.  When a visitor clicks on one of those links, you get paid.  And because In-Text advertising does not look like, and cannot be confused with Adsense ads, you can use them on the same site/pages as Adsense.  Another advantage of in-text advertising is that it does not take up any real-estate on your site, potentially leaving more room for other advertising systems or more content.

The two biggest players in the in-text or in-line advertising are Chitika and Kontera.   Both are free to use and both are very easy (as easy or easier than Adsense) to setup and use.

Chitika’s Linx Product

Chitika LINX tend to be more technology related, and may yield you a higher CTR because the links look more like ‘normal’ links.  Many publishers claim a very high ePC with Chitika.
Kontera’s In-Text Link Unit

Kontera has a larger advertiser inventory (based on what I’ve seen), but they have a slightly restrictive new-publisher approval process.

Kontera is the primary inText advertiser that we use at GrownUpGeek.com because it performed better for us in testing than Chitika did, however on my other lower-traffic site, Chitika does far better than Kontera because of the type of content of that site.  The only way to know how well these systems will work at your site is to try them.  Even though you can use both along side Adsense, you cannot use them together so I recommend at least 1-week (or longer) of testing both systems - you may find as I did, that one performs great on one site and the other sucks - but if you don’t try them both you will never know.

Don’t throw away potential earnings - Try Chitika LINX, Kontera, or other types of advertising at your site(s) and see what works for you.  For us, adding InText advertising increase our overall earnings by an average of 75% -  that means that even on a day that Adsense earnings are at an all-time low, overall earnings don’t suffer as much.  Diversifying your income with other advertising systems also protects you should something happen to your Adsense account.


Affiliate links: You can try Kontera at www.Kontera.com and Chitika LINX at chitika.com. Other links in the post may also contain affiliate links. If you hate aff-links, you can go direct to www.kontera.com or www.chitika.com.

Choosing Between Kontera and Chitika

Kontera’s In-Text Link UnitEarly in February after being disappointed with my Kontera earnings, I decided to try Chitika’s Linx product to see how it compares to Kontera’s In-Text product. I have been using Kontera for almost a year with excellent results and on average it was earning almost as much as Adsense for Content. But in December ‘07/January ‘08, eCPM and earnings were nearly half of what I had grown accustomed to - I decided that I needed to see what else was available. Since Chitika’s Linx product was very similar to Kontera’s In-Text product, taking up no additional space on my pages it was the obvious product to test.

Chitika’s Linx ProductSign up and setup of Chitika was fast and easy, and adding the code to the site was as simple as pasting it right over my existing Kontera code. It took a while (seems like a few hours, if i recall), but eventually the Chitika Linx units began to display on all my pages. At first look they are very similar to Kontera’s In-Text, the only real difference being the distance between the little double-underlines on the link-units. Chitika also allows you to use a dashed-underline instead of double-underlines. Kontera’s only choice is the standard double-underline, however they do have the undocumented single underline option.

I ran Chitika Linx for a few days, and on the surface it appeared to do well. My “unaudited” earnings were higher than Kontera had been for the last month or two, but roughly the same as how Kontera “usually” performs. I say “unaudited” because Chitika posts your ‘raw’ or unaudited earnings the next day, but you have to wait a month or so before you see your “real” earnings - it’s the “audited” earnings that you get paid for. It has been over a month and I am still not seeing my “audited” numbers for Chitika, so I still don’t really know what I’ve earned. This waiting game alone is enough to make me stick with Kontera, but there are more reasons:

Another thing that has swayed me back to Kontera is that they seem to care about their publishers. The fact that everyone has an account manager should prove this, but have a look at this email Kontera sent to me (and presumably all publishers) last week:

Dear Publisher,
We have been making certain upgrades to our infrastructure to support the explosive growth we have been experiencing in recent months.

One such upgrade occurred on the days of March 8th, 9th, and 10th. Some publishers experienced temporary downtime as a result of this upgrade.

Because we care about our publishers and realize how important the revenue stream is that we provide them with we are choosing to “make good” on this down time. Therefore, the numbers you will see in the reporting system will be low. These are real numbers and the reason they are low is because of the temporary downtime we experienced.

In addition to what you see in these numbers we are going to compensate you $xxx.xx that should reflect what would have been “normal” traffic and performance levels for your site. These amounts will not be updated into the reporting system. They will be added to your overall monthly earnings for March and paid when March payments are due to go out.

Thank you for your continued participation in Kontera’s rise to becoming the premium player in the “in-text” space.

What does this mean (for those of you in a hurry and that dont want to read the whole letter)? Kontera had some down time last week and their In-Text links did not show on any websites - and they are actually paying publishers for that downtime! When was the last time Chitika or even Adsense for that matter paid publishers to compensate for downtime? Heck, Adsense’s new TOS & Policies specifically states that if the Adsense system goes down, it’s tough-shit, you don’t get nothing. It’s these “little things” that make me stick with Kontera.

My Chitika account is still open, and I’m still using it on my low-traffic site where it’s earning about $1/day. But for GrownUpGeek.com, I’m back to Kontera.

Affiliate links: You can try Kontera at www.Kontera.com and Chitika at chitika.com. Other links in the post may also contain affiliate links. If you hate aff-links, you can go direct to www.kontera.com or www.chitika.com.