Gogle Ads

Microsoft Adcenter is an excellent alternative to Google Adwords. The user interface takes some getting used to, but all of the essential functions are there, including 2 of my favorites on Adwords, the keyword tool and ‘opportunities’.  What I noticed most was that the advertising seemed significantly less expensive. On Adwords, I couldn’t get anything to display impressions for less than .40 a click, but on Microsoft AdCenter, impressions are available for as little as .05 per click. Ads are displayed on both Yahoo and Bing search.

In short, functionally, they are equal, financially, you’ll win with Microsoft AdCenter.

Check it out.

Kitara Media may not be one of the better known Adsense alternatives, but it should be. Despite my initial reaction to a plain and unappealing website, the service, the pay and the admin tools turned out to be top notch, boasting a level of control that even Adsense doesn’t have. Kitara allows you to browse through all of the creatives (images) and ban any that don’t want appearing.  They also provide tools to select from various categories of ads to prevent unwanted ads from appearing. My favorite feature was the ability to add your own advertisers to your account. I used it to add my own House ads for cross promotion. Revenue wise, Kitara competes at or above AdBrite, but not at the Adsense level, unfortunately.

Pros:

• Higher revenue than most ad networks, on par with AdBrite.
• Both CPC & CPM
• Excellent admin tools
• Simple but complete reports

Cons:

• The admin tool uses Flash and can be a little slow

Performance:

Kitara was tested as a backup to AdBrite, but still performed as well as using AdBrite alone. I intend to test it with all of the traffic to see how it performs and will update it then.

AdBrite is one of the most popular Adsense alternatives. They offer several types of ads including banner, interstitial, image hover and inline text. Banner ads are both CPC and CPM, served contextually. AdBrite has a few unique features, like being able to see your own profile, as seen by Advertisers.  As far as performance, AdBrite is far and away the most profitable Adsense Alternative that I have tested. The site that I tested generated from 1/3rd to 1/2 of the income I had earned through Adsense in just the first week. It continues to rise and could easily meet or exceed the revenue that I was making. My only real complaint is the reporting. All of the essential reports are there, but the interface is cumbersome. It might take a little exploring to find what you need.

Pros:

• Much higher revenue than most ad networks.
• Both CPC & CPM
• Long time provider
• Low minimum payout ($5)

Cons:

• Limited reporting.
• Cumbersome reporting interface.
• The create ad wizard takes too long. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be done very often.
• Limited payment options (check only)

Performance:

Higher than most. Expect a slow start with increasing revenues over several weeks as advertisers select you. Performance is much more consistent and predictable than even Adsense, which in my experience, could swing wildly from day to day.

On Friday, Google announced that that the FTC had formally started a long overdue investigation into the company. Okay, they didn’t use those words exactly, but they should have.

Check out the MSNBC article. I’m sure there will be many more to follow.

Now is a good time to add your voice, perhaps your testimony to such an investigation. FTC contact info.

CJ, LinkShare, Pepperjam and GAN are the top tier of the affiliate network route to monetizing your website. Affiliate networks, if you are not familiar with the scheme, pay on a lead or action. Basically, when a user clicks the ad and then buys something at the target site, the publisher gets a percentage of the sale. While there are a few advantages to this option over PPC and PPM networks, they do not compensate for the ridiculously low income this option provides. In my trials, I sent several thousand impressions to several top advertisers. While a few clicks were generated, only one resulted in a sale and the commission was a lousy .30. Over all, I would say, don’t bother unless you have specific advertisers in mind to use to work in addition to your ad network. One place where Affiliate networks may be a good fit is in place of foregoing ads altogther. Affiliate ads can provide some visual interest and make a site look more commercial / professional. Since they load quickly, there’s no sacrifice in speed.

(Excludes Amazon, which will be review separately).

Pros:

• Complete control over ads. Pick them yourself or use rotating ad tools that most networks offer.
• Top name advertisers available.
• Ads can be used to actually improve the looks of your site, rather than distracting from it or degrading it.
• Lots of flexibility in the type of ad, from simple text links to 160×600 banners to 1/2 page ads.
• They typically load faster since it’s just an image with a link, without the typical ad javascript.

Cons:

• Extremely low income.
• Each advertiser must be applied to and accept or reject your site.
• Managing the ads and advertisers can be a considerable amount of work, especially up front. Compare this to copying and pasting a code fragment for most ad networks.
• Generally requires some kind of ad management platform (Doubleclick or Openx) to manage ad rotation et

Performance:

• Ridiculously low. 30 cents for several thousand impressions, in my trials.

A review of foregoing ads altogether isn’t really a review, but more of a commentary and an evaluation of the pros and cons. Generally, it takes thousands of ad impressions (visitors * pages viewed * ads per page) to make any money at all from site ads and tens of thousands to make anything worthwhile. Meanwhile, the browser has to fetch the javascript, and then fetch the ad components, all of which slows a site down and more often than not create a hostile environment for users, with poorly flashing, loud, distracting ads. If your site gets under 100 visitors a day, it probably isn’t worth the headache.

Pros:

• Sites load faster with the heavy javascript associated with ads.
• No unprofessional flashy ads to interfere with content. Users appreciate not being flashed and blinked and waved at.
• Small sites sacrifice little money.

Cons:

• Zero Money
• No Filler
• Less visually stimulating, possibly less professional (see Affiliate review for an option)

Amazon offers one of the better alternatives to ad networks. With almost every imaginable product available to links to and numerous Amazon created ads, almost every site will find something relevant to their content and visitors. It is also the only affiliate program which I have had the pleasure of profiting from, albeit minimally. Most are a complete waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t make near the profit that you would with ads, but it’s a positive supplement to ad programs. The only down side is that you may see numerous clicks before anyone purchases anything. The good news is that you get a cut of everything they buy, not just the link they clicked.

Pros:

• Numerous display options, widgets, custom store and even an API for developers.
• Trusted company with many loyal customers
• Numerous products to choose from
• Better performance than most affiliate programs
• Easy to use admin interface
• Applying to each Merchant is not required
• Easy to get started and manage

Cons:

• Low revenue, like all affiliate programs.
• Some widgets are slow loading

I decided to review AffinityClick as the first Adsense alternative because they are relatively new and seem very promising. If the ad performance lives up to the rest, they could be a strong contender. While my exposure to them has been brief, so far, I love the look of the ads and I love the administrative interface. AffinityClick is also one of the few PPC networks out there, which generally perform better for publishers.

Pros:

• The administration interface is super simple, attractive and easy to use.
• Ads can be filtered by category, keyword or by advertiser, including a blacklist (negative filter).
• The ads are modern and attractive with customizable themes that complement most sites.
• It’s a PPC ad network.
• Payments are made via Paypal.
• Registration and acceptance are easy.

Cons:

• Compared to other ad networks, they have relatively few advertisers (3005). AffinityClick lets you search through them and there aren’t a lot in the categories that I was interested in, but they are new and growing, so hopefully this drawback will be short lived.

Performance:
06-20-2011 Update: Unfortunately, the results thus far are not very promising. Several hundred ads have been served without even a single click. Thus, $0 ad revenue. I recently modified the filter to show more relevant products and I will continue to test it since I really like everything else about the company.

06-23-2011 Final: After 1500 impressions across 3 sites, I have decided to give up on Affinity Click. Despite the attractive ads for this segment, they are either not enticing clicks or simply not tracking clicks very well. Either way, with zero clicks and zero cents in CPM money, this is definitely not the way to go.

Gogle Ads is a blog about the Google Advertising monopoly and the chilling effect it has on the internet. I’ll be exploring alternative ad networks and reporting on their performance via a small network of sites, including this one.

The impetus to write about this topic came one day when one of my brand new sites was inexplicably removed from Adsense with an ominous email from Google with the subject “Google AdSense ad serving has been disabled to your site”. I was alarmed to say the least, as I have a few profitable and well established sites. Fortunately, it was not one of those but my new site, whose traffic was minimal.

(more…)