Saturday, September 25, 2010

Bidvertiser Review

Bidvertiser is a Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising site that competes directly with Google AdSense. Its main advantage over AdSense is its low $10 payout. Yep, that's ten times less than Google's $100 payout. This effectively slash your waiting period from months to weeks. For small time bloggers, this is particularly attractive.

Registration: Pretty straight forward and fast. I got my activation code within 5mins.

Mode of payment: Paypal ($10 Min.) Check ($50 Min.)

Ads Format: Very similar to Google AdSense. However I don't quite like the ad customization. Unlike AdSense, Bidvertiser uses only one code. Changes has to be made in your Bidvertiser account. It will need some getting used to.

No. of Ads: Bidvertiser allows me to show the ads that is displayed. I did a quick estimate and I have about 200-400 ads available for each of my 2 blogs.

Other Features:
You can get to choose which ads you want to display - meaning you can choose ads with the highest CPM. Though this may mean that you can earn more per click, the drawback is that ads may be limited and totally irrelevant.

Bidvertiser Pros

1. Symbiotic with AdSense.
Well, if not symbotic, at least compatible. Because Bidvertiser is CPC but not contextual, I believe AdSense allows them on the same page. I’m not 100% sure of that, though, since Bidvertiser ad formats pretty much look like AdSense, with mostly the same sizes, and both Skyscrapers and Rectangles.
2. Variety of categories.
There’s a fairly wide range of content categories and ads to match topics
3. Ads and referrals.
Publishers can earn money from both ads and referrals.
4. Small payout level.
The payout threshold is only $10, if you’re being paid through PayPal.
5. Choice of advertisers.
You can pick and choose from the list of bidding advertisers for your site, by the highest CPC bids. If you set your own minimum $ per click acceptance level, the ability to choose can be a boon. (I.e., just approve those ads which are above your selected CPC threshold.) The default setting is that an ad is blocked unless you specify otherwise.
6. Improving bids.
While I’ve only tried Bidvertiser on one site, I do have a tech blog registered. Over the past year, I’ve been getting emails saying that there are new bids waiting for approval. The bids generally seem to be getting higher. I haven’t used Bidvertiser there because AdSense does “okay”, and the layout’s already cluttered enough.

Bidvertiser Cons

1. Possibly poor clickthrough rate.
I tried Bidvertiser on a single blog with 60-120 pageviews/day, over about 2-3 calendar months last Fall, with not a single clickthrough. In all fairness, most CPC advertising underperforms on low-traffic websites. Non-contextual ads can do even worse, especially if they seem out of place. It’s up to the site publisher to choose Bidvertiser ads carefully. I used it only on a poker blog, which may be a niche that doesn’t get high clickthrough for text ads. So my small case study may not be a good indicator.
2. Complicated ad selection.
Not only do you have to have each website pre-approved, you then have to go through a sometimes massive list of bidding advertisers for your site. This could be a could a good thing, if you approach it properly, but I’m too busy to want to do this on more than a site or two. If you let any type of ad through, though, you will definitely end up with irrelevant ads. It would be nicer if they had something like Chitika’s non-contextual ad selection, which lets you specify ad keywords. That’s a much simpler process.

Adbrite a really good Adsense Alternative

AdBrite provides three types of ads to publishers – full page (interstitial) ads, inline ads, and banner & text ads. One feature which makes AdBrite stand out from the competition is that they organize private ad sales, on either a CPM or CPC basis. Following is a screenshot of the private ad sales page.


Full Page (Interstitial) Ads

Interstitial ads are an innovative form of advertising where the advertiser’s website is displayed in a frame which the visitor sees in-between pages of the publisher’s site. This is similar to the television advertising model where ads are displayed in the middle of a show, with interstitial ads the ads are displayed in the middle of browsing a site.

The great thing about interstitial ads is that they earn a consistent CPM no matter the age or web savviness of your visitors, you are paid per visitor no matter what. Whereas with a contextual ad, for example, a web savy visitor would choose not to click it so you wouldn’t be paid. Another advantage is that you can use both interstitial ads and other ads on the same website.

Inline Ads

Inline ads are also quite innovative, certain words on the page are transformed into double underlined hyperlinks, which when hovered over display an ad relevant to the word. One big advantage of inline ads is that they take up very little screen space, leaving more room for content or other ads. Inline ads are highly targeted (relevant ads) if your page has sufficient text, for example, 500 words of content will get better keyword targeting than 20 words of content, and because of the better relevance, higher earnings.

Banner and Text Ads

Similar to Adsense and many other contextual ad networks, the banner and text ads respectively pay on a CPM and CPC basis. In my experience the ad relevance and CPC of the default network ads are less than impressive, it is simply a lower quality copy of Google Adsense. To earn good money from the banner and text ads requires some private ad sales through the Adbrite system, or maybe some lucky keywords.

Earning Potential

Interstitial Ads: Perfectly suited to low CPM sites such as social media sites, video sites, wallpaper sites, and so on. They earn $0.25 CPM for me, on top of any contextual ads on the page. If you have rock solid traffic sources and don’t mind annoying your visitors a little, interstitial ads are the sure way to boost your revenue.

Inline Ads: The revenue depends mainly on the topic of your website, a credit cards site will earn more per click than a desktop wallpapers and so on. The CTR however is usually good because visitors are less ad blind to inline ads than contextual ads.

Banner and Text Ads: Lower earning than Adsense in my experience, but it’s worth a shot; maybe it will work better for your sites than it does mine.

Payment Methods

AdBrite pay only by check. With a net-60 day payment period, AdBrite is one of the slowest when it comes to payments, but after the net-60 period the check takes just days to arrive (to Australia). Fortunately, they convert the check to your local currency which saves having to pay a bank a currency conversion fee.

Best Suited Websites

Interstitial Ads: Low CPM sites and those looking for an easy way to boost their revenue.
Inline Ads: Websites about high paying topics such as credit cards.
Banner and Text Ads: People banned from Adsense and big-name websites who can aquire private ad sales.