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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I Added Two More AdBrite Widgets

I decided to add 2 more AdBrite widgets. I added a vertical banner in the left sidebar (above the fold), and a bottom-of-page rectangle. ("Above the fold" is the part of the page that's visible before you scroll down.)

I was slightly concerned that adding another widget would decreased my earnings. Then, I figured "Why wait?"

Most of my income comes from CPC ads (pay-per-click) and not CPM ads (pay-per-pageview). If I add another ad widget, then I'm more likely to serve some non-spammy/scammy ads.

Overall, I'm satisfied with AdBrite. Even though AdBrite is non-contextual, I'm getting about the same ad clickthrough rate as AdSense. The ads don't really seem to be more or less spammy.

AdBrite also tells me which ads are being clicked. Are you guys really interested in such spammy/scammy stuff? It could be random Internet traffic clicking on ads.

Is 0.5%-1% considered a high clickthrough rate? I hope that AdBrite doesn't ban me. If there's a dispute, hopefully they'll just remove the invalid clicks, rather than banning me.

I don't understand why someone would pay $0.10 per click when they could pay $0.10 per thousand pageviews, if clickthrough rates are 1%.

It seems like Google did the online advertising industry a great disservice, by promoting "cost per click" over "cost per pageview". CPC is *MUCH* more abusable than CPM.

Ironically, my clickthrough rate for CPM ads is *HIGHER* than for CPC. There's been some non-spammy stuff. AdBrite tells me the full details for all ads served. I saw a Boston-area Toyota dealer advertising; those ads were targeting Boston only (CPM based). I saw some ads for Domino's Pizza. There's some CPM ads targeting other countries.

I'm trying to figure out why I'm making more from CPC ads than CPM ads. Most other sites claim the opposite is true.

I wonder if it's because I have a real blog, and not a "made for SEO/AdWords/AdSense" site? That's the only explanation I can think of for "relatively" high clickthrough rates. Does having a non-spammy site give me better ad performance?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It makes perfect sense that CPM ads have higher clickthrough than CPC. The quality of a CPC ad doesn't really matter to the advertiser, they'll always pay X dollars for Y clicks. But with CPM, the number of clicks they get per dollar is highly dependent on how good the ad is. Thus better ads are CPM, worse ads are CPC.

Incidentally, I see where you've added the adbrite widgets, but all I ever see is the "Your Ad Here" link to adbrite itself.

FSK said...

I can think of two reasons you might not be seeing the AdBrite ads:

- If you're using antivirus software, make sure it isn't blocking AdBrite. Someone else's antivirus software was blocking AdSense.
- If you're using NoScript, make sure you aren't blocking AdBrite.

I see why scammers prefer CPC, and genuine advertisers prefer CPM.

AdBrite gives me full statistics. I've noticed the CPM ads tend to be legitimate products, and the CPC ads tend to be scammy.

Fivemileshigh said...

Hey FSK, if you're looking for an outlet for your programming talent, it seems the folks at ripplepay.com could use a hand: http://ripple.sourceforge.net/concept.html

Keep up the good work!

This Blog Has Moved!

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