Newbie needs advice on networks

[madhatter]

I am working with a site that got 175 million impressions this month. Our current network is giving us a Net eCPM of $0.45 and we are making about $80,000 on net publisher compensation. I am being asked if we should stick with our current network or move, so I'm doing research and found a lot of helpful stuff on this site.

I would really appreciate any insights or advice on what other publishers think. Are we getting a good deal with out current publisher (60% revenue share for us) or should we be making more?

Should I be trying out Adsense and affiliate programs? If so - any good places to start looking?

Thanks for any advice or thoughts.

[Chris]

It depends on the type of site. I would guess with that much traffic the traffic quality levels might be low and so 0.45 would be considered good.

[rpanella]

Yes, it definitely depends on the type of site. If you don't want to provide the URL describing what kind of site it is could help people give you suggestions.
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[madhatter]

The site is an index of links to video sites on the internet. Hence the huge amount of traffic. Previous owners tried adsense and found it didn't work well. Now we are on a CPM advertising network with those stats. Like I said, Im trying to figure out what other networks to approach. Last week I sent emails and inquiries to the following requesting someone from their sales team to contact me, but nobody has!

Casale
Adbrite
Advertising.com
Blue Lithium
Real Media27
Burst

Our current network seems a lot smaller, but they are also trying to keep us by making deals. They recently offered a 65% revenue share if we signed a 3-month exclusivity deal.

I would like to try out some other networks just to compare who is best for this site. But who should I be contacting and what should I be asking about?

Also - can I run 2 networks at the same time?

[Westech]

Is your current network filling all of the impressions you're sending them for an average of .45 eCPM? If so, that's actually pretty good unless you somehow have almost 100% US traffic.

I have a site which probably has a similar type of visitors and we've had the best luck with Casale and Tribal Fusion. I'd be interested in hearing who your current network is so we can evaluate adding them to our rotation. You can PM me if you don't want to post it here.

You can (and should) run more than one network at the same time to ensure that you're serving paid ads for every impression. The easiest way to do this is by "chaining" the networks together. For example, if you wanted to set up a chain of "Tribal Fusion -> Casale -> Burst" you'd put Tribal Fusion's ad codes into your site, then go into Tribal Fusion's control panel and set things up so that if TF doesn't have any ads to show for at least .40 eCPM (for example) they'll pass the impression on to Casale. Then you'd set Casale up so that if they don't have any ads to show for at least, say, .25 eCPM they'd pass the impression on to Burst, and so on. The trick is to find the optimum order for the chain and minimum cpm amount for each advertiser.

[madhatter]

Thanks Westech, thats really helpful advice. Our current network is CPX interactive. They are obviously smaller, but seem to be working really hard to keep us. I'm happy so far, but need to check out the competition.

CPX are manually optimizing our campaign, so we don't need to know much about the tricks (although it looks like we need to learn!). Do most networks do this, or do most require a lot of management on the part of the publisher?

I'm surprised that none of the other networks have contacted me in the week since I emailed them. Thats pretty bad customer service! Can I just apply to them and then either use them, or not, depending on what happens?

Im going to apply to Casale and Tribal fusion on your advice and try them out first.

And one last question - have you tried affiliate campaigns too? I want to check them out, but not sure if its worth it.

Thanks.

[rpanella]

I would apply to the ones you mentioned and also to Valueclick Media (formerly Fastclick). Any of these I would think would be able to generate a higher CPM than CPX, and then you could runs CPX as a default to them. I definately would not sign any exclusive contracts with anyone though, especially with that level of traffic and without testing other networks first.

Affiliate campaigns can work very well depending on how targeted they are. Your traffic sounds kinda like general/teen traffic, so if you wanted to try some affiliate offers I would sign up for Azoogleads and run some ringtone or free ipod/laptop etc campaigns.
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[Westech]

Glad to help! If I were you I'd just go ahead and apply. There's nothing to force you to use them if you decide you don't want to. The applications should have a section asking how much traffic you get and once the networks see that they should all start falling over each other to help you out.

I'm not sure what they mean when they say they're "manually optimizing" for you. With your level of traffic pretty much any network would give you a dedicated account rep who would do pretty much anything you need them to. Most of the reps they'll assign at your level will be very knowledgeable and helpful, but you need to keep in mind that these reps work for the ad network and not for you. They'll do their best to maximize your revenue within their network, but not necessarily your overall revenue. For example, if they can fill your last 500,000 impressions at .20 cpm at their network they'd rather do that than advise you to pass those last 500,000 impressions on to another network that can pay .40 cpm for them.

I've experimented a little with CPA affiliate ads from companies like Azoogle. They can sometimes bring in more than CPM ads, but they take a lot more time and effort to keep running. You usually have to target certain ads only to visitors from certain countries, you have to constantly keep changing the ads around to keep people interested, you have to pick out the right offers to run or you won't make much from them, etc. I pretty much just stick to CPM banner ads now.

[madhatter]

Once again thanks westech and rpanella for the really useful info. I am sending in my applications to those ad networks. I'm going to try make the chain Casale-Tribalfusion-Valueclick-CPX or something similar. I suppose the best way is to try and see what happens? Ill keep posting how its going - and I'm sure I'm going to have more questions :)

Do you know of any other good publisher resources like this site? I have found a few, but I have a lot to learn, especially about exactly how ad networks function, how to best do chaining etc. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

[rpanella]

That sounds good except I would recommend that you put Tribal Fusion before Casale. In general Tribal Fusion has a higher CPM as well as higher quality advertisers (more big brands instead of flashing "click here to win" banners).
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[MaxS]

You should definitely apply to Tribal Fusion, Casale, and ValueClick (I would rank them in that order).

With that many impressions, smaller networks (or should I say niche-craving) such as Burst will have a hard time filling a worthwhile amount.

[webmoney]

If you want to earn few times more than go to pay per install programs.

[madhatter]

I was reading reviews on Casale, Valueclick and Tribal Fusion. Am I correct that Casale offers the highest revenue share of 70%, while Tirbal Fusion offers 55% and Value click offers 65%? Why would you not make the most from Casale with the highest revenue share? Is it the quality of the brands Tribal Fusion advertises?

[Westech]

You're correct, but Tribal Fusion generally offers higher cpm rates so even a smaller percentage revenue share can bring in more money overall.

That said, it fluctuates a lot depending on who's currently advertising and what kind of site you have. Lately I've found that for our online games site Tribal Fusion and Casale are actually paying around the same eCPM in the end.

[madhatter]

Casale got back to me and said they wont accept my site at this time. I'm assuming this could be due to copyright issues? Although we don't host any videos ourselves we link to sites that do, and they are probably breaking copyright.

I'm still going to apply to Tribal fusion but I believe they are even more fussy than Casale. If I cant get into these networks, any other that you would recommend?

[Cutter]

Can't be any worse than Google-Youtube :lol:

In terms of CPM networks, the guys in this thread have told you the top ones. Thinking about it, I recall seeing cpx doing ads for some more questionable-content sites. Some of the big guys like to stay squeeky clean, regardless of what the law is.

[madhatter]

It gets worse! Valueclick don't want me either! I find that very strange as they seem to be advertising on http://channelsurfr.com which is pretty much the same sort of site as mine?

I have also been looking into whether CPX are filling all my impressions, and apparently they guarantee to monetize 100% of impressions. Does this mean its not worth chaining?

[madhatter]

Sorry its not channelsurf that Valueclick are on, its http://www.alluc.org

[rpanella]

Its still worth looking for other networks, since just because the fill all impressions doesn't mean you are getting any decent for it all. If they are paying you pennies for a lot of it, it would be good to default to someone else.

I havent tried RMX (Right Media Exchange) but you might want to look into that as I think they let you rotate a lot of smaller networks and have them compete on CPM.
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[mobrik]

175MM page views per month is pretty decent traffic volume that should be very attractive to ad networks. Did you get any reason for your rejection by the networks that did reject you?
You might want to look consider the situation and first work on some good arguments for the quality of your traffic to advertisers.
You might also want to engage more than one network at a time. It will let you test and compare.

[madhatter]

The networks don't seem to tell you why they wont accept you. Just send a generic "you don't meet our criteria" answer. Possibly the best thing for me to do is call them and speak to someone about my site. Only problem is I'm not in the US and time zones make it a bit hard.

Thanks for all the advice anyway. Will let you know how it goes.

[Westech]

You could try valueclick. In my experience they pay less but are less picky.

It's also probably worth following up with Casale about the reason for the rejection. It might be something simple that you could fix or change.