I’ve been using Kontera for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I’m not pleased with it. Kontera is a contextual advertising service that highlights keywords on your webpage and links them to advertisers. Hovering over a contextual link provides a popup with a quick blurb.
Installation is easy - just add a javascript to any page that you want to hold the content, and you’re golden.
My biggest problem? Deceptive statistics. We know Apache logs are flawed because they can’t tell robots from people, and we know javascript logs are flawed because they miss people with javascript turned off or adBlock.
Since Kontera and Statcounter are both javascripts, they should return approximately the same number of impressions. Right? Apparently not - for the same period of time, Kontera received 872 impressions, and Statcounter had 1,818. Somehow I lost 52% of my page impressions in Kontera’s count. Does it just not load for some people? What’s going on here? If someone could explain this discrepancy, I would greatly appreciate it.
Beyond that, how profitable was Kontera? According to their statistics, I had a CTR of 1.26%, 11 clicks, and a revenue of $1.30 (about $.12 per click). This amounted to an increase of $1.49 CPM overall, since it doesn’t interfere with advertising.
However, taking into account the actual impressions, CPM only increased only by $.72, which isn’t worth the time it takes to load.
Add to that the fact that there is no automated process for adding additional sites to your account (you have to email them), it just seems like too much hassle for too little gain. However, it doesn’t conflict with other forms of advertising, so if you’re looking to squeeze out every buck out of your site, this may be just what you need.
Goodbye Kontera!
Update Monday, May 14, 2007: I just received a reply back from support about my issue - total response time: 35 hours, 37 minutes. That’s already much better than most companies, but that includes weekend time. Business hours: 3 hours, 21 minutes. Not only that, but the person that responded to my e-mail, David, had already taken the time to look at my site and see if there were any obvious issues and suggested several possibilities. A+ so far for customer service.
I’ve put Kontera back up temporarily to see if we can find what the cause of this may be. Roman commented (below) that the impressions are ones where the ads actually ran (”prods”) which can vary depending on page content, page length, geo-location, OS, browser, etc. Since I’ve noted it sometimes takes a few seconds for the highlighting function to run (page has to load fully), it may be that certain groups of people who only visit for a few seconds (Digg, StumbleUpon) are mostly ‘lost’. Another possibility is that a sizeable portion of my audience is using AdBlock.
Additionally, David informed me that they are currently working on an automated system for submitting additional sites, which I’m looking forward to using for additional sites later on.
May 11th, 2007
posted in Kontera, Top, Monetizing |
7 comments
Now it’s just the last few weeks of school here at Brown University, and then I enter the real world. Really, I’m already halfway out - I’ve got a job in Ft. Lauderdale, working for Citrix as a tech consultant. Only a couple more exams and papers are in my way.
In any case, I decided to dip my fingers into the flash gamespace and see how that does. I created a prototype website called Zombie Haven with an assortment of random zombie games. As you can see, the design is basic, the layout is basic, and the advertising is minimal (One line AdSense). I stumbled the main page and started seeing hits almost instantly - over the last four days I’ve had between 1.5k and 3k visitors, mostly from StumbleUpon (about 2/3), and 1/3 from www.motika.com.mk (I’m going to assume that’s Greek).
Advertising revenues, as expected, have been pretty dismal. The first 3 days had a CPM of about $.03, although today it bumped up to about $.27 CPM. If this level of traffic and CPM is maintained or increases, this may be an area I’d be willing to look into, although it seems that it would be a high maintenance project. There are additional monetization possibilities that I’ll explore and experiment with once I believe traffic is more stable.
I’m curious to see if there’ll be an upswing in traffic around the time that 28 Weeks Later is released. Personally, I’m just a huge zombie fan and can’t wait for the sequel to 28 Days Later to come out.
May 3rd, 2007
posted in Top, Google Adsense, Monetizing |
2 comments
I’ll be trying out Kontera, which is a integrated advertising system that turns certain words (like AdSense, Photoshop, etc) into embedded links, for which you’re paid per click.
There’s apparently a 2-week ‘ramp-up’ period in which Kontera is figuring out what your site is about, so I’ll let you know in about two weeks whether this service is useful or not.
April 9th, 2007
posted in Kontera, Top, Monetizing |
no comments
So I ran a test with AdSense on my blog, knowing it would be disappointing, especially since Guy Kawasaki reported earlier that he only made $3,350 from his blog in all of 2006.
In my test run, I was making $.37 eCPM. That isn’t worth the space that AdSense was taking up.
Someone might argue, “But Mike, you didn’t place them properly! You need to place them squarely in the middle of your content!” And uglify it beyond belief while simultaneously destroying usability? That may be acceptable on a random junk site I’ve made, but not on a site that has my picture on every single page! Especially in a highly competitive market like web marketing and monetizing.
AdSense is easy, but it’s nothing more than a starting point.
April 9th, 2007
posted in Top, Google Adsense, Monetizing |
no comments
Jen from JenSense has a good summary of Google’s new Pay-Per-Action program.
Catching up on the last few days of news stories, Google AdSense has launched their new pay per action program for AdWords advertisers, meaning that publishers can now earn referral money through the AdSense program. The program is in beta for both advertisers & publishers, and AdSense publishers can apply to be a part of the beta, as can AdWords advertisers.
As you will remember, Google first began testing pay per action ads last summer.
March 23rd, 2007
posted in AdWords, Google Adsense, Monetizing |
no comments
Creating a product that is worthy of being spoken about to friends is the best kind of marketing there is. Giving people more options to spread is even better.
ABC has done both, creating the highly addictive Lost, and being forethinking enough to allow people to watch online at their convenience, so that they don’t have to watch at exactly 10pm on Wednesdays. Because no matter how addicting their show is, people still have lives, and they have BitTorrent and YouTube.
So ABC did the smart thing and monetized it by putting streaming TV episodes with commercials online. No extra installs needing, no plugins (other than flash). Then it messed up.
I go to watch yesterdays episode earlier this evening and suddenly ABC.com demands you give some demographic data - name, year of birth, and sex. All right, all right, fair enough. Then they demand I install a plugin. GRRR, but I really need my Lost fix, so I go ahead and accept, and Firefox freezes. I’m addicted so I restart my browser and try again. Freeze.
I figure it may be a plugin complication, as I have a decent amount installed, so then I try it on my other computer, which has a virtually unmodified Firefox. Freeze again. I assume they were just idiots and didn’t test for Firefox (which is a terrible mistake), and so after dinner I launch the evil Internet Explorer. Now I have to register with my email and password and full DOB, in addition to the previous information, but it doesn’t freeze.
And what do I get for this new plugin that they claim is for my own good? The same exact player I had before. Except now it only plays on my computer screen, and not the 32″ TV set it’s attached to. Yes, I know that’s not that huge, but I’m in a dorm room, so it looks massive. My girlfriend still complains that it’s too big.
There are several lessons to this:
- Don’t offer your customers something and then take it away, make it worse, or mess it up entirely
- Do testing before you launch your products on multiple platforms, and if you’re a big company, don’t modify on the fly
- Don’t make video any more difficult than it needs to be. Almost everyone has flash, so just use a flash player
ABC, hear me out. I like what you’ve been doing, and you’re gaining brand loyalty with me. Don’t mess it up by breaking things that are already working!
March 22nd, 2007
posted in WebTV, TV, Top, Monetizing |
no comments
Since music downloading has destroyed CD sales, Epic has resorted to putting up AdSense on some of its artists’ websites. Not only are most of the sites flash based, heavy, counter-intuitive, and, for the most part, really shitty (as is almost any musician/band site in the industry), Epic has decided to put AdSense on some of them as well. This includes Jennifer Lopez and (this one is painful) Jessica Simpson - see thumbnail.
Why would you stick an ad in prime visual real estate? Especially when the websites purpose is to sell the ARTIST (and her CD’s, incidentally). Here are just a few things wrong:
- If you’re trying to sell a product, DON’T monetize with advertising
- If you’ve made a flash site that’s supposed to be pretty, DON’T destroy the design with an ad designed to integrate with text content.
- Don’t put it it prime visual real estate.
- Don’t make sites entirely in flash. Please. There’s no good reason for it.
That’s about it. End rant.
March 21st, 2007
posted in Design, Top, Google Adsense, Monetizing |
one comment
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been running a test on one of my small websites comparing Google Adsense to Yahoo! Publisher. The website receives a couple hundred visitors a day, has few repeat visitors, and is related to phones and calling. It’s a one page website, with two 468×60 ad spots on it. The majority of traffic is from StumbleUpon and random “fun”-related websites.
In this experiment, a script randomly rotated Yahoo! and Google ads whenever the page was loaded (Google and Yahoo! ads never appeared at the same time). I threw out the data of the first few days to allow for Yahoo! to stabilize, as AdSense had already been on the site. No special settings were used for either set of ads; Publisher’s option to self-target ads was not used. This report is based on the last 7 day of activity.
Ad Impressions
As for the results: Google showed 1609 page impressions (meaning 3218 ad impressions, since there are two ads per page). Yahoo! showed 2935 ad impressions, which is notably less and also an odd number. Considering that every page shows 2 ads, it should be impossible to have an odd number of ad impressions. As for the lower number, this could be due to simple randomness, but a ~10% difference is a large amount for simple chance to create. I’m a little sketched out by Yahoo!’s reporting capabilities, and this isn’t a good thing.
Ad Relevancy
As for the relevancy of ads, AdSense wins hands down. Take a look for yourself:
Google Adsense
Yahoo! Publisher
As you can see, Google Adsense has 4 of 4 related ads, with additional text. In Yahoo! Publisher, only 1 of the 4 ads are even remotely related, and no additional text is shown. This is likely due to an issue of advertiser volume, but it also hurts CTR rates, as seen next.
Click-Through RatesÂ
Adsense had a per-ad CTR rate of 1.3%. Publisher had a CTR of .3%. Ouch. Google wins this one as well, although this problem will solve itself once more advertisers start working with Yahoo!. In the end, Google had 42 clicks and Yahoo! had 10 clicks.
Total Money Made
Now this is the most important section for most people. Who ended up making more money? The average CPC of the caller area is relatively low, so this hurt Google’s CPC. The lack of Yahoo!’s targeting actually increased the CPC and increased it’s return. Without further ado, I present the results:
- Google: $6.74
- Yahoo!: $6.54
Yahoo! loses by a bit. Ouch. Sorry Yahoo!, between the lack of contextually topical advertising and the low CTR, I’m going to have to argue AdSense is still a better result, and a better service for customers.
Winner: Google AdSense
March 16th, 2007
posted in Contextual Advertising, Yahoo! Publisher, Top, Google Adsense, Monetizing |
no comments
Super Affiliate Marketing Blog made a great post explaining how to affiliate market in 24 hours or less. Good stuff - I read it and I like it. I can’t say I’ve delved into the affiliate market arena yet, but I may do so as a result of this post.
So word has it that I haven’t made many good posts lately that help people make cash. Well, I agree, so here’s how you can make some bank quickly and easily without breaking the bank too. Let’s take a quick look at Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing and see how underrated it is and how you can seriously make some cash without getting too wrapped up and hung up on the usual things that stop you from moving forward.
March 11th, 2007
posted in Affiliate Marketing, Featured Posts, Monetizing |
no comments
As a psychology major, one of the first lab experiments I did was teach a lab rat some little tricks, like pulling a lever or standing on its hind legs.
That’s kind of cool, but how does it apply to you? Hey, wouldn’t you love to be able to control your visitors like that?
Maybe you don’t want them to pull a lever, and making them stand up is the last thing you want them to do, but what if you can get them to comment, click a link, or do anything else more often?
When the rat pulled the lever, or stood on its hind legs, I gave it a small pellet of food. The rat ate the morsel and then went back to work, pulling my lever for me.
As an offhand note – the rat’s name was Cain. For some reason, my girlfriend thought this was uncute and decided to rename it “Sparklefairy.†In retrospect, she realizes this is an absolutely ridiculous name.
Fortunately, when it comes to training, human beings haven’t evolved much beyond rats. We see examples of this constantly, and we can use it when creating a site design.
There are five “schedules†of reinforcement. All of them are good, but one, the fifth one, keeps people coming back for more, and more, and MORE…
It’s the kind of thing that causes people to get addicted, and who doesn’t want addicted visitors?
Give it to ‘em every time! (Constant Reinforcement)This is the simplest kind of reinforcement. Every time Cain did something that I liked, I gave him a treat. Easy and effective, and he learned his tasks quickly.
Unfortunately, this schedule is much more costly than any of the other methods and you run the risk of satiating your subjects (meaning they’ll be full and won’t pull your lever anymore, because they’re not hungry).
Examples of constant reinforcement are purely information-based websites such as Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia. When you search for information on these sites, you get a result that fills your need, and therefore no longer need to look.
Make ‘em wait! (Fixed Interval)
Sometimes I’d set it up so that Cain would have to wait one minute after he was rewarded before he could get more. No matter how many times he pressed the lever, nothing would happen. Once the minute passed, the first lever pull rewarded Cain, and then he’d have to wait again. Quickly, he learned that pulling the lever right after a reward wouldn’t give him more food, and so Cain stopped working for me for free. Boo, Cain, boo.
This strategy by itself isn’t very useful. Forcing your visitors to not act is counter-productive. However, in conjunction with other strategies, it can have a very positive effect. For example, Yahoo! Answers rewards you for visiting the site once a day, giving you a small incentive to check in and see what’s going on in the site, and maybe answering (or asking?) a few questions. Blingo.com allows you to search ten times a day with a chance of winning a prize each time.
Try and Try Again (Fixed Ratio)
With a fixed ratio setup, I made Cain pull the lever a certain number of times before he received food. Once he learned the setup, Cain would pull the lever slowly after each reward, and then more quickly as it came closer to the last pull – knowing you’re closer to your goal makes you work harder for it. On the other hand, knowing you’re far from your goal may make you put off working for it.
Many pyramid scheme sites employ a fixed ratio reward system – “Get five of your friends to sign up, and get a free iPod!†Many of these types of sites also use points as a midterm reward - a constant reinforcement - to achieve the periodic reinforcement of the end result (an iPod, XBox 360, etc.)
Is it ready yet? (Random Interval)
With this schedule, Cain didn’t get reinforced until a random amount of time had passed since his last morsel of food. This resulted in similar learning to fixed interval, although slightly faster.
Generally, I’d stay away from this kind of reinforcement, as either fixed interval or random ratio is more appropriate and effective for almost any occasion.
Gambling Addiction! (Random Ratio)
Here’s the one I mentioned before – the schedule that gets people addicted. And frankly, what’s better than addicted users? Casinos make money hand over fist. Cigarette companies are still posting a hefty profit even with massive taxes and legal costs. Alcohol is a booming industry in good times and bad. And there’s almost no chance your site will kill people (Digg hasn’t – yet…).
Getting a royal flush in poker doesn’t mean you won’t get a full house on the next hand, so you’ll still try just as hard to win the next, and the bite of the gambling bug is something we’ve all felt at one point or another. At the same time, getting twenty bad hands doesn’t mean you’ll get another bad hand either.
Random ratio is simple in that every lever pull or comment or click will have an equal chance of winning, and often times the system allows you to win far more than you lose. Cain learned the system, and he realized the more and the faster that he pulled the lever, the more food he got. And he started working hard.
Now if you can implement a reward system in which essentially every action has a chance of achieving a (big?) reward, your visitors will be much more likely to do that action in a frenzy. Mix that in with the fact that people overestimate small odds and overrate their chances of winning large prizes, you’ll be able to create a site that people won’t be able to tear themselves away from.
And that means more money for you.
February 6th, 2007
posted in Psychology, Top, Articles, Monetizing, Marketing |
one comment
