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
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
Back in August of 2006, FaceBook made a deal with MSN for exclusive third party ads. Today, on the spot where Facebook Flyers usually go (below the vertical left menu), I caught one impression of Google AdSense. Huh? What? I wish I would’ve taken a screenshot, but I didn’t get a chance to, and I haven’t been able to catch it since.
What’s going on here? We already know FaceBook is one of the worst advertising platforms in terms of ctr rates, but is MSN testing out Google AdSense now? Or is the partnership breaking down - because MSN can’t deliver publishers, or because FaceBook’s traffic is just too low quality?
March 24th, 2007
posted in Facebook, Top, Google Adsense |
4 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
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 |
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