In my attempt to diversify revenue on Wopular, I'm throwing in another kind of ads -- in-text advertising. These are ads you see when you hover over keywords that are double-underlined. They're great because you can use them along with display advertising, thus providing an additional source of revenue without cannibalizing your existing ad inventory. Currently, the two most popular in-text advertising networks are Kontera and Infolinks.
Kontera claims to be the best; Infolinks claims to be the highest paying. In my research regarding the two ad networks, it appears that Kontera publishers have been flocking to Infolinks because they pay better.
INFOLINKS
To me, the best is the highest paying, so I applied for Infolinks. The sign-up process was simple. I entered in some personal info, select a payment option, and got an ad code to stick into my site. I then had to wait for their approval, and that was when it started to get tricky and frustrating. Unlike display advertising ad networks, I only got a general support email instead of being assigned to a specific representative, so we started playing e-mail tag. They generally take a day or two to respond to each email, and there are different reps responding to my emails. I was told by one of them that I've been approved, but when I logged into Infolinks, it said I wasn't yet. More e-mail tagging ensued. Finally, everything came together after a couple weeks. Customer service is not bad if you don't mind waiting a day or two for replies and dealing with different reps. Half of the time, I do get the same rep.
I think I'm spoiled by the customer service from PubAccess (Advertising.com) where I get replies (emphasis on the "s") within the day.
KONTERA
While Infolinks and I engaged in a game of email cat-and-mouse (don't ask me who's the cat, and who's the mouse), I applied for their arch nemesis Kontera. I signed up, picked a payment option, and was approved almost instantaneously. This entire process took at most 5 minutes. I stuck their ad code into Wopular, and like they said, ads started appearing on the site within 24 hours. To my surprise, the ads are actually relevant to the keywords. A day after that, I started getting revenue reports. Kick-ass. And I'm impressed with the figures. They're comparable to the display ads.
ADBRITE
Let me backtrack a little. While I was testing out AdBrite months ago, I also tested their in-text ads. I turned them off after a couple days because:
- Their ads were completely irrelevant to the keywords. Not even close.
- Because their ads had nothing to do the keywords, the click-thru rates were really low, and I made nothing from them. Well, almost nothing - I made a small percent of a penny in those two days.
AND THE WINNER IS ...
Between Kontera and Infolinks, I would have to say that Kontera has a smoother operation, but Infolinks does indeed pay more. And like I said before, the best network is the network that pays more. Therefore, the winner is Infolinks. I use both, not simultaneously. I give a chunk of my pages to each - of course the higher paying one gets most of the pages.
