In Content Ads Networks Test Results
Past few weeks I have been testing Kontera and InfoLinks to see who provide better ads and who generate more money. As you may know, sites or blogs with a lot of content are having a hard time earning revenue by PPC display advertising, like Google Adsense.
I ran the tests on a blog with a lot of content, with about 300 unique visitors a month, in mobile/gadget industry. There is not much traffic, but it is enough to make an idea about the revenue generated by the networks. Before I tell you the results, I will tell you something about Google Adsense results on the same blog.
1. Google Adsense provides classic display advertising. You place the ads and people click of them. It is not that advanced, but most online advertisers are investing a lot of money in Adsense. This is why, on a regular month, 15-20$ are generated on the 300-visitors a day blog with a lot of content. I wanted to see if there are other options, that can generate more on the same website.
2. Kontera. It was the first to try. They are not displaying many links. About 2-3 on every article. There were very few clicks on the links, but they were paying well: about $0,50 for every click. After 2 weeks, I have generated a total of 3 clicks, totalling about $1,50 . This is very very low compared even to Google Adsense.
3. InfoLinks. When I first installed InfoLinks on the website, a lot of links were displayed ( about 10-20 per article ). I told myself that they should generate a lot of money. However, the results were very poor. About $1 generated after 2 weeks. Even lower than Kontera.
Despite Google Adsense does not work very well for blogs or rich content websites, they are still generating 10 times more revenue that in-content ad networks.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission
October 17th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Hi Lucian,
This is Jonathan from Kontera. As Kontera only takes up a fraction of the space on your page that AdSense does, it’s expected that the earnings will proportionally be less. That’s not a problem, in fact most of Kontera’s 15,000 publishers use Kontera and AdSense together to add to their overall earnings.
Another thing to keep in mind is our ads are geotargeted, so while Kontera has very strong big brand advertising for sites about mobile/tech, if your readers aren’t in regions that our advertisers are targeting, many of your readers won’t see those high performing ads.
Thanks,
– Jonathan Cohen
Kontera Community Manager
October 18th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Hello Jonathan.
I think that the article sounded more biased towards Google Adsense than I wanted. I have no incentives to promote Google Adsense and I usually don’t reccomend it to anyone. I wanted to find alternatives to Google Adsense that work better for blogs and I tested Kontera and Infolinks. The way I posted the results may seem that I recommend Google Adsense. Well, I don’t think Google Adsense is a good option, especially for blogs.
Your point is very good, Kontera only places 2-3 links inside every article, which does not take space at all. Even the blog had about 500 pageviews a day, Kontera reported only about 200-300 net impressions per day. And this is because the geotargeting of the ads. However, Google Adsense also have geotargeting, but because they are so big they have ads to display for all visitors.
I wanted to believe that there is an alternative or at least a complementary option for Google Adsense. But, on the blog I tested and maybe others, I am unsatisfied about Google Adsense earnings. Even Kontare ads are unintrusive, the earnings are small and added up with Adsense money, there is a small number according to my expectations. I think that the best solution is to go for Affiliate Links.
Thank you for your comment.