Performancing Ads – Why It Doesnt Work!
A lot of people have been talking recently about Performancing Ads, John Chow, Problogger and Shoemoney to name a few. I totally understand the system they are trying to put in place, but is it actually going to work? For a long time people have been saying that Advertising marketplaces are the way forward, but I dont think that the type of marketplace that Performancing ads has will ever work.
Performancing ads simply will add a banner onto your site so that you can self-serve advertising, a full automated system. While at the same time they gather information about your traffic and user demographics. This is meant to automate the system so the publisher doesn’t have to worry about negotiating individual contracts or the advertiser doesn’t have to worry about having a 5 email exchange before they can purchase.
Advertisers will only purchase advertising in this way on sites that are already major players in their niches, solid brands or emerging sites. Thus, it has a very limited return for publishers. A great deal of smaller sites have joined Performancing Ads in the hope that they will sell more advertising.
Selling advertising in this method for small sites simply doesn’t work, because they don’t have the traffic or brand to actually sell. Smaller sites really need to band together in a particular niche and use the safety in numbers method, cause then they will have a much better chance of getting more top quality advertisers with their broader reach.
This method of self service is great for only a very limited few sites. Therefore, I’m sure that Performancing Ads will only be a fad and they will die off soon enough. The only way this platform can work successfully, is if they have a huge amount of publishers, then a marketplace which makes it very simple to purchase across 10 sites for example, while at the same time they increase their sales team.
Currently, Performancing Ads is a company that medium or small bloggers shouldn’t be taking seriously!
4 Comments
Hi Steven,
Thanks for the critical feedback. One item of criticism that we are dealing with is the development of ad bundles so that advertisers can choose a cluster of sites within a niche to advertise across. The more sites in any niche an advertiser includes in the “ad bundle” the more discount they receive. It is a request we’ve taken directly from advertisers and are about 1 week from implementing.
At the end of the day, the great thing about the Internet is that it rewards performance. You either show up, or get eaten up. We’re working our asses off to show up, and make PerformancingAds a value add for publishers of all sizes.
I tried Performancing Ads for a few weeks. Had a 1 week booking in that time. Was not thrilled by my earnings being cut in half. So they have been removed. Advertisers are getting a really good deal though. A lot of sites selling themselves short.
There is an alternative using a new plugin: MyAdManager. I included it in my monthly “hot” plugins list for wordpress: http://robmalon.com/9-new-popular-wordpress-plugins-in-october-2008/