I received a very interesting email this morning from a new advertising network called MyBuxNetworks.com. They are offering a CPM and a CPC solution with also a referral option. The network seemed interesting in the email, however it was a totally different story when I took a look at their website.
The site itself looks terrible and so amateuristic. However, that was the worst thing I saw on the site. Check out the video I have attached below, which is from a “member”. Would you go on this guys word?
Disclosure: Im CEO of Adphilia which is a site representation company.
It has been reported by the Silicon Alley Insider that Yahoo is closing their RSS Advertising solution.
Not much word on why — a Yahoo spokeswoman provided this statement to SAI:
Yahoo! is closing its Ads in RSS effective February 2, 2009. The beta program, which enabled publishers to place contextually relevant ads on their own site, was available to a targeted group of small online publishers. We have ended this beta program to focus on other more broadly used ad products for our publishing partners such as Sponsored Search and Content Match.
Silicon Alley isnt really sure why Yahoo is making this move. However, here at Crenk we know that this is just a smaller part of the big move coming from Yahoo. I have heard from inside the company that they are going to be closing a lot of departments within their contextual advertising network. Major changes will be coming with the next three months.
IDG Tech Network is moving away from Adify and Doubleclick will be their new ad serving and technology partner. IDG confirm that everything will be moved to Doubleclick between the 12-19th of February and that the transition will be a smooth one.
Adify have not really been making too much improvements since they were acquired back in April of 2008 for $300 million by Cox Enterprises. It is interesting that IDG have moved from Adify to Doubleclick. I know Doubleclick are quite an expensive ad serving solution compared to most on the market today, but this move has happened because Adify are even more expensive. Adify have been charging around 20% or net revenues from networks who have been using their platform. This is extremely high and no wonder they are losing business. IDG has to be one of Adify’s main customers so this is a heavy blow.
I have been receiving a lot of emails lately from webmasters using Technorati Media as their ad network. Techn0rati is a blog search engine which launched an ad network back in June last year. At the time it was very big news, because Technorati was losing its way a little bit and also traffic at the same time. Thus, they launched Technorati Media which would open up a new revenues stream. At the same time Technorati purchasedAdEngage which would be the backbone of the Technorati Media platform. AdEngage is a basic self service advertising platform which deals in CPC display advertising.
Anyways, Technorati Media launched their ad network with a lot of media attention and were offering some amazing CPM rates, in which was going to entice a huge amount of small and medium blogs. However, now since the economy is in a bit of a decline ad revenues have dropped but this is nowhere near the amount Technorati Media’s CPM rates have dropped.
I’m not too sure what Technorati Media is trying to achieve because using the current model they have for advertising, I’m sure they will be in a huge amount of trouble come the end of 2009. The economic crisis is not going to be fixed over night and it will take a couple of years to sort itself out, so Technorati please think of another advertising solution. CPC campaigns are great for advertisers because they get an instant return on investment for their money, but CPM is great for publishers because they can see a return on their investment. Technorati Media is struggling even to sell CPC campaigns even with some great sites on board, so this spells big trouble!
Disclosure: Im CEO of Adphilia which is a site representation company.
Today it was repoted by Torrentfreak that according to a report in the Norwegian press today, some companies have reacted uncomfortably to the news that their Google Adwords text ads have been appearing on IsoHunt, the world’s third largest BitTorrent site.
Google has a policy of not displaying ads on sites that are involved in or linked to copyright infringement, with many torrent sites previously excluded from the scheme. Of course, some still carry Google ads, purely because Google is unaware of the nature of those sites, but with IsoHunt the situation is different. On IsoHunt the Google ads aren’t directly served by Google, but by Ask.com, a Google AdWords ‘reseller’.
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, works with several other BitTorrent sites. Only on IsoHunt have they displayed search based ads that came from Google AdWords campaigns. They have been doing so for several months, perhaps years, but up until now nobody complained, or knew.
In a statement, Jan-Henrik Ohme, head of digital marketing at Sony BMG said “We have stopped the section of the campaign that goes to the third party until Google cleans up the issues. We have contacted Google, and they took immediate action.”
For its part, Google Norway has apologized for the situation, and said that the advertisers should not be held responsible for the placement of the ads, since due to the 3rd party involvement, they had no way of knowing where they would appear. The campaigns are not limited to Norway though, and Ask.com certainly has something to explain to Google.
This situation was bound to happen but some of the companies dont really understand why it happened. Ask.com was only allowed to have their ads on Isohunt because the deal they started with Google was done after the Isohunt deal. Thus, Google allowed all historical deals to continue as normal. Therefore, it is impossible to now have Google ads on new bittorrent related sites.
Additionally, the ads are not done through Ask.com, they are from Ask.co.uk. This is because Ask.com sell their own adwords type program still and Ask.co.uk controls the Google Adwords reseller program.
Skimlinks is a new tool that allows web publishers to easily control thousands of affiliate networks in one place with one simple plugin. Affiliate market is all based on the CPA advertising model which is cost per acquisition. In other words when someone purchases a product and comes from your site then you get a percentage of the revenues.
Skimlinks simplifies signing up to hundreds of different networks and then having to check all the stats from these networks. Skimlinks seems like a simple fix to an annoying problem.
Some of you have already noticed that we have added a new advertising option into the sidebar. The services is provided by BuySellAds, and we are currently offering this direct advertising options (300 x 100px) for only $10 per month. There are currently 6 places on offer so be fast. We are hoping that this ad slot will allow startups get some extra promotion for a very cheap price. The stats for the site havent been updated yet, but as a startup you can expect a minimum of 40k ad impressions per month for only $10, bargain!
No more just Google Adwords CPC ads on YouTube cause they have just added a sponsored videos section. Anyone can now start and run a campaign for their videos directly on YouTube and they all based on CPC.
Concerned about costs? Don’t worry – Sponsored Videos puts you in complete control of your spending. There’s no minimum spending requirement–the amount you pay for Sponsored Videos is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad.
Currently they only support users in the USA, but im sure that they will be expanding this very soon to other countries.
NewsGator has announced today that they have launched a new product called AdBurner. AdBurner is a program that provides a turnkey advertising based solution for premium publishers, which helps them to optimise ad revenues around key web 2.0 technologies with no incremental effort.
AdBurner is aimed at optimizing the CPM for, and process of, inserting and managing advertising into NewsGator’s publisher products suite, including services as diverse as widgets, related content, and iPhone applications. The initiative is built around best of breed advertising partners Technorati, Admeld, Gigya, Medialets, and Tremor Media.
This is a very interesting moving from NewsGator and Im very keen to test the product for them. Currently, the new product doesnt seem available via their website, so would be great to hear from the NewsGator team.
I have been reading Gigaom a lot lately, which is one of the worlds best technology news companies. Gigaom announced back in November that they will be leaving Federated Media for advertising revenues and move over to IDG. Since this time I have noticed a few key changes at Gigaom and was wondering if the site was being affected by the lack of quality advertising on the part of IDG?
Below is a screenshot of the Gigaom site as seem by a UK ip address.
As you can see from the screenshot Gigaom has been showing a huge amount of advertising from Chitika. These ads seem to just make Gigaom look a lot cheaper and more amateurish. Do you think the look of these ads has been affecting visitors to Gigaom?
I think it must have some affect. I have noticed these ads and from being on Gigaom several times in the last few days they have no put me off from visiting the site and actually just reading the full RSS feed instead.
There hasn’t been a post on here for a few days so I thought I would just have a bit of a rant. Here at Crenk the theme of the site has changed several times in the last year. Currently for the last few weeks I have been thinking about re-branding the site and actually changing the theme again. This time I have thought against changing the site. My basic thought process was that a site like Crenk needs to improve to a certain level and then branding has more of an affect, but at the present size it is really more about content and basic usability of the site. I was wondering if this was the thought process of most blog owners or am I in the minority?
2008 has been a very interesting yer here at Crenk. Crenk was launched mainly as a hobby for me to review new startups. Since that time we have had several writers head over to Crenk and help us out with content, including Ades, Kenneth, Mike, Luis, and our newest writer Matt.
In 2008 we have written over 760 posts on various topics. Crenk has also been recognised by some of the biggest names in technology including Guy Kawasaki (who put us towards the top of alltop), Thomas Marban (placing Crenk on Popurls). Additionally, we have our articles syndicated by Reuters, Google News, Livestrong and Computer Shopper.
In terms of subscribers we have had a huge increase throughout the year, mainly because of our partnership with Blogrovr which now means we have over 20,ooo subscribers to Crenk.
In terms of advertisers who have pretty much kept this site in business we would like to thank Adphilia for their hard work in bring in at least some income for the site, as well as TribalFusion.
What can you expect from Crenk for 2009? Crenk in 2009 will be bringing you a lot more startups that are making splashes all around the web, as well as that we hope to offer startups so free advertising on the site. Crenk will also be featuring a lot more top tools posts that help our readers find startups in the same niche. Apart from that you will be able to find more helpful tips and analysis as well as more articles, more freebies and more cool stuff in general.
Thanks for reading Crenk in 2008 and stay tuned cause we will be bringing you even more in 2009.
NewsGator
