I’ve just started this week’s ‘poll of the week’ in the side bar. It asks:
“If you could only use one Ad System which would it be?”
I’ve given you 9 of the more popular options that I see many bloggers experimenting with. I know there are others that I’ve not included – but I had to draw the line somewhere.
Note – I’m not including affiliate programs in the list – rather these are just advertising options. So which one is most essential to you???
If you want to tell us why you’ve chosen what you’ve chosen feel free to do so in comments below.
As long as chitika is not available for german website I have to vote for adsense. Otherwise I might have chosen chitika.
regards,
Markus
I gotta go with the Chitika ads. They’ve got pictures and I can focus them myself without worrying about some abstract algorithm trying to figure out what my site is about. That’s the biggest thing for me. If I want to hit a specific product, I can do that. If I want to target a class of products, I can do that, too. If I want to let it go crazy and do the stupid stuff that AdSense does, I still have that option as well. How can you beat that?! :)
Plus, they seem to pay more per click than Adsense does and if I target and place them well, I get more hits from them than the AdSense. The only drawback for me, which I’ve asked the Chitika people about and they’ve assured me that their engineers are working on, is that I can’t put on in my posts in blogger. It gives me errors and either won’t post the ad or posts a wrong ad. It’s bizarro.
I think it depends on the contents of your blog. I like both Chitika & Adsense. Since Chitika has got pics, it will be more effective if your blog is something related to consumer products or new technology. Let’s say, if your blog is something like art or design, Adsense might be more efficient to put Ads that would be more appealing to the visitors.
Besides, you can’t ignore your site’s stats. If you make more money on Adsense than Chitika from a particular site, just stick to it.
For the record – I voted Chitika for a number of reasons:
1. earnings – they’ve left Adsense for dead for me
2. payment speed – paypal payments speed things up considerably for an Aussie like me
3. control over targetting – ability to target specific ads is very handy – gets rid of some of those relevancy problems that many of us experience from time to time with other systems.
Of course this is just what I vote for my current and main blogs. It doesn’t work for every topic/blog.
Luckily we don’t have to make the choice – I find Chitika and Adsense make the ideal partnership!
I see almost nothing from Chitika (but I like their concept and their ads so run them anyway) and YPN is too variable. Adsense is steady and reliable day after day
However: I have had reps from both Chitika and YPN call me asking how they could be of assistance. Nobody from Google ever called me.
Google is frustrating because of their secrecy. The few times I have asked a question, I usually got a curt answer that just directed me to their faqs. Only once did I get someone who honestly seemed to care at all. I make more than $1,000.00 a month from them, which isn’t giant money, but it isn’t peanuts either, so I think they should care more.
Right now, I’d stay with Adsense. But if I could get better income from Chitika or more reliable income from YPN, yeah, I’d switch.
I’ve got people from aZoogle calling me. I would be interested in knowing if anyone has used them or know anything about them at all.
As far as the ads I choose, I’ve seen little out of Chitika, but I think it’s largely to do with the “type” of visitors I get. I’ve got no complaints whatsoever with Adsense. I’ve been very excited to become a 5 figure blogger (of course that’s annually)
Depends on the site. My tutorial/article based sites do best with adsense. My tech news site and forums do best with Chitka.
In my opinion the best combination has been chitika and adsense as well.
I’m trying YPN on a smaller site and I’m not sure what to think of it yet.
I hope Chitika rolls out the statistics by channel feature soon because I’m interested to see how the conversion rates for your product-related blogs (cell phone, digital cameras) compare with your other blogs (this one, secure instant messaging, content management, etc) where there is so much of a focus on a specific product.
When I put on Chitika I saw an early bump in conversion rate (probably because it was new) but since then it’s been leveling off.
I’d still stick with Adsense (I’m not in the YPN beta)
So far I’d say Chitika gets my vote. Adsense won’t run on tobacco related sites. But they will take your money for AdWords.
And this is why I read this site daily now.
Darren – you nailed exactly why I also chose Chitika as well for exactly those reasons. They are definitely the best option currently IMO.
However, they do still have a ways to go. Better (more in-depth)reporting, quicker reporting (i.e. closer to real-time), a larger client base,etc. will all make Chitika improve greatly over time.
Personally, I see better clicks per 1000 impressions with Chitika than I ever did with AdSense and Google’s secrecy policy is too stand offish for my liking.
Advertising systems I use:
Adsense most reliable, but I hate one cent clicks. YPN lacks features, has targeting problems, but most clicks are fifty cents or better. Chitika, l like their targeting scheme, but turn on the channels!
Advertising systems I don’t use:
Fastclick turned me down with no explanation. Question for the 2 voters for them (so far). Why would they be your only ad system?
We use adsense and fastclick on our free people search and public records directory at http://www.skipease.com and are the most pleased with its performance. We also use adsense on our web log http://rlh.blogs.com/skipease/ and get great click through rates without trying to trick the visitors into clicking on the ads. We use fastclick as well, however, most of the ads are not really related to our target audience.
The only drawback to adsense is that it seems to take awhile to get back on track after you make a major site change or redesign.
Chitika isn’t appropriate for most of my topics and tends to just end up offering ipods. I suppose there might be a few initial click-thrus from curiosity, but once the readers have bought their ipod, what then.
BlogAds is an interesting tool, but doesn’t work well for moderate traffic sites because you don’t even make the directory. I have sites that earn decent amounts from Adsense that would never make the BlogAds directory. Also, not being able to charge under $10/week makes it too pricey for moderate traffic blogs.
Adbright is a neat imitation of Adsense but produces less clicks because of a much smaller ad pool. My experience is also that the money per click is, on average, less than Adsense.
CrispAds is too slow loading and sometimes locks up a page from loading at all if the ad is near the top.
YPN hasn’t gotten back to me about joining, so let’s just say they aren’t even on the list as far as I’m concerned.
For ease of use, ability to use at any traffic level and average payment, Adsense still beats everything for my topics.
Chitika for me because its working and working well, Adsense revenue seems to be declining, and as much as I like blogads they don’t perform as highly on lower traffic.
One thing I like about Adbrite is I can sell adspace. With my niche it didn’t take long to find five takers. Granted I’m not charing much yet since my traffic rate is extremely low but it is enough to cover my hosting costs.
What about selling products with CafePress? I sell products on my blog… its just as easy as any of the other programs, i make money and i grow my community seeing as how my readers are now wearing my schwag. just another thought.
[…] Darren Rowse conducted a poll a week ago which listed 9 of the more popular advertising systems for blogs. The poll results closed today with 597 votes. Unsurprisingly enough, AdSense was the clear winner. […]
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Can i put Yahoo publisher ads on blogspot.com because it’s under Google?
Does Yahoo publisher allow people from Malaysia to join them?
Please help and teach me.
It has to be Adsense for me. I tried Chitika about a year ago on a tech blog and the targetting was pretty poor.
Experimenting with several ad schemes though my professional work (web based invoicing services) I have coime to the conclusion that most work well in short bursts. What lets them down is strange and occasional glitches such as poor targetting, sudden drops in revenue and occasional technical issues.
Adsense may be secretive and the reporting could be better, but it is very reliable. You klnow what you are going to get with Adsense, so long as you play the game properly.