The poll I’ve been running this week on which Advertising system you find ‘essential’ has just been closed with some predictable results and some that are perhaps a little surprising. The question asked was:
If you could only have one – which Advertising System would you use?
The unsurprising results were that Adsense came through as a clear winner with 66% of the 597 votes. Adsense has long established itself as being a quality ad system that many many bloggers use as the primary income stream for their blogs.
The surprising element of the results is the dominance of Chitika’s eMiniMalls in the race for second place with 23% of the vote.
This could be partially explained by my own love for this ad system (I know a lot of you have taken them up on my recommendation and this might have skewed the results a little). But for an ad system that has only recently become quite popular with Bloggers I’m surprised by how many would be willing to give up Adsense over it if it came down to an either/or choice (which thankfully shouldn’t ever happen).
It will also be interesting to see how these results change in the new year after YPN comes out of beta (hopefully) and when MSN rolls out their publishing network.
Thanks to all who participated in this week’s Poll. If you have a suggestion for the next poll let me know.
Not surprised at all about Chitikia scoring such numbers. The ads are very unique against the bland Adsense ones. It’s very Web 2.0 in their interactivity whereas AdSense ads are so static.
For what it’s worth, I have my own say about Chitika as in my area (home-based web business) there’s a real buzz about the potential of eMiniMalls.
Since you get linked all over and promote eminimalls… seems their channel data is finally displayed.
http://chitika.bloggerteam.com/entry.php?u=chitika&e_id=309
And on the poll.
eMiniMalls has been nothing but success for my little out of the way blog for nothing but writing about the video games I play. It way outperforms Adsense. Why? Partially because my content is not something the Google adbots understand. I have my ad filter full and there is a certain website with over 50 entries through various domains… and I still get public service ads and ads that I don’t want. Not to mention the text based nature of most Google ads makes no one really at all interested in clicking them. I never understood why anyone ever would want to click the text ads unless you somehow trick them into doing so.
eMiniMalls on the other hand I can focus directly to my audience. If I write something about a keyboard or video game I use… I directly link it with a MiniMall. I can make a list of recommended games all through eMiniMalls. They are relatively eye pleasing and offer a picture (most of the time) to direct the viewers direction.
Your blog actually got linked, as I’m sure it has, all over the place and it is where I encountered eMiniMalls first. I don’t do this for a living and don’t do it to pay server costs. I blog because I like to write. eMiniMalls ads just fit and aren’t spammy unless you make them. The generated funds have gone to support a recent server purchase for my gaming clan when our main server was down for a month.
If you respect your readers and only wish to make a few extra dollars on the side… eMiniMalls is the way to go.
I haven’t yet got the courage to test out anything other than Adsense, although I’m not sure about the MiniMalls at all.
I may try to optimise results with Adsense before trying anything else. Unadventurous, I know, but I’m a cautious playa!
Hey Darren, this is off topic but when i went to your homepage this text is at the top
“Not to mention the text based nature of most Google ads makes no one really at all interested in clicking them. I never understood why anyone ever would want to click the text ads unless you somehow trick them into doing so.”
Because they’re relevant and often not for commodity products. My visitors have proven they’re not interested in clicking on ads for iPods, Dell computers or most other consumer goods. They ARE interested in clicking on ads (yes the boring textual ones) about Java API’s, PHP integrated development environments and Windows scripting engines.
I’ve run the minimalls for several passes of experiments. I use the same placement and attempt to get appropriate keywords fed into them (effort not required for Adsense). Yet, on *my* site, Adsense outperforms the minimalls in terms of CPM by 5 to 1.
Just take the ad that’s showing below this comment box for me right now. It’s for high paying affiliate programs. That’s something that doesn’t work with the minimall setup. Yet, I looked at it, read it and clicked it into a new window for reading after I’m done posting. At the same time, I’d have to guess what’s showing in the minimall up above. I’d guess it’s an Apple product, but that’s mostly because with most implementations that guess will be right about 50% of the time.
Heartless_, because of your niche (gaming), the minimalls work well. The actual products you are talking about and almost everything you refer to can be bought in a mall store or online equiv. And, your readers (and likely you yourself) are visually oriented. That makes these ads work great. My readers (and me myself) are text oriented. They don’t want a pile of pictures all around their content.
They do *not* work equally well in all situations and should, like all ad programs, be tested against CPM. You only have so many “M”s to go around and you should get the most “C” for them you can. For my site, out of Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo, Adgenta, and Adbrite, Adsense outperforms all of them by at least 3 to 1 and as much as 20 to 1. I have individual pages that have, I kid you not, nearly 100% click thrus.
[…] View the Poll Results over at ProBlogger […]
Great points J :)
It truly depends what kind of blogs you are running them on…my porduct related blogs do great with Chitika, and my information related blogs do great with AdSense.
It’s definitely not a matter of one size fits all!
Hey Darren:
Thanks for this. Not surprising. What is surprising is Google’s poor service toward me. I’ve been trying to get a PIN since I first signed up with them in Sept. Supposedly they’ve sent two out already, but I’ve not seen them.
Long story-short, I’ve sent three emails in the past week to their support dept, and no one has responded to any of them. I realize I’m a small-time publisher to them, but I was hoping you could give me some advice or maybe even a name and direct contact of someone you may know with Adsense.
Any guidance is most appreciated.
Best – Michael
It seems like a lot of people are obsessed with Adsense and Chitika when there are plenty of other affiliate programs that pay very well. I am not in any way discounting Adsense, Chitika or any of the others as they perform well. It is great to have these on your blog but you can also add reseller programs that pertain to your topic and get paid considerably more.
I have written a good bit about this and you may find the information helpful. You can read more Here. If you have an informational site like mine, then you can offer valuable information that has helped you and share it with others. If that makes you money by reselling it or being an affiliate then that is awesome.
Kent
[…] Chitika eMiniMalls is the hottest thing since AdSense At least that is what you could tell from the poll results from this weeks poll over at problogger.net. […]
I think this poll should be done again. the crisp guys are selling out on ebay (90k LOL), and new more promising blog advertising systems like bliggo (www.bliggo.com) are coming along.
I for one would like to see the results of a new blog advertising poll, and see how the old results stack up today. I think ad bright would be much higher than 2%.
@ Darren,
Adsense is good, however there are a few issues with it too.
1. The adsense program disallows all other contexual advertisements. SO you cannot have other local services.
2. the referral program offer is not good.
Howver the targeting is good and the payments are made properly.