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WidgetBucks to Serve CPM Ads to Non North American Traffic

Posted By Darren Rowse 1st of December 2007 Advertising 0 Comments

WidgetBucks have announced that they will begin to serve CPM based ads to traffic that isn’t from the US or Canada (starting early in December).

This comes in the wake of them previously stopping international traffic from seeing their ads – something that caused many publishers to stop using them. The announcement on their blog doesn’t mention what the CPM rate will be or what type of ads will be served.

They do say that the ads will not be adult or have ‘other suggestive themes’ and that they are country specific ads. My concern is that the quality and relevancy of an ad can have an impact upon the blog that it appears on. For example if you’re running a fashion blog and the alternate ad is one of those annoying smiley face ads then it’s going to be a turn off for readers.

It’s a step in the right direction – but I’d prefer a little more control over what ads appear on my blogs and would want to know the CPM range before I’d reinstall WidgetBucks on those blogs that I removed it from due to large proportions of non North American traffic.

My personal preference would be for them to set up a system like AdSense that would allow publishers to run their own ads as alternate ads.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I absolutely agree with you.Widgetbucks very often don’t match with my content of site!
    Cheers

  2. I love Widgetbucks because I made so much money, especialy if you are into Mp3 Blogging. I haven’t placed widget on my LC blog yet.

    Anyways thanks for the news.

    ~Live Crunch

  3. Could somebody tell me if widgetbucks is paying to the publishers?

  4. Abhijeet Mukherjee says: 12/01/2007 at 6:53 am

    Hey Darren….thats good news…infact honestly speaking bloggers outside US have lesser options of “good” monetization…many ad networks like yahoo panama etc are reserved only for US publishers…I think in the blogosphere there should be a level playing field for everyone…i hope widget bucks goes a step further and sets up a system like adsense as you are saying

    Cheers!!

  5. To tell the truth i didn’t get a single penny from WidgetBucks….Besides its taking a lot of time to load..

    http://megamasalapics.blogspot.com/

  6. I saw the email last night. They said first payments will be the middle of December. Not that I have earned enough to qualify.

  7. Omar – yep, what mmj said. Should be in the next week or two.

  8. @Omar:Yes December should be the month that you should get the money from.

    I actually received paycheck about 3 weeks ago :) for

    (October 01- October 31st)

  9. widgetbucks don’t follow a sites content and it takes time to download.

  10. Darren, Thanks for letting your readers know of the change. We’ll have a better idea of CPM rate at some point next week. As indicated on our blog post on the subject, this is one step toward a larger, more lucrative solution for publishers, namely to bring in global merchants that pay per click — and naturally, with this would come more control. Also, to confirm, payments will be distributed next week, with PayPal sent first and then checks. If anyone has any specific questions, please email me at dean [at] mpire [dot] com. Cheers, Dean Jutilla, Marketing Director, Mpire (the company behind WidgetBucks)

  11. Darren, Thanks for letting your readers know of the change. We’ll have a better idea of CPM rate at some point next week. As indicated on our blog post on the subject, this is one step toward an additional new solution for publishers, namely to bring in global merchants that pay per click — and naturally, with this would come more control. Also, to confirm, payments will be distributed next week, with PayPal sent first and then checks. If anyone has any specific questions, please email me at dean [at] mpire [dot] com. Cheers, Dean Jutilla, Marketing Director, Mpire (the company behind WidgetBucks

  12. Quote “…a little more control over what ads appear on my blogs and would want to know the CPM range…”

    It allows customizing of your widget colors, sizes and categories. But to what extend… I need to test it out to be sure. Check out their site.

    From an unconfirmed source “Payouts have been seen to be much higher than Adsense with most peoples CPM in the $3-$6 range compared to Adsenses $1-$2.” This is really good if it is really true. I have suggestion that you might want to start a poll to find out what is the Widgetbucks CPM range. This way, we can have a reliable source of the average range of most sites.

    One additional note is that WidgetBucks is giving out bouns and referral program. This seems to make it really attractive for both the beginner and seasoned problogger.
    Quote” Publishers and bloggers can get the ball rolling with WidgetBucks’ instant $25 sign-up bonus, which gets you half way to your first check! With WidgetBucks’ Referral program, affiliates can earn a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer. Affiliates receive this 10 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Payouts to affiliates are monthly, along with their commission checks.”

    (sorry I’ve been trying to post a reply but nothing seems to be coming up. Anyway, this is my last try)

  13. CPM is the awesome

  14. I like Widgetbucks. I got email from Widgetbucks. Payments via Paypal likely to arrive early next week. (May be this Monday)

  15. Realising they need the traffic that the international publishers are giving came a little too late after snubbing us not once but 2, i guess there will be only a certain percent willing to go back to widgetbucks and their payout is 45 days unlike adsense in 30 days.

  16. @etienne: please be advised that payments will be sent next week, likely Monday for PayPal. According to my calendar, that’s payment at 32 days, a full 13 days ahead of schedule (note that the 30th and 31st days fall on a weekend). undoubtedly you will find fault with this (obviously you have strong opinions about WidgetBucks). Additionally, the “snubbing” you refer to came as a result of our US merchants’ unwillingness to pay for international traffic. No payment to us meant no payment to publishers for that traffic, period. To give this additional perspective, we were able to implement a solution, albeit a short term one, in 2+ weeks, and continue to work on additional solutions, including global merchants. Frankly, that’s not “snubbing” — that’s listening to our publishers and finding solutions. Is it perfect right now? Nope. But hey, we’re listening. If you’d like to take your issues up with me directly, I welcome your comments at dean [at] mpire [dot] com. Dean Jutilla, Marketing Director, Mpire (the company behind WidgetBucks

  17. Still waiting to see if they actually pay. Heard alot of negative things so far. Just testing them on a few sites.

  18. All, Dean Jutilla from WidgetBucks here. More payment details on payments on our blog today. The essence of it is that the initial wave of PayPal payments was sent yesterday, while the remainder go out over the next couple of days. Checks are being processed and mailed early this week as well, including those sent to international publishers. (http://widgetbucks.blogspot.com). Cheers.

  19. So far I have mixed results with the international offering – and I do not mean payouts, there are no results in that area. On one of my blogs, a WidgetBucks ad looks OK and I have some hopes for it. On another blog, it automatically converts into a horrible early 90-s looking Windows ad which wiggles and blinks and otherwise annoys me and potential visitors to the site. All my careful color co-ordination and product category selection are replaced by this monster. In no way am I going to tolerate it on my site. Besides, now I am afraid that the WidgetBucks ad I currently like and have on my blog may turn itself into a 15-year-old Windows blurb any minute.

  20. All,
    Updated information on Int’l CPM ads is available on our blog at http://widgetbucks.blogspot.com), including information on reporting and an updated MyWidgets page. Two important details — yes, you will need to replace code to earn revenue on these ads and two, reporting on the ads results starts tomorrow (12/12). – Dean Jutilla, Marketing Director, Mpire/WidgetBucks

  21. WidgetBucks is a scam
    At least for some non-US based sites this seams to be the truth. Half words, sudden policy changes, omissions and silence and promises not fulfilled combined with arbitrary account suspensions when they were on the verge to reach the minimum amount that would lead to a payout, all this is happening and all this I can testify in first hand.
    A fluke (filled with bugs and inconsistencies) and a scam.
    I received ads from widgetbucks in Portuguese (!) (qith spelling mistakes) on my site! And they forbid non-english blogs right!?
    Google Adsense can be at ease for the time being.

  22. The problem with widgetbucks is their counting! Only 10 per cent of my served pages are accounted for in their cpm impressions stats on a good day, with a fraction of a percent most days. I calculate that I need to serve 100,000 pages in order to get 1000 impressions.
    Worse still are the widgets (not cpm) that are supposed to be served to North American viewers. I served over 10 thousand pages to the USA (by Geo-IP), yet Widgetbucks claim just 5 impressions!
    At this rate, I will probably get paid in about 2010.

  23. Unfortunately a lot of the CPM ads are a bit naff: “You are the 100,000th visitor” etc. However, since the targetted ads on WidgetBucks seem to generate reasonably high revenue, I scripted something to get one without the other.

    Basically, it uses the visitors browser language settings to make an “informed guess” about their location (en-us / en-ca being most likely from US/Canada). It’s not geolocation by any means but it is a simple kludge that mostly works. Using this I’ve restricted the amount of the CPM ads showing considerably and filled that space instead with something visitors might want to see.

    Not perfect, but better than nothing.

  24. can anyone tell me how actually i earn from the the impressions that i get from widgetbucks

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