One Man Band

Having just signed up to AdBrite and BritePic — I am running a test on my other blog Red County, California — I approached an article by Andreas Roellon entitled “Ad Network Disasters” with ambivalence.

After the first paragraph, I relaxed: the approach was from the advertiser’s viewpoint.

Then I realized that similar disasters await the ad publisher!

Here are the advertiser disasters, and my take on what the same sort of disaster looks like from a publisher’s viewpoint:

• Disaster 1: Undesirable ad placements
  Say your blog has frequent posts related to the Catholic Church (as does my blog, Kicking Over My Traces). How do you react if Google AdSense serves up an ad for an organization that attacks the Church?

  When you sign up with an ad network as a publisher, check whether there are controls available to the publisher that allow the publisher to filter out possibly inappropriate or offensive ads.

• Disaster 2: Unreliable inventory levels
  Does the ad network have a fall-back, if none of their current advertisers match up with your publishing profile?

  For instance, AdBrite will serve Google AdSense ads if none of their own advertisers match — provided you are signed up already with AdSense.

• Disaster 3: Reduced campaign exposure
  Does the ad network allow you to twiddle with the rate you charge advertisers? Does it provide a default setting if you are inexperienced or don’t want to twiddle it on your own?

  For instance, AdBrite not only allows you to set your charge rate for its own advertisers, it allows you to set a rate to match before serving up any fallback ads. Plus it provides a setting to allow AdBrite to set your rate for you, based on its own metrics. (Be sure that you understand those metrics!)

• Disaster 4: CPA-buying risks
  Pay-per-action ads (cost-per-action (CPA) from the advertiser’s viewpoint) puts most of the risk on your shoulders as publisher, since you get nothing unless an ad reader completes an advertiser-specified action such as signing up for a newsletter or service. Does the ad network serve up different cost-models? Is it all pay-per-click? All pay-per-action? A mix? Does it allow you to specify the type of cost model for ads that you publish?

• Disaster 5: Pop-ups and pop-unders
  Does the ad network serve ads as pop-ups or pop-unders? If so, does the ad network provide a control that allows publishers to screen out these sorts of ads? If you don’t want to annoy your readers, eliminate pop-ups and pop-unders. Just say no.

One final thought on ad networks before closing: check on how the ad network makes payment. Being able to specify a payment threshold and method of payment make money management much more flexible.