Jun 07
5
Bidvertiser Review (Sponsored)
This is a sponsored review of the bidvertiser advertising program. It contains affiliate links to the bidvertiser program.
I signed up with bidvertiser after reading Andy Beard’s Bidvertiser Review I even blogged on it myself too.
You can sign up as an Advertiser, a Publisher or Both. They also have a referal program where you can earn up to $50 for new publisher sign ups and $25 for new advertiser signup, both of which are conditional upon performance.
Advertising with Bidvertiser
I must confess I haven’t yet used the advertiser product, so can’t really comment on its effectiveness. I’m sure people will be able to find out info on this with a quick Google.
Publishing and Bidvertiser
I wasn’t too impressed with the backend system at bidvertiser. I briefly touched on those here . To elaborate further, my biggest issue was with what for me is just too clunky a system.
As a blogger I just want a quick and easy way of getting ads on my sites and getting paid. When you log in to the publisher backend you are auto opted in to a long list of advertisers. I didn’t enjoy having to go through 240 + advertisers disapproving sites I didn’t really feel were relevant. It was a royal PITA. I think a better system would give me an option to enable myself to opt out of all advertisers and then selectively choose which ones I wanted to allow. Sure, some people might not care what ads they show, probably because they have a broader reach or appeal yet for a tech blog like this I see little value for myself, my readers or potential advertisers in showing links to sites like Russian Brides 4 Marriage’ and ‘Casino’ and ‘Rehab, Drug and Alcohol’ . To make matters worse, once having been through what can only be described as the rigmarole of a disapproval process. I then found I had to go back and constantly tweak and add and disapprove as new advertisers came on board.
I really don’t have time to mess around like that,so for that reason and that reason alone I decided to remove the ad code.
Would I reconsider? Sure, yes of course I would, but before I did they’d have to improve upon how it currently works. I would like to see.
- Catergorised ad channels – would allow me to more specific about the kinds of ad channels I wanted to show. If I run a tech site then I want tech related ads. If I run a drug rehab site then again the same kind of thing applies. I don’t see the point in showing ads to Russian Brides for Marriage websites as in 99.9% of cases very few people who read a tech blog are really that interested in such things. I want to give them ads that are in the very least somewhat related in some way.
- Minimum bid rate options – What is the point in me showing ads from a network that are going to pay me such a base minimum. Niche blogs target all manner of sectors and themes. Different markets have different levels of participation and therefore profitability. A blog that deals with finance or gambling as a subject matter would ideally wish to display adverts of related content. Ads in this sector tend tomore expensive than those of other sectors due in the main to the high returns that can be made from serious program participants. A casino affiliate can earn great commisions, as can casino operators too, simply due to the high level of spend by the average new player. Why would any blogger blogging on the topic of gambling want to show a low bid 0.05c ad to a site talking about unrelated stuff, when a relevant ad could perform so much better. By having a minimum bid option, a site that decided on a benchmark level, could work from that base and if so wished exclude further as appropriate.
- Opt in to advertiser options – I alluded to this above and understand that as a program bidvertiser wants to get their advertisers ads out there in the space, but jees, do please also appreciate that not all of your publishers are that carefree with who they link to or show even. If at least an option existed to automagically opt out of all, then this would be very much the welcome time saver. Publishers could then look at the list and selectively include whomever they saw fit. I’d like to be able to also have a a checkbox that prevented new advertisers from appearing as well as maybe an email alert otion if ‘ads opted in to ‘ fell below a certain threshold.Update:
My bad. I have since noticed that there is an option to manually approve each new ad, and filter out sites you may not wish to publish; such as your competitors. I hadn’t noticed this though as it wasn’t immediately apparent.
They also allow you to contact them and request inclusion in different categories. This domain was assigned to which to me is pretty restrictive Computer & Internet –> Internet Services –> Search Engines I dont get why if this is my classification I had ads for all manner of unrelated areas but hey…
Bidvertiser Referal Program
I think that the referal program has the potential to be a very good thing but feel that it could be improved somewhat. They offer up to $25 for advertiser sign ups and up to $50 for new publisher sign ups.
Whilst the lure of $25 and $50 per new sign up is on the face of things attractive, when you look at it further you do realise that once these thresholds are met, your bucks stop there.
It would be both cool and I’m sure affordable if there was some additional ongoing passive stream. Maybe some tiered bonuses relative to either advertiser spend or publisher income generation.
If bidvertiser are seriously looking to grow their publisher base then IMO they could do far worse then step up to the plate and offer its partners serious ongoing incentives.
Conclusion
On the whole I think bidvertiser has a lot of potential.
With a sufficient publisher and advertiser base it could obviously do very well indeed.
The success of Google, YPN, Adbrite and Kontera to name but a few are a living testament to this. I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of their ads from either an advertiser or publisher perspective. In many ways they look very similar to most of the other players in the marketplace and could certainly do with some additional formatting options. I think there are as witnessed by some of the advertisers who are using them, some excellent opportunities for the arbitragers of this world to come in to programs like this and exploit some of the low cost offerings that are to be had there.
Its obvious to conclude that a successful program of this type has to live up to the aims and expectations of all its constituents and users, with a little bit of work Bidvertiser IMO, could well do this.
update :
Search Marketing Services Holistic Search
