Recently while writing a comparison between banner advertising and in-text link advertising, where of course in-text advertising has been proved a lot better than banner ads for majority of the bloggers, I promised a comparison between Kontera and Infolinks (as both of them have exactly the same kind of in-text advertising service).
I tried these services on BloggerStop.Net, in 3 phases:
- Kontera alone
- Kontera + Infolinks together (Although Kontera doesn't allow you to run another in-text ad service simultaneously ;)
- Infolinks alone
According to my experience I found Infolinks way better than Kontera. Although Kontera is a well established advertising network but it fails to impress the bloggers at an important criteria - revenue sharing.
While selecting an advertising service, you must compare the eCPM values from different advertisers. eCPM in simple terms is the revenue being given to the publishers per 1000 ad-clicks. And so it is the basic criteria of selection of an advertising program.
And the difference in the eCPM values between Kontera and Infolinks is not by a few cents but you will be amazed to know that they are differed by 10-20 times. Now that means, to earn any particular amount (say $50), if it requires 30 days through Infolinks, then it will approximately require 300-600 days (1-2 years) through Kontera...
The 10-20 times difference has been observed by me, if you read reviews across different blogs and forums, different bloggers have reported that Infolinks has 4-5 times to 20-40 times better eCPM than Kontera.
Now one problem that I have been facing in Infolinks, is that the ads are highly irrelevant to the linked text. The problem is due to lack of advertisers in the network. I think with increasing popularity this may be easily solved, already the traffic details from Alexa, shows a rapid increase in Infolinks as compared to Kontera:
Statistics from Alexa for Infolinks
Statistics from Alexa for Kontera
One more problem that I have found in both of them, is that the ads are opened in the same window, which actually takes away our visitors, so i will be writing to them regarding this issue, and it would be a great help for me if you do the same too.
Bottom line: Out of Kontera and Infolinks, I would advice you to join Infolinks to earn better.
Other than these two, there's another advertising agency - VibrantMedia, but it's first qualification requirement says:
- Kontera alone
- Kontera + Infolinks together (Although Kontera doesn't allow you to run another in-text ad service simultaneously ;)
- Infolinks alone
According to my experience I found Infolinks way better than Kontera. Although Kontera is a well established advertising network but it fails to impress the bloggers at an important criteria - revenue sharing.
While selecting an advertising service, you must compare the eCPM values from different advertisers. eCPM in simple terms is the revenue being given to the publishers per 1000 ad-clicks. And so it is the basic criteria of selection of an advertising program.
And the difference in the eCPM values between Kontera and Infolinks is not by a few cents but you will be amazed to know that they are differed by 10-20 times. Now that means, to earn any particular amount (say $50), if it requires 30 days through Infolinks, then it will approximately require 300-600 days (1-2 years) through Kontera...
The 10-20 times difference has been observed by me, if you read reviews across different blogs and forums, different bloggers have reported that Infolinks has 4-5 times to 20-40 times better eCPM than Kontera.
Now one problem that I have been facing in Infolinks, is that the ads are highly irrelevant to the linked text. The problem is due to lack of advertisers in the network. I think with increasing popularity this may be easily solved, already the traffic details from Alexa, shows a rapid increase in Infolinks as compared to Kontera:
Statistics from Alexa for Infolinks
Statistics from Alexa for Kontera
Update: Infolinks has clearly overtaken Kontera as per the statistics from Alexa, see the screenshot below
One more problem that I have found in both of them, is that the ads are opened in the same window, which actually takes away our visitors, so i will be writing to them regarding this issue, and it would be a great help for me if you do the same too.
Bottom line: Out of Kontera and Infolinks, I would advice you to join Infolinks to earn better.
Other than these two, there's another advertising agency - VibrantMedia, but it's first qualification requirement says:
Your website must receive a minimum of 500,000 page views (per month) to qualify for Vibrant In-Text AdvertisingI hope I would soon be able to try this out :)
37 comments:
i also use infolinks and it makes a good combo with adsense. :)
Good how do you compare adsense and infolinks commission rates?
Thankis, Bloggerstop.. i will try Infolinks before kontera... I
Hm, i didn't like particularly the ad from "better than banner ads" to some site "better than wikipedia".
Couldn't get you dude..
Better than wikipedia?
Personally I hate any type of advertising that adds javascript over lays to my text. It's misleading to visitors at least and annoying to the point of throwing a computer out the window at most. Also, it slows down pages...a lot.
I've tried both companies, but just can't justify doing that to my visitors and blog readers.
I just made a simple Infolinks tweak in my Infolinks settings that made my earnings multiply by 5 times compared to my previous month's Infolinks earnings.
@ deadmanblogging
Well, I have two points to explain:
JavaScript is present whether you use in-text or banner ads(including Google adsense)...
Moreover, although in case of intext ads, only links are appeared, but in case of banner ads etc. sometimes u see text, sometimes images and sometimes even videos and flash :-o
Imagine how much slow these will make your pages.
Moreover as a publisher, I know that clicks on these banner ads are really really less, but as in case of in-text ads clicks are many more. Ofcourse as I have mentioned too, the ads should not open in the same page, let's see if they change it soon....
@ infolinks tweak,
The tweak you have explained is to modify the underlining from 2 lines to 1 line, but my advice do not tweak it yourself in the javascript file, as it may be against their T&C, as they already allow you to make this change through their advance integration method, so do it that way...
Anyways, I know that this method increases the chances of clicks, but I do not personally like this method as according to me, their should be some diff b/w the sponsored links and original-html links !
Hi,
I’m just wondering how to add the infolinks code to wordpress blog.
Hope you can make a tutorial for the newbies.
Thanks
Hi Tania, simply add any HTML widget to your blog and paste the code in it, you can use any of the present HTML widgets too.
If you have got the access to your blog template, then find this in the template:
</body>
and paste the code right ABOVE/BEFORE it !
I'm using Kontera on hubpages, without much success (the ads they serve tend to be irrlevant to the reader).
What a pity hubpages don't allow infolinks...
Then why don't you use Infolinks in your blogspot/blogger blog ?
I also recomend q2click.com ! They have really high bids, nice looking ads and friendly support. Wort trying: http://q2click.com
Hi can we use both adsense and infolink simultaneusly?
Yes none of them interferes with other advertising networks......so you are of course free to use them simultaneously...
But is it not conflicting with Google's terms of service?
"... You further agree not to display on any Serviced Page any non-Google content-targeted advertisement(s)..."
As far as I know...adsense do not allow competitive banner ads, but text-link ads are not competitive to their banners and are thus allowed to use simultaneously.
PS: I do not use adsense.
Hey harold, according to the new TOS of Google Adsense, you can now use non-google ads alongside adsense:
Read the sixth point in this page:
Labnol
With few thousand clicks a month from adsense I get less than Infolinks which makes me say go to Infolinks. I have both on same site, they're working fine - I had no issues so far.
I found another problem with adsense, revenue, cpm, ect are numbers that will be chnaged form one day to another. Say you make $12 for may 15, 2009 - if you check the status on May 25, revenue earned for may 15 went down to $4.50. It does not make any sense to me... not to mention google anaylitics which shows different reports for same site, same dates.
Go figure.
Robert
http://robertkuzel.blogspot.com
http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/35.gif
Infolinks sucks these days.. They are not paying good... They are just paying 0.01-0.03 per click which is really suck. Its Better to leave them. Howz your earning these days..
@ Love*India
Yup that's true, but you know... "Andho me kaana raja"...as long as it is paying more than other services (although with a declining performance), then we don't have any choice...
In my case, clicks are of course even now are much better than banner ads, but payout is as you said around $.01-.03 (and I have confirmed this from others too, thru forums)
Is Google Adsense allow infolinks in same page?
Yeah of course you are free to use them simulataneously...they are non-competitive ads, and so both of them allow you to use the other service.
Hi guys, nice discussions here. Does anyone see big round video buttons when you point your cursor at your Infolinks on Opera 10 browser? If you point at the video button "please click to download and activate plugin" text also appears. It does not happen in firefox.
*Update
Infolinks service is gearing up again. The revenue sharing numbers (eCPM) have started getting better from the last few weeks, averaging to around $1-$2.
@Charles Nehshah
May be you do not have the Adobe flashplayer plugin activated in your opera browser. All these ads are flash based and so they will display only if your browser supports flash.
I've stayed far from both infolinks and Kontera! I've had bad experiences with them, getting loads of clicks on what I assume are high paying keywords but barely get anything for them. I stick with Adsense all the way, I remember Kontera telling me that if I earned less than $50 in one month then it is not counted. Unless you get bomb loads of traffic I don't recommend either! :D
Even I do not recommend kontera, but I'm sure it does carry on the unpaid amount to next month.
Although adsense gives you dynamic ads, but still in my experience I have seen much more clicks on my in-text ads as compared to adsense banners...
Hi Friends,
I am a new blogger, how does infolinks pay for bloggers in india? (i mean by cheque's or ....)
http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/8.gif
I have tried both one after another (not both together), and to me Both are good. :)
Hey Guddu,
thanks for sharing your experience with us, can you please give some more details like what was your average clicks, ctr and ecpm with each one of them, and finally what's your selection?
BTW I just made a visit your blog, and found Infolinks on it. So is it the winner according to you or are in still in your experiment phase?
Ya. you are right they are better then others but even they pay pathetic. 12$ for 1200 clicks.
Yeah Sandeep that's true, in fact recently infolinks is going even worse. Although similar new start ups are there, but none of them is able to stand the test of time...so we have to wait for a really good one...till then we have to use Infolinks.
Allowed HTML tags: <b>, <i> and <a>
Join and share your views with other bloggers at BloggerStop Community
Comment Like This! and Optimize your blog...
SPAMMER OF THE MONTH: www[.]Seeking4Hosting[.]com