Happy blogging!
Pamela  

The College Investor said:

Jonathan, I recently tried INTENT click for 60 days, and it yielded poorer CTR and CPM than InfoLinks.  Even after speaking with an advertising manager (Tom Weisberg), they couldn't match or beat what InfoLinks was doing on my site in the Personal Finance niche.  Maybe things have improved though, but this was in January - February.  

Hi Robert, 

 

I checked with the INTENTclick team and apparently there were a couple of issues going on. First of all, you were running INTENTclick from Dec 4th - January 9th. and while December is the busiest time of year for many brand advertisers, it's actually the opposite with the EDU vertical. People are away on Christmas break and the last thing they want to think about is school, which also affects CTR.

 

The other factor is back in December, INTENTclick was just starting to branch out into the EDU vertical from Save Money and Better Income sites. Since then we have developed more tools and have many more EDU advertisers. If you tried INTENTclick again today, I think you'd experience the same level of performance that Save Money and Better Income publishers experience on INTENTclick.       

Thanks for the reply.  I may check it out again here in the near future.

After having read all the posts here, I may should consider grabbing some extra income with my sites. First some questions to get it clear in my head:

- Is Google penalizing pages that carry Infolinks or Kontera in the seo ranking of these pages (beyond the "slowing of the page" issue)?

- In my sites, I can easily add some code for specific pages. I was thinking to use these in-text ads for high-seo-traffic pages with a reasonable long "time-on-page" and also a high bounce rate (people read and leave). Is that possible and does this make sense? 

- Is it correct that Media.net is more like Google Adsense and is not offering in-text ads, while Kontera offers both display and in-text ads and Infolinks is only offering in-text ads?

- Is IntentClick just  like Kontera in-text ads (because it is owned by Kontera) except for that it has specifically advertisers that focus on the "coupon" target audience? 

Hi Van, 

1. Google doesn't penalize sites for using in-content ads in search results, you can read a blog post covering the issue extensively here. The basic finding is that both Kontera and Infolinks are safe to use in terms of SEO. Regarding page speed we recently did a study using the Google Speed Test Tool, a Google product which scores your page speed and gives you tips on how to improve it. Testing websites that use Kontera on some pages and not others, we found that 99.932% of the time, Kontera had no effect on the Google Page Speed score. Kontera by design is always the last element to start loading on a page, so it shouldn't affect the user experience.

2. You can control which posts Kontera appears in. To help with that we offer Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and Blogger plugins.

3. Kontera offers a variety of products that provide editorial alignment including In-Text, Mobile, and Social advertising. We do offer Interest Based Display advertising, but that's currently only available for a limited number of publishers. You'd have to contact your account manager or our support team to see if you qualify.

4.   Yes. There are some small differences but essentially INTENTclick is the same ad platform as Kontera, with a different ad inventory.           

- Is Google penalizing pages that carry Infolinks or Kontera in the seo ranking of these pages (beyond the "slowing of the page" issue)?

- In my sites, I can easily add some code for specific pages. I was thinking to use these in-text ads for high-seo-traffic pages with a reasonable long "time-on-page" and also a high bounce rate (people read and leave). Is that possible and does this make sense? 

- Is it correct that Media.net is more like Google Adsense and is not offering in-text ads, while Kontera offers both display and in-text ads and Infolinks is only offering in-text ads?

- Is IntentClick just  like Kontera in-text ads (because it is owned by Kontera) except for that it has specifically advertisers that focus on the "coupon" target audience? 

Jonathan, I recently tried INTENT click for 60 days, and it yielded poorer CTR and CPM than InfoLinks.  Even after speaking with an advertising manager (Tom Weisberg), they couldn't match or beat what InfoLinks was doing on my site in the Personal Finance niche.  Maybe things have improved though, but this was in January - February.  

Hi Robert, 

I checked with the INTENTclick team and apparently there were a couple of issues going on. First of all, you were running INTENTclick from Dec 4th - January 9th. and while December is the busiest time of year for many brand advertisers, it's actually the opposite with the EDU vertical. People are away on Christmas break and the last thing they want to think about is school, which also affects CTR.

The other factor is back in December, INTENTclick was just starting to branch out into the EDU vertical from Save Money and Better Income sites. Since then we have developed more tools and have many more EDU advertisers. If you tried INTENTclick again today, I think you'd experience the same level of performance that Save Money and Better Income publishers experience on INTENTclick.       

Dividend Ninja said:

Well since I use AdBlock Plus on my browser, I hadn't even noticed you use Infolinks.

Hey Sam, InfoLinks really slows down the page load - and the forums are already loading slow. Might improve page load performance, in fact I am certian of it. Hence if you want to run these ads - consider Kontera instead. But you might find wihthout the ads everything runs faster.

Cheers. 

Dividend Ninja, I've been using it for years and have some awesome load times on my sites.  It hasn't slowed down my pages a bit.

Hey College Investor, I am surprised to hear that - you are one of the few ;) Do you think that the infolinks you put in posts are worth the "obtrusiveness" of them, and do you make enough money to justify it? How many links do you put into your pages?

Cheers

Well since I use AdBlock Plus on my browser, I hadn't even noticed you use Infolinks.

Hey Sam, InfoLinks really slows down the page load - and the forums are already loading slow. Might improve page load performance, in fact I am certian of it. Hence if you want to run these ads - consider Kontera instead. But you might find wihthout the ads everything runs faster.

Cheers. 

Dividend Ninja, I've been using it for years and have some awesome load times on my sites.  It hasn't slowed down my pages a bit.

Financial Samurai said:

TightFistedMiser said:

I haven't tried Infolinks but I have used Kontera which is similar.  It took me a long time to reach the payout and I suspect some of the Kontera clicks would have otherwise been Adsense clicks.  I didn't have any complaints about the links though.  I'd consider trying Infolinks if people think it works better than Kontera.

I tried Kontera for 60 days, and was disappointed and took it off.  I'm willing to give anything a go for 60 days to get a true sample set, and see what the results are.  I won't hold back from my InfoLinks review on Yakezie.com, rest assured.

It's too bad about Kontera, b/c they are based right here in San Fran, and I always love to support local businesses.  Maybe they'll contact me with a better offer in the future, or improve their algos.  Who knows.  I'm open.

Looking over financialsamurai.com I think your content might be a better match for INTENTclick, which is a new in-text network from Kontera. While it uses the same underlining technology as Kontera, instead of featuring brand ads, it has coupon offers that perform better for publishers that feature Save Money or Better Income content on their site. You can learn more about INTENTclick here, or contact me for additional info.  

Jonathan, I recently tried INTENT click for 60 days, and it yielded poorer CTR and CPM than InfoLinks.  Even after speaking with an advertising manager (Tom Weisberg), they couldn't match or beat what InfoLinks was doing on my site in the Personal Finance niche.  Maybe things have improved though, but this was in January - February.  

Hey Sam, InfoLinks really slows down the page load - and the forums are already loading slow. Might improve page load performance, in fact I am certian of it. Hence if you want to run these ads - consider Kontera instead. But you might find wihthout the ads everything runs faster.

Cheers. 

(1) Slows your site down incredibley, hence they made a big promo page to state otherwise - obvioulsy its an issue.

(2) Nobody makes any money with InfoLinks (well somebody must be)

(3) Most People hate readig blog posts stuffed with InfoLinks - don't irritate your readers!

Any questions?

 Financial Samurai said:

Jonathan - Can you subscribe to this thread to keep in touch with the latest conversation?

Could you share in your opinion what makes Kontera better than Infolinks and vice versa?

 

thx

Yeah, I subscribed, sorry about not figuring that out a year earlier. 

The two things that differentiate Kontera is our technology - our Synapse platform is able to deliver more relevant ads because it can read articles for actual meaning rather than going off of keywords lists, which leads to higher CTR and better CPC. Additionally, while most other in-content providers rely solely on genetic ad feeds; we work directly with major brands and feature an exclusive ad inventory from these advertisers. These campaigns are much cooler looking, provide the best CPC, and aren't available through competitors. 

As I had mentioned in an earlier reply, Kontera also now offers INTENTclick, a network specifically catering to the needs of Save Money or Better Income sites, with high amounts of SEO traffic. For relevant publishers, this new network is easily the most effective solution for their in-content advertising.  

TightFistedMiser said:

I haven't tried Infolinks but I have used Kontera which is similar.  It took me a long time to reach the payout and I suspect some of the Kontera clicks would have otherwise been Adsense clicks.  I didn't have any complaints about the links though.  I'd consider trying Infolinks if people think it works better than Kontera.

I tried Kontera for 60 days, and was disappointed and took it off.  I'm willing to give anything a go for 60 days to get a true sample set, and see what the results are.  I won't hold back from my InfoLinks review on Yakezie.com, rest assured.

It's too bad about Kontera, b/c they are based right here in San Fran, and I always love to support local businesses.  Maybe they'll contact me with a better offer in the future, or improve their algos.  Who knows.  I'm open.

Looking over financialsamurai.com I think your content might be a better match for INTENTclick, which is a new in-text network from Kontera. While it uses the same underlining technology as Kontera, instead of featuring brand ads, it has coupon offers that perform better for publishers that feature Save Money or Better Income content on their site. You can learn more about INTENTclick here, or contact me for additional info.  

Could you share in your opinion what makes Kontera better than Infolinks and vice versa?

thx