Hi I have been exploring some native ads recently and just trying to learn as much as I can about the industry.
I usually see the site peppered with advertorials and affiliate offers, but then I see some ads for random celebrity pictures, or very strange or interesting articles that are meant to get clicks.
I am just trying to find out how are people making money with these slideshow type sites? Is it primarily from them selling banners on their pages and people click them by accident when clicking through their slideshow?
That seems to be the strategy but I don't know for sure- I would think if that is the case and they are paying for native traffic, how tight must the margin be if they are simply trying to arbitrage?
Maybe someone more seasoned will shed some light on this for me - and can you advise if this type of site/ad is viable and if it has worked for anyone here? thanks
It is a very tight margin business. Definitely not for a beginner.
Yup, it's a form of arbitrage and as cmdeal posted already, the profit margins got very tight on this method. It was a very good method some time ago, all it took was to post click-bait stuff on facebook and if it went viral, the money started to pour in too .... since as you guessed, the main monetization method for such sites is selling ad space, mostly to native networks.
It still works to some extent, you might even be able to make a site like that and if you manage to get a reasonable mix of traffic, it can work ... people who run this usually follow some kind of a plan like this : post article, buy cheap feeder traffic for it to get some love for the share buttons, post it on FB and boost the post (if it's in par with the FB rules) and hope for the best. Once in a while, the post goes viral. If optimized properly, you can also expect some SEo traffic after a while.
But, since this is one of the lowest quality traffic types in native networks, these widgets get blocked quickly and the rates you will get are rather low, so you need thousands and thousands of visits to see some reasonable revenue.