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Anyone have experience as a website publisher with using ad networks fr monetization? (27)

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Hey folks -

We have a couple content sites we've been building up that we're getting to the point where we want to ad some ads to...

Does anyone have experience with that side of things? I know we have a bunch of world class advertisers here but not sure if anyone is an expert on the opposite side...

If so, could you give me a 30,000 foot view/rundown of where things stand today?

Is display better than native?
What networks do you recommend?
How big does a site have to be to work with most ad networks? I know Adsense has no bottom limit, but it sounds like that's the bottom of the barrel cpm-wise and the better CPM's come from more specific providers which are more discerning of which websites they allow- is that accurate?

I know Matt Diggity recommends a display network called Newor Media so just reached out to them, but figured I'd also try to see if there were any STM experts who could give me any ideas.

Thanks!

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I know this is where @matuloo started from and where he is currently trying to get back into. Should have a lot of insights.

@wakeboarder had this almost exact question about a year ago.

Also @stickupkid was working on something in the background... but not sure if at that stage for monetization.

And of course @kinan with Shinez stuff is also possible.

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Hi Jack!
So you build sites and you want to start monetize it with ads? what are you doing with the sites now?
How much traffic it have and from where?

Yea Adsense (we use ADX) is a good filler but to really kick ass in the US you need to work with Tier 1 SSP's like OpenX, Rubicon etc
Not easy to get those up on your site, you need lot's of history, monthly volume and of course to be a legit site.
Without those you won't be in the competition...

Feel free to send one of you sites and I will be happy to take a look, we might be able to help.

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Sooo, most of my experience with this goes back to my years of running adult websites. The choice of adnetworks here was kinda limited and exoclick always won, no matter who I tested them against. Another good option was to broker a deal with some heavy advertisers, such as the large livecam platforms, those guys could afford to pay way more than you would make from ad networks.

But, I guess this doesn't apply here, so let's move on.

I played with "mainstream" sites, some time ago and indeed adsense was the best option for small sites with international audience.

As @jaybot mentioned, I'm playing with a little project now in the cooking niche, so I was doing quite a bit of research and there are way better options available these days, compared to adsense.

So for example, there are ad networks that deal with this specific vertical (cooking) such as gourmetads or blogging in general, for example mediavine or cafemedia or adthrive. I've seen screens of stats and these networks can beat adsense revenue by a lot.

However, all of them have some extra conditions and requirements ... traffic breakdown (most want high US % or at least EN speaking), certain monthly volume (50k-100k monthly page views is the most common), has to be a real website etc... and they cannot monetize all niches/verticals properly. Most, or probably all of them use adsense as a fallback for traffic they cannot monetize themselves too, so part of the traffic will end up in google anyways, this time minus some % that the network takes for sure.

With some of these networks, you also need or should transfer video content to their platforms in order to monetize it better etc...

What I would do would be to research your niche to see what the major players are running, chances are you would find out there are specific networks preferred in your vertical(s) and it would be a good idea to try those.

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Hey Jack,

I currently do this in the Personal Finance niche.

What niche are you in? And how much traffic (from which geos)? I assume its organic traffic?

I monetize with Ezoic and make an intro. You can DM me if you only want to share these details privately.

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Hey Jack,

i 've heard good things (high RPMs) about Newor, Mediavine and Adthrive. But you have to have 100k monthly visitors from mainly Tier1 iirc.
I am using Ezoic for a german site atm, but i am not impressed so far.

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Nice - thanks Hen!

You guys do all Content-Arb if I remember right so you probably have this paid ads stuff optimized insanely good...

These are primarily SEO content/affiliate sites that I also want to add ads too. Not really Amazon affiliate sites just authority sites where maybe 10% of the articles have affiliate links in them and then ads will be the other main form of monetization.

Do you think those hardcore players you mentioned above are appropriate for SEO-based authority sites or would you recommend something more pedestrian like Ezoic or something instead?

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Thanks man dm'd you to ask about Ezoic.

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Cool thanks man - I just spoke with Newor Media actually and they said they'd be willing to take as low as 30k, so that is good. We're at like 25k for the larger site now but its been growing at like 50% per month so should hopefully get past 30k soon...

What don't you like about Ezoic? Just low CPM's or?

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You're always the voice of logic my friend gonna do exactly that right now!

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Ezoic is IMO the worst out of all your options for managed header bidding companies. They have little-to-no support reps that honestly care, plus their ads are substantially slower than what I've seen from other similar HB providers. And they treat pubs the worst compared to other companies (I've heard a couple absurd stories from other pubs). I'll send you a message on Skype with more details b/c I don't want to get into too much here, but suffice to say that if you can get approved by any other managed adops company, then I'd avoid Ezoic like the plague. They're OK for newbie sites but once you grow it's worth switching to somewhere else

I'm doing about $1.5k/day ($35k-$55k/mo) right now on content sites between AdThrive, Mediavine, and a variety of affiliate programs, plus I've tested Ezoic and Monumentric & have friends that have shared their experiences with other managed adops companies too. I'm not an expert but do have experience in this space.

Content sites that monetize via search traffic work differently than native/social traffic, but at the end of the day it's all ad arbitrage. And most managed adops companies will offer basically the same service for you, so the basic idea is always the same: pay less to get the traffic than what you earn back from ads.

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To help clarify this, what kinan is listing in his post would be SSPs (OpenX, Rubicon, AppNexus etc..). Ezoic is not an SSP, they are a company that connects you into SSPs because you probably don't have enough volume to be approved into them by yourself.

Most SSPs have high volume requirements, I don't know them myself but I'd estimate a minimum of tens of millions pageviews (or more) for you to be able to join directly. Most pubs can't do this, and even if some pubs could, they'd still need to manage their actual header bidding setup by themselves which involves some tech knowledge & coding... so this is why smaller pubs work with another company to manage header bidding & offer that connection into the SSPs. Ezoic is one example of a company that offers this managed adops type service, although I consider them by far the worst option.

Other companies that can manage your HB/adops could be Newor, Freestar, AdThrive, Mediavine, Playwire, Sortable, Monumentric... the list is almost endless.

If you want an actual list of companies which Google considers viable, you can check their Google Certified Publishing Partners (GCPP) page listing some options here: https://www.google.com/ads/publisher...ind-a-partner/

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Wow! Incredible info man I appreciate it tremendously... sounds like you are absolutely killing it - those are some impressive numbers!

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@kinan, do you guys use native on buying side and anything else apart from facebook? facebook is bullshit without agency acc and agency acc need high spends monthly.

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I would say native traffic is pretty fine. There are lots of content arb agencies spending around 5-6 figures a day.

The most important thing is the optimization since on native you’re not buying on a “single site” like you might be doing on Facebook.

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Yep, I come across a lot of them in my research as well. I guess you're talking about whitelists and preventing fraud clicks! I'm also struggling with improving my on-site engagement and increasing the EPC of each click. I think my IPP and PPS need to go up. Since I'm doing no targeting whatsoever except for geo and device type, I'm not sure if it's my layout that sucks or if my creative/headline is misleading in any way. I'm going to experiment a bunch, but I don't know if I can see profitable results with just adsense?

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You don’t necessarily need to run a whitelist to make it work. Most native networks don’t provide whitelists anymore.

Also regarding the targeting that’s fine to go for a broad one. On such campaigns it is really important to generally have a good Ad Ctr and revenue per session.

Adsense arbitrage is still solid.

Adsense content arb agencies running with TheOptimizer are heavily optimizing their campaigns towards, Adsense Ad Impression or Unit Views, Adsense Ad Clicks, Revenue per Adsense Clicks, etc.

It really comes down to the optimization approach.

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platinum, can we connect offline to discuss further? Please send me a PM with your skype if possible.

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Yup, the thing is, it's another world on its own again, so it's the best to see what the other players are doing instead of shooting blind.

But I'd say some really awesome advice has been given by the other guys posting in this thread!

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Well Yep, we have tons of A/B test running constantly
Feel free to share with me the sites, I will give you my opinion - we do have few publishers sites where we offer our monetization solution so it might work (we already have super good connection with the demand partner and can add website easily if it's legit)

As for you Q, I would go with the most legit demand partner you could find.

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Sorry to hijack a thread but any chance I can send you my friend's site as well?

He runs a legal cannabis store you can order from online and looking to get started on affiliate networks.

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In our internal media buying yes, we are high spenders on native and can reach 1M spend monthly on Taboola
Think that Native platform business started from content recommendation for content arb, I know it cause both Taboola and Outbrain offices sits next to me in Tel Aviv

But, for our partners (affiliates) Facebook is by far the best as it have the highest margin, some our using our own agency accounts as it became so messy in FB those days...

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Sure, I can't promisee anything but if I could help, why not

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@kinan, thanks for the response. Yes, I've heard some stories internally as well. Love what Shinez is doing. I'll be signing up shortly to your service. Just few questions if you don't mind.. Are you doing wide campaigns for native on both desktop and mobile? Or focusing on just desktop? I'm able to achieve $0.06-0.08cpc on Taboola and cheaper on Revc.. but unable to make it profitable. Is it too high? Do I need any whitelist with Taboola or Outbrain?

How do you track your cpc vs epc with native traffic? Because I want to check how much earnings in each click.. I'm not sure how to do that. I'm using nitropay and rotating different ssps like the ones you mentioned earlier.

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Most of the time we will separate Mobile/Desktop and even Tablet - prices and EPC will be different
6-8 cent CPC should be enoght, not sure what monetization you have but it might be not good enoght to be competitive, there are big players in this market.

Well, the tracking is not that easy to explain + we recently build our own internal analytic tool which help us calculate the epc almost in real time and on hourly basis.
I am not sure what basic tools you should use but from my experience you can work it out with Mixpanel

Hope it helps!

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@kinan, thank you for taking the time with such a detailed explanation. You're absolutely right. I'm separating my campaigns by device as well. I've managed to get a hold of agency accounts on Facebook and Taboola. I've also figured out a few different ways to track EPC vs CPC including MixPanel as you suggested. Thank you.

However, since I'm starting out fresh, I have 0 traffic to my site. In this case, is it possible for me to become profitable with just Adsense + Native combo to a level that I can approach the bigger adx resellers/dsps/ssps? Few of them, including AdThrive, even said that they don't work with arbitrage sites. So how do I go about this? How would you start from 0 traffic if you had to?

Also, does paginated content work anymore? I see more arbitrage sites using infinite scroll.

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Happy I manage to help!
Paginated content works but neither the user, monetisations partners (specially google) or Facebook like it
Many are still doing it mostly on Native

Re-0 traffic, will be hard to even approach to any of the big player, Adthrive are just a broker and not a direct SSP/DSP
when we started we tried to run high scale on breakeven and than approach, is it really 0 traffic? feel free to send it over by DM.

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