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Using Fastclick to earn extra from your blog

Using Fastclick to earn extra from your blog

Fastclick is one of those companies people either love or hate, mainly because they offer pop-unders, but if you are looking for an alternative revenue stream to Google Adsense and other such services, and in particular are looking for advertising options that pay CPM as opposed to CPC, Fastclick is worth a look in. I’ve had Fastclick ads running here at the Blog Herald for a couple of months, and as I’ve said in the past they don’t have spectacular returns, but they do bring in regular returns…they are literally reliable as a form of income. I’ve also had the opportunity over the last month to literally play with most of their ad formats (including what many would consider to be the evils ones) and this is what I found.

728/468 Banner
:
These are the big MF banners that you often see around the place. I’ve seen peope use these inline under the header and above it. In my case my templates only really allowed for them to be placed above the header, which isn’t regarded as a sweet spot. As such the returns weren’t that impressive.

Pop-unders
:
If you ever wondered why pop-unders are so widely used by websites in general (as opposed to blogs) its because they pay, and they pay good. Now we don’t use pop-unders at b5media, but I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with them on some other sites, and they paid really well, with eCPMs of between $4-$6 USD day in, day out, and CTR rates of between 2-3% (constantly). Now, if you run pop-unders, particularly on a well known site, you run the risk of upsetting people, so its not for everyone, but if you’ve got a minor site depending mainly on search traffic its worth a shot….but don’t tell anyone you are doing it :-)

160/120 SkyScraper:
I tried this out in place of Adsense on a site where I wasn’t happy with what Google was delivering in terms of ads, and in this regards it helped monitorize the spot, but having said this if the Google ads were working I’d been running them again at a blink of an eye. Fairly poor returns.

InVue:
I didn’t try this type of ad because I could think of nothing more annoying than an ad appearing across my content on any site. You see these sorts of ads on MSM sites a fair bit now so they might very well work, but believe it or not I hate this ads more than pop-unders.

Interstitial:
These are the ads you seem at big media sites when you click on an ad and are taken to another page that says something along the line of “please visit our sponsor, you will be redirected to the page you are seeking in….” with a countdown clock of say 10 seconds, or you can click to continue anyway. What I like about Fastclick is that you can specify how often your visitors will see these ads, and the default is 15 minutes, so they aren’t going to see them that often. This is also the only downside, because the exposure rates aren’t as high. As returns…good eCPM of between $2-$3 (so far in my experiments) but more amazingly CTR rates of 6%+. Yep, people click on these ads.

Medium Rectangle:
This is one of the most popular spots at Fastclick, and certainly it has the most number of advertisers using it. I’m using it here at the Blog Herald, and its pays reasonable rates, but its not very exciting in terms of eCPM or CTR..but its a Politically Correct Ad.

Rectangle:
Nothing more than a space filler that pays terribly, but given its so small its handy if you’ve got a spot you need to fill.

See Also
how to get verified

Half Page/ Text Ad:
Unfortunately I haven’t tried these two out yet, because the half page is too big and the text ads clash with Adsense. Maybe one day….

As with any form of advertising its important to experiment. Fastclick is worth a look in as part of your options.

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