TextAdMarket: A New Non-Contextual Advertising Service
I was asked to beta test a new advertising service called TextAdMarket. This advertising service is very, very new. As with any new service in the beta-testing stage, this one isn't without its share of problems. There are very few members using it right now and fewer is better until the bugs are eliminated from their system. It has only been live for a little over a week.
Signing Up
In order to do a fair evaluation of the service, I had to go through the process of signing up for the service and put ads on my blog. If you see ads in the upper right sidebar, that's the result.
You can sign up too, without a beta invitation, by clicking:
One of the first things I noticed was an authentication requirement on every page. Luckily, I was in continuous communication with Benjamin Schrum, the owner. He fixed the problem while I was moving from page to page on the site.
The Interface
The interface is easy enough to get around on. The only thing I really found annoying is that you can't edit an existing banner. You have to delete and start over if you want it to be different.
Not every banner size that you see with services such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network are available. I'm hoping to see more size options as well as being able to control the individual attributes of the banners, such as the border and link colors.
The Selling Points
With this advertising service, you have the option of selling your ad links for a fixed price or letting the market decide. If you use the market-driven option, your ad prices will change automatically every 24 hours depending on your supply and their demand.
Here's the rundown for publishers:
- Payment At $25
- Ads Sell Themselves
- Easy To Manage Listings
- Free Listings In Marketplace
- Payments By PayPal or Check
- Low Commission, Highest Payouts
- Indepth Site Performance Statistics
- Set Your Own Price or Let Market Decide
I purposely set my ads high, starting at $5.00, so I could see how far they'll drop before they start selling. After one day, they dropped to $4.85 each.
The Buying Points
If you want to buy ads on other sites publishing the ads, the cost is relatively cheap. There isn't much competition yet and with the exception of my ads currently in the sidebar, the cost is less than 65 cents per link per day right now. Some are as low as 10 cents per day.
Here's the rundown for advertisers:
- Targeted Advertising
- Variable Time Length
- Supply & Demand Prices
- Low $20 Minimum Purchase
- Stats, Graphs, Charts, & More
- Open Marketplace Style Listings
- Customizable Ad Campaigns & Alerts
- Choose Exactly Which Sites To Advertise On
If you're looking to drive targeted traffic to your site or to an individual page, this is a cost-effective way to do it.
Contextual Versus Non-Contextual
It's perfectly alright to run these ads on the same pages as contextual advertising services like Google AdSense since they're not competing with each other. Since these are JavaScript-driven ads and "nofollow", you won't get penalized by the search engines either.
If your articles are written correctly, contextual ads are going to fare better. If not, then non-contextual ads are going to fair better. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages depending on what kind of website you put them on.
Evaluation
It's too early to tell how well the service will perform. The ad serving is a little slow, so I stuck my ads in an iframe widget to prevent them from slowing down the rest of the blog. I'm sure they'll work on the server problems as the beta testing takes place.
If you have wasted space on your site, you may wish to consider putting up a banner or two. As long as you don't stick them obtrusively in the face of your visitors, your visitors probably won't mind.
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Hi RT,
I'm actually going the opposite way on my blogs … taking off as much advertising as I can. Essentially increasing my "wasted space".
I am kind of of interested in the second half of your post though. I'm pretty much getting to the point where I'm ready to do some additional advertising for my BANS sites.
How much of a variety is there so far when it comes to publishers? In other words, if I wanted to find for example, parenting sites, would I be able to use this service to target those type of sites?
Thanks,
Todd
The variety isn't there yet and you can't select by category, but all the URLs where the ads are served are linked so you can look before you buy.
I checked it out, RT. I'll keep watching and see what develops. With only a few people it isn't worth using at the moment. I don't want to clutter my sidebar for "Advertise Here" ads.
It does have potential.
Stevo’s last blog post… prayers at the tomb of the boy-king
It seems like a pretty good advertising network, you did a good job of describing the benefits. Reminds me a little of Text Link Ads, probably because 2 out of 3 words are the same and it has the same number of syllables.
What is the difference between TLA and TextAdMarket?
Sorry I didn't answer this earlier. TextAdMarket won't get penalized like TLA, since the ads won't affect the search engine.
They're similar in concept, but I think this one will be much better in the long run.
This looks like a good network. It's good to see more altrnatives to Google Adsense coming around.