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.