I notice that you run Kontera’s contextual advertising network on your site, Dave. I’ve heard good things about the network, but am curious: how much do you actually earn off this program, and is it worth it? If so, how can I get started?
I’m actually quite pleased with the results I’m getting from Kontera‘s ContentLink program, truth be told, and they tell me that the Kontera advertisers are also quite happy to appear on AskDaveTaylor because, as Kontera exec Mike Glover explains, “our advertisers are really enjoying your site and its content/readership: The conversions they’re seeing are higher then on other sites…”
Before I go further, though, let me explain what I’m talking about. In this very article you’ll notice that there are, somewhat randomly, words or pairs of words underlined. If you move your cursor over one, you’ll find that there’s a slick looking pop-up advert that appears, and if you click on that ad, you’ll go to an advertisers’ page. Kinda like Google AdSense, but hidden behind text links. Here’s how it looks with a popup:
Is Kontera worth it for me on this site? Well, let me just show you a report for the last week and let you do the math so you can answer that question:
As you can see, if you have some good traffic to your site and your site and content is advertising friendly, it can be a terrific new source of revenue for you.
Mike explained when I asked him about why he thought my site was doing well: “Because of your content and how tailored it is to people looking to solve problems, it works especially well with our technology and suite of advertisers. Kontera is always looking to promote publishers who have quality content for our advertisers.”
Sound good? Heck, I’d suggest to you that as with anything else, it’s worth experimenting with Kontera, even if you’re already using Google AdSense or another advertising network, because of how unobtrusively the ads blend into the content of the page. If you’d like to get started, Kontera’s given me a specific link for you to use so they’ll know I sent ya:
When you sign up, you’ll also then want to read my article on how to use their special codes to specificly include and explicitly exclude passages of text on your site from their matching engine: How to Customize Kontera Text Ads.
Generally, though, I’ve found that it’s easy to get started. Who wouldn’t like to make a few more bucks from their site, in a way that I think is quite respectful of the attention and time of your readers? 🙂
Thanks Dave, you provide a lot of useful information on this site related to online advertising. I’ve been looking for more ways to monetize several sites and have signed up with Kontera under your referring link. Keep up the good work!
Great Infor.I own several blogs with adsense already enabled on them.If i sign up to Kontera,will i be able to enable the adds on all my blogs and sites using one sign-up?
Hi Guys,
This is Jonathan from Kontera. I just want to elaborate a little bit about our leading In-Text ad network, and update you on what’s been going on at our network since Dave first write this post.
First of all, the reason Kontera has been so successful for Dave and our other over 15,000 Publishers is because of our Contextual Technology, an algorithm that rather than just scanning for keywords like other networks do actually, it can actually read your webpages for meaning. This added level of relevancy differentiation is how we can provide your content with the highest CTR and best CPC ads.
Another advantage of Kontera is our exclusive ad inventory. Featuring premium, often Rich-Media ads from brands such as Microsoft, National Geographic, L’Oreal, Kmart, Domino’s Pizza, Quaker ,and more; we provide you with ad units that offer the best possible CPC, and that are only available through the Kontera Network.
If you’re interested in becoming a Kontera Publisher, our terms our even more favorable. We’re currently offering new publishers a 70% revenue share, which is the best rate in the industry. We’re also offering new publishers a $50 bonus if they bring in at least 25,000 page views during their first 30 days on the network. Additionally, we recently lowered our minimum payout threshold from $100 to $50 across all payment methods, meaning many of our Publishers are seeing their revenue in half the time!
If you’d like to learn even more about the Kontera Network, please visit our Publishers Page: http://www.kontera.com/publishers?aff_id=1732
(Dave will still be credited with referring you)
Thanks,
– Jonathan Cohen
Kontera Community Manager
Jonathanc@kontera.com
Do youselves a favor and aviod Kontera. I wish we did. In my experience, Kontera is one the worst of the AD partners we’ve ever had. Right now they are tanking with pay outs down over 60% this year. They have very poor targeting. They ran Ford truck ads on our movie site that upset our readers. On top of that they are short on inventory and even if you have the traffic they cannot pay for it. We found them to be pretty sneaky. When we threatened to leave about the above problems, they scrambled to give us a better rev share, but they shorted us on inventory. We got paid less than before on more traffic. Finally when we demanded they let us out of agreement for the reasons above, they refused and will not send our final payments.
Do yourself a favor. Sign up with Chitika or Vibrant Media. You’ll get a good rate, targeted ads your readers appreciate and as much inventory as you can sell.
how can join Kontera?
Dave, I am using kontera in my wordpress blog and tried to place the line you gave in your comment, in the style sheet.
But the ad still has 2 underlines, and not one.
Any way to do this for a wordpress blog?
Thanks I signed up! Hopefully i’ll get accepted into the program.
FYI, I’ve created a WordPress plugin that helps wrapping Kontera’s ad zone tags around post content and/or comments easily.
See it here
Cheers
I am able to see the above financial statement can you please share what u r getting is it revenue or ECPM? 🙂
Matt, you’re welcome to “view source” and see what I’m doing, since I’m not sure that the single-underline trick is widely disseminated. You can also ask your Kontera rep, of course. In terms of your line spacing, try adding this to your style sheet:
body { line-height: 1.1 };
and see if it makes things lay out better.
Karen, from what I understand, there is a way to have the Kontera ads open up in a new page, but the problem is that it is flagged by pop-up blockers but Kontera can’t recognize that situation. Net result is that the advertiser pays for the click, but doesn’t gain the visitor. That’s why they aren’t explaining how to do that in the documentation and that’s also why I haven’t tried it out on my own site.
As with Google AdSense placement and anything else, the best way for us to ensure that there’s an ongoing revenue stream from advertising in the online world is to go out of our way to NOT trick people, to NOT defraud the advertisers and to instead ensure that they get the best possible leads from our sites so that they’re happy and pour more money into their ad budgets, not less. Make sense?
Dave, how did you get your Kontera links to appear with just one underline? Mine have two which then forces the line spaces apart creating funny formatting. Thanks.
Hey Dave – is there a way for Kontera ads open in a new window – I’m always afraid of advertising that takes people AWAY from my site.
Cheers!