Like mentioned in the previous post about the first sponsored ad, we got this week a real invasion of sponsored ads (up to 12) from members of EntreCard. Yet there are still no advertisers from outside the blogosphere who wants to promote their products in the EntreCard network.And there are good reasons for those Outside-Advertisers and EntreCard-Members NOT to spent a part of their budget in the EntreCard network
- 25 $ is good for only five days FULL EXPOSURE in the whole EntreCard community, for a targeted campaign it's depending on the amount of blogs and activity in the category (10 - 30 days).
For one month you would pay 150-200$ but if EntreCard members recognize there is NO CARD TO DROP or you DON'T drop back, the clicks will get less and less but the ad is paid by "automatic" ad views NOT for each click! The result will be disappointing over a longer period (more than one week!). - Goal of the ad campaign is to get more visitors (clicks)
EntreCard promotes the price of 25$ with 40.000 (over all categories) or 20.000 ad views (one targeted category).
The information Eli from Businessphere and Chinaren about their Click-through-rate is in my opinion more than disappointing for this 25$ investment.
You can get in these four - five days around 450 - 600 clicks, depending on the amount of sponsored ads and the approval of your sponsored ad by the EntreCard members.
In comparison to Adgitize -where you get "on Auto-Pilot" monthly around 2.000+ clicks for a 31 day ad for the price of just 24$ - the EntreCard-Deal is TOO EXPENSIVE especially when you see the 1-week-ad in Adgitize for 12$ which give you on average 77 clicks/daily = 540 click/week! - EntreCard "promises" EC-based ad price raises up to 2.000%.
This promise is just fulfilled if you have an ad price of 2 or 4 ECs!
Like we see/have seen on the actual sponsored ads which are in the TOP 15 most popular blogs (EZGreatLife, Businessphere, Seek No More, SpicyBugz World, The Junk Drawer), there was just a slightly higher ad price to achieve (from 1.024 to 1.536 or 2.048 EC) which is the normal price hike after a weekend (when the ad prices are always lower!).
Strangely the ad price went up for most of them as the sponsored ad has expired :)
You should think twice when you buy an ad on one of these sponsored ad members.
As i said, the ad usually runs just for five days (the sponsor has the possibility to pause the ad, too, and run it hours, days or weeks later again as long as there are remaining funds!).
If you buy there an ad, the ad price should be lower than 32 EC, otherwise the traffic surge has stopped already when your ad runs and in case the member didn't drop back, your investment might be worthless.
- If you are for a few days not available for dropping your cards, you could buy your sponsored ad to maintain your position and your ad price in EntreCard or ad/page view points in Adgitize (but like i said, it's expensive).
- You could reach immediately many blogs without spending tons of ECs to advertise (success is around 1,5% of the ad views give you clicks for all categories and 3-4% for targeted category ad campaign), some of them could become regular readers!
- You can pause the sponsored ad (after you deposit the 25$) and start a new campaign hours, days or weeks later (they write about a 30 day period when the deposited money should be used), suitable for low-traffic weekends!
- EntreCard marks members who have opted-out of sponsored ads with a star in their ad picture (if you look in the campaigns), i saw two or three blogs today (SpicyBugz World, Maitri's Blogs)!
What's your opinion about Sponsored ads in Entrecard? Are the sponsored ads acceptable or not?
As advertiser have you been satisfied with the results?
Is it worth the investment or would you say, i learned my lesson? :)
Great post, Cornyman. Very good analysis.
ReplyDeleteFor your many readers who are also EC users like us and who are planning to try the EC sponsor ads, here's my personal experience.
I started my ad campaign last Sunday morning, Nov. 22. I choose Internet marketing category for my ad campaign.
But my ad runs in the entire EC network, appearing even on the many blogs which are not active, with ad prices ranging from 2ec to 4ec.
After 4.5 days of running my campaign in all blog categories, my $ 25.00 has completely gone with the wind.
My advertiser’s stats as reported in the EC dashboard are as follows:
Impressions: 41,776
Clicks: 577
CTR: 0.0138
CPM: $ 0.5984
CPC: $ 0.0433
Therefore, EC sponsor ads is very expensive. Its cost per click (CPC) at $ 0.0433 is 4x expensive than that of Adgitize’s $ 0.01005.
My $ 24 ad in Adgitize runs for 31 days, with cash rebates, while my $ 25.00 in Entrecard lasted only for 4.5 days, without any rebate.
In addition, in Adgitize I got a total of 1,881 clicks for 31 days (October 2009 data) while in Entrecard my $ 25.00 has given me only 577 clicks.
Having personally experienced the EC sponsor ad, its cost and effect to traffic, I can say that it is not worth its price.
Thanks for the detailed information of your ad campaign, Eli!
ReplyDeleteChinaren also wanted to advertise only in "Mixed Bag" but the system didn't "accept" the input of the chosen category.
I tested it myself and found that the explanation for starting a targeted campaign is written very complicated.
Will write a tutorial tomorrow on how to choose the settings for a normal campaign and a targeted campaign.
thanks for this info, i will stick with Adgitize, After my last payment from Entrecard, with all those news.. I don't bother to advertise on them or buy EC with discounts!! Still I have their widget and i still drop... but not 300 drop anymore..Thanks Eli, for this well said, we have idea about that $25 ad. I hope all will read this.
ReplyDeletethanks
(Visiting using a VPN which is very slow, but I wanted to read your entry!).
ReplyDeleteGood summary there Corny! You've saved me the work! I'll link to yours when I write a summary of mine.
I've been so busy the last few days I've not had much time to do an analysis but you and Eli have covered the main points anyway!
Keep on blogging!
A few additional thoughts:
ReplyDeleteFirst, lets look a little more closely at the numbers. Let's take a typical EntreCarder who visits 120 sites a day. With 20% of the visits displaying paid ads, that would mean 24 paid ads. Split those ads out over the twelve paid advertisers, and that works out to mean that our typical EntreCarder is going to see each ad twice a day. In terms of bringing in unique visitors, half of the ads are wasted. As the number of paid advertisers grows, this problem should decrease.
In some recent clicking, I found that these numbers appear to stack up.
Related to this is the strong No Paid Ads sentiment. It seems to have died down a little bit in recent weeks, but people buying paid ads face a potential backlash. People may decide not to click on paid ads. There are several paid ads that I see that I always avoid.
On the other hand, there is a very high correlation between popularity and advertising prices. The most popular sites on EntreCard are currently getting from 1536 to 2048 credits per day for their ads. EntreCard takes half of that. However, if we figure that a paid ad puts you into that category for five days, that is going generate around 4000 additional credit, which you could buy at the current market price for $12.
Personally, I'm going to continue to avoid paid ads. They over saturate the market, are annoying and do not seem to be a great value.
Welcome back, cornyman! I haven't paid much attention to what EC is offering these days. Without placing a poll (maybe I should), it seems to me like there isn't much incentive for or success in chain clicking. I do see a lot fewer clicks (from EC ads) to my blogs than I used to, even with readership up (see http://justthrowmoney.blogspot.com/2009/11/traffic-from-entrecard.html)
ReplyDeleteMost people SEEM to be clicking from lists of their favs or returning inbox clicks, or perhaps generating sites from the EC toolbar.
Hi,
ReplyDeletethanks so much for all your comments. I will respond to everyone tomorrow!
Really appreciate for your detail information regarding the entrecard. I am the entrecarder also the Adgitize active member.
ReplyDeleteI am using the entrecard service for the free traffic by dropping only. I got 190-240 visit to my blog for 300 dropped I made in daily.
I am got quite enough point in adgitize (300 point daily), and i am heading to advertise in adgitize next month. Hope that I can made 500 point a day in adgitize and get lot of traffic + money form it as per my calculation in my article.