What if we just fill the empty ad slots with Network ads instead of CMF House Ads?
If a widget is already full, Network ads would not show up until one slot would be empty (otherwise it hurts the actual advertisers).
In this case, you could run the CMF House ad (if you don't like any of the existing Network ads) and earn 0 cent or you could run one or more of the Network ads and earn more than with the actual 30 day-Flat-rate solution.
Sure, this will cut down the page views/clicks for the Network advertiser by a high percentage.
In this case the ad price could be set by Page impressions 10.000/25.000/50.000 and not by a time period.
The price should be 5,5555 cents for 1.000 page views with 90% of the revenue being shared to the publishers and 10% for CMF Ads (it would equal to 50% of the suggested price).
UPDATE:
Another addition would be to expand it to a certain formula:
- For each ad slot, only one Network ad
- a maximum of 5 Network ads can run simultaneously, if you have the 5 ad slot widget
- if you have only 1 ad slot, only 1 Network ad is allowed to run
- wouldn't hurt the classic advertiser (like it does NOW) (End of Update)
Why is this a fair offer?
With the actual pricing system only members with HIGH TRAFFIC (more than 7.500 page views) and LESS ADS (double amount of available slots - 4 ads running with 2 slots or 6 ads running with 3 slots...) get a significant payout (more than 3 cents) from the Network ads because the actual Network ad price is fixed to 30 days and not to page views but the payout is calculated by own ad views/overall page views!
Most members contribute on a monthly basis less than 1.000/500/100 ad views for each running Network ad! For my Network ad this would mean you would get less than 3/1,5/0,3 cents after the payout is calculated (based on 300.000+ page views - after 80 hours i got now 41.000+ page views).
If we calculated the payout by "how many days/hours the ad was running" which would be appropriate as the Network ad is for a certain TIME PERIOD (30 days) the payout amount would look differently especially for LOW TRAFFIC BLOGS (then High Traffic blogs would earn less than 2 cents or not participate at all and Low Traffic blogs could earn easily more than 2 cents for each ad)!
With the new pricing and change to page impressions there would be a fair price to run one or more Network ads on an empty slot (when i look at my suggested price with 77 cents and i charge usually 60 cents). If the Cost/page impression would be just 5,5555 cents, you would still get 50% of your suggested price for an previous empty slot with the actual solution you get between 3 - 25% of your suggested price (depending how many ads you are running)!
And if publisher like to increase their earnings they can use with this solution the biggest widget with 4 or 5 slots as there will be a fair price for empty slots and Network advertisers will be more than happy to buy such an ad.
What does this mean for Advertiser?
Advertiser pay more (up to 100%) but the exposure on the blogs will be better because the publisher approves your Network ad while an empty slot is available. There should be a possibility to choose one or more ads which "share" ONLY THIS EMPTY SLOT (Why more ads? When one ad has reached its page view limit there is the need of another ad running immediately).
It is better to pay more for this Network ad and have a SATISFIED PUBLISHER as they are the majority who approve at the moment Network ads (with too little to earn).
Otherwise there will or are already more and more publisher who let the current Network ads pending or cancel it immediately as soon as they are queued up!
I believe Network Ads can get a success when the payout for publishers is significant higher than with the current system and if it doesn't influence the actual campaign advertiser (like it does now if you approve additional Network ads).
To join the discussion i published this article in the CMF Ads forum, too!