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!
So if I read this correctly Martin the ads would run on mostly low traffic blogs that have no advertisers and run basically the CMF ad. If that is what I understand is correct, why would any one want to advertise on a network that has only low traffic, thus not exposing the advertiser to many page views.
ReplyDeleteWhile I appreciate the efforts that CMF is making for us advertisers and publishers, I am not sure the network ad system is a good one. Either way as long as you get good stats from it, then time will tell if it is a viable advertising source or not.
PS I myself will not take any network ads, as I do not want to take away any ad views from my paying(classic) customer.
@ManOverBoard:
ReplyDeleteHi Glenn,
it seems to be cheaper for the first advertisers who bought a Network ad. I believe as soon as the members see their payout in March, less members will approve one. So the following advertisers will see a decline in clicks/page views - higher costs.
In comparison to Adgitize it's less "effective" as you can't earn back the 10$ and you get roughly 45% of Adgitize's daily traffic.
If you and me would participate in the actual system we would earn with full exposure for MY Network ad - you (15.000 page views) 30 cents (but you have more ads running, at the moment you would earn around 5 cent for one month), me (7.900 page views) 16 cents (actually only 9 cents).
That's why i opted out for now from the Network Ads unless there would be an empty slot.
Thanks for the continued feedback. All I can say for now is that we have a lot of ideas being discussed at the moment, and it is difficult to see what will work the best without trying them out. The risk is that we choose something that doesn't make enough of a difference and people stop using Network Ads altogether. Because of that, we're still discussing all of the ideas until we find something that we're confident will work for both publishers and advertisers.
ReplyDeletethanks for info about CMF
ReplyDeleteBeing the fact that I justed signed up with CMF ads these articles are very in depth but I don't understand much of how it all works yet, the whole ad view thing, I know network ads advertises across all blogs in the network for a portion of time, but I need to see more how it works in person.
ReplyDeleteIf you only allow one network ad per ad slot then it seriously limits the views for some network advertisers.
ReplyDeleteThe first advertiser will show on every blog. The next advertiser will only show on widgets with two or more slots, etc.
It'd be nice to have an option for a shorter network ad. E.g. 7 days for $2.50
Hi Martin- Just got another of turnip's slightly caustic comments on Just Throw Money because I had decided not to carry any network ads. He accuses me of not being up to date because Network Ads are limited to 30% of the total time. But I'm pretty sure that was not true when I read the rules yesterday. I'm glad that they are willing to evolve, but it would sure be nice if all the rules would be posted in one place, or updates on them sent to members.
ReplyDeletethanks for info :)
ReplyDeleteSharkbytes - we always post news on the CMF Ads Blog, so they are already in one place. We strongly encourage all members to subscribe to the CMF Ads Blog to stay updated with news of our latest developments. This was a recent change, but we did announce it on the blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaning toward a separate box for network ads. Keeps it simple.
ReplyDelete