CMF ADS: Infected by a superbug!

One month ago i started again to buy for several dollars campaign ads in CMF Ads Network instead of buying one of their low-cost Network ads (which by the way exploit just the CMF ADS publishers!).

As there are not many campaign ads running anymore in CMF Ads because they missed out that low-cost Network ads will harm their monetary system and as we can see leads to a severe recession with deflationary tendencies in their CMF ADS economy (a blog post about the devastating economical situation in the CMF ADS Network is prepared for Monday. There i will bring some light into their newly announced changes and "improvements").

When Network Ads (NA) got introduced, they've been running equally side by side with Campaign ads (CA).

This meant when you had SINGLE Ad widget and 2 CA, each CA got 50% of the available page views.

From end of January 2010 on around 8 - 12 NA have been running additionally each month which reduced the visibility for CA, especially on single ad widgets.

ONE CA would get now only -> 100% page views/(10-14 Ads) = 7 - 10 % of the available page views.

For a blog with 10.000 page views, your ad views would have been reduced from 5.000 to just 700 - 1.000 ad views. Most likely you paid up to 1 $ for that ad spot! Now the return in ad views would have been just like a low traffic blog on which you could advertise for 0.25 $ or less!

One week after the introduction of their Network Ads CMF ADS announced that the equal sharing will be changed and NA will show up only 30% of the time when they are running. This should mean CA could get 70% of the available page views - theoretically!

In the last weeks i had some extreme examples in which this was and still is completely NOT THE CASE. There have been some high-traffic blogs which get several thousand page views and my Campaign ad should get at least 1.000 page views after 10 days but instead of getting 100 ad views/day, the ad showed up just 35 - 45 times daily (in other cases up to 75% less views).

The behavior of the Campaign ad is just like before their announced change to a 30% reservation for Network ads. It had to share the page views EQUALLY with the Network Ads and didn't get 70% of the available page views!

Taking as example Ben Barden's Blog (CMF Ads Admin). This blog gets roughly 1.400 page views/month.

30% would be around 400 page views reserved for all running Network Ads, so a Campaign Ad should be exposed 1.000 times/month.

In my case i got just 170 ad views within 20 days instead of 500 ad views (excluding the surge in the first 5 days)!

In an email conversation in which i told Ben about this matter with the two "high-traffic" blogs, he replied me as if there is NO WEIGHTING and that the page views i received are the correct numbers even when Network ads should just get 30% of the available page views.

For a better view of the e-mail click on the screenshot!

Hopefully this superbug in their code could be changed to an algorithm in which Campaign ads are favored with 70% as they give paying advertisers a bigger portion of exposure when you want to buy an ad individually and publishers can earn again more money because they deliver the ad views an advertiser deserves!

I'm sorry for the members which ads got cancelled in the last days and weeks as their CPM was -due to this superbug - much higher than the 10 cents which i'm usually calculating to pay for my ad views.

CMF Ads - My Network Ads suggestion - a better way for publisher and advertiser

In my previous post about Network Ads i complained about the low payout for publishers and the influence of my existing campaign advertisers. After i wrote that article i thought about it and how CMF Ads could make it a successful Network ad for both parties - Publishers as well as Advertisers.

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!

CMF Ads: Network Ads - bad for most publishers, good for some advertisers

Yesterday CMF Ads launched Network Ads within their System. It's a new way to get your name out in the blogosphere. With a Network Ads you can advertise on over 640 blogs for a time period of 30 days and it costs only 10$ (similar to Adgitize, mostly rotating ads, just no need to click on your ads!).

Is this good or bad news for Publishers?

There are different opinions as it depends how many page views your blog gets in these 30 days, which ad price you have set and how many ad slots are available or empty! The more ad slots available, the better your "return" for each Network Ad. This said, perhaps you should choose the 4 or 5 ad slot widget from now on to earn additional from the network ads and the classic ads.
What about Ben's discussion about an Advertisement experiment
In short: Reduce your ad slots (to one for each ad network), so that the readers don't get swamped with ads (and you could maximize your earnings).
That's what i call double standard in CMF Ads because NOW you SHOULD maximize your ad slots like Turnip reminded some members in the forum otherwise you WON'T earn anything from the Network ads + classic ads (and your direct classic/campaign advertisers wouldn't get much exposure).
It looks now similar to Adgitize, the more ads you display, the higher is your share on the overall ad views of the specific Network Ad. Only that you could get paid more in Adgitize (even when you don't click and write just occasionally an article daily, you could earn 1-3 cents DAILY not within 30 days).

What influences do the Network Ads have on your earnings?

This depends how many ads you have currently running. In my case i run already 9 ads on 5 ad slots with 8.000 overall page views. The 9th ad can expect 4.500+ ad views (i guess more as soon as some of the other ads expire in the following two weeks).

• ADDING ONE of the Network ads reduces the page views to 4.000/month
• ADDING a SECOND Network ad the page views would be again 10% lower - just 3.600
• For each additional ad the available page views would be reduced by around 200 - 250.
  

At the moment there are 8 Network ads in the system (including mine), this would mean my classic/campaign advertiser who paid up to 60 cents for their ad would get an immediately effective CUT of 60% in page views (from 6.000 ad views down to around 2.400 ad views) for the rest of their ad period and in the end their clicks are lowered probably by more than 60%.

WOULD YOU LIKE THAT SOMEONE CUT OFF YOUR PAID AD VIEWS in this way?
In my case, i will weed out in 3 - 7 days the ads which i have previously placed as some of them are no more WORTH THEIR money because of the extremely reduced ad views!
You can look it up in your Ad history and see how many ad views you got in the last days (divide it by the days), how many ads are running now on the advertised widget and then use this formula to see the NEW daily ad views for your ad and COMPARE if it's worth!

Ad slots/running ads * page views / 30 days


How much can you earn as Publisher from the new Network ads?

Now to the earnings estimation
The advertiser paid 10$ - 1$ is for CMF Ads and 9$ will be divided by all publishers who approved the Network ads.

There are over 600 blogs in the system: 900 cents/600 blogs = 1,5 cents (average)

What does this average price mean for you?

From the old ranking system by page views (which was ironically discontinued in early January) i remember that around 1.800 - 2.200 page views have been necessary to reach a rank of 300 out of more than 600 blogs. But this rank was just a page view ranking, not the real ad view ranking (more ads running than ad slots available reduce the ad views)!
But overall page views of your blog is not everything like i mentioned before, it depends how many ads you have already running!! And with actually 8 NETWORK Ads these page views will get reduced by more than 50%, even with a 5 ad slot widget, not to mention when you have only a 1 ad slot widget (from 2.000 ad views down to 222 ad views/month with previously ONE AD running).

Someone with 5 ad slots and 2.000 page views earns more than someone with 1 ad slot and 5 running ads and the same page views because the Network Ad would get just 20% (400) of the 2.000 page views. In the end you get less than the average 1,5 cents.

My Network Ad gets at the moment around 12.900 ad views/day (it's the first day so there will be a lot of blogs who have not yet approved these new Network ads or who will reject them during the 30 day period after reading this article!). This would equal to 387.000 ad views/30 days.

Here are real numbers from my campaign in terms of ad views of my ad on other blogs!
If you run my ad and you might get at the end of the 30 days (i will update this section daily)

• 2.000 ad views (daily: 67), you could get 2.000/387.000 * 900 cents = 4,65 cents,
• the person with just 400 ad views (daily: 13) will get 0,93 cents and
• the other member with 100 ad views (daily: 3) 0,233 cents.
• To get the average price of 1,5 cents 645 ad views (daily: 32) would be necessary.
  

I'm curious, how much ad views did my ad get on your blog in these days?


Now lets look at Turnip's Electric Car Blog -
16 ads running (canceled mine as i'm in his opinion an attention seeking jacka$$ because i show off the negative things for publishers/classic advertisers - my tone is just more aggressive than from the other members who complain) -
480 page views - 4 ad slots = 120 ad views gives him a whopping 0,28 cent for each Network ad instead of the 2 cents which he usually charges.

Isn't that a lot of money for a 30 day? It's faster to get this 0,28 cent by clicking one more Spikes each month, isn't it :)

My advice:

Network ads might be worth the money for members who

• have not many ads running and expand their widget to the maximum of 5 ad slots
• have empty slots
• will have empty slots in the next 12 days (this means, don't put your ads on auto-approval, let the ads pending until they get auto-approved after 12 days or cancel the ad on the 11th day or approve the ad within the 12 days as soon as you have an empty slot)

If you approve a Network ad you should cancel the Network ad when you get again a classic/campaign advertisers because they give you the REAL EARNINGS and for them each CLICK/Page view is counting (more ad views for them, higher possibility of a click, better return, might advertise again), a Network Advertiser doesn't care about your earnings (earnings from Network ads will be at least 70% less than what you usually charge).

Another tip for your CMF PROFILE!

Write it detailed in your CMF Profile description if you allow Network ads or not and if allowed how many you approve and if you cancel the Network ads when a classic/campaign advertiser buys an ad space (which just filled out the usually "empty" CMF Ad house slot)!

As soon as the first payout will take place in March (as there are several members who don't approve the ad, so it will take 42 days until payout), less members will approve the Network ads when they see that they earned less than the average 1,5 cents and lost traditional advertisers for which they charged 5, 10 or even 30 cents.

CMF Ads - A critical look - Part 1

As we are heading now into Week 3 of CMF Ads new blog traffic option "Spikes" and several blog reviews about "Spikes" later, it's astonishing how positive some members are about the "Spikes".

Who are these members who have a positive attitude towards "Spikes"?

1. Most of these members are "CMF Ads only"-members with no affilation to EntreCard or Adgitize. Some of these members get only 5 - 30 visitors per day when i look at the statistics which CMF Ads provides.
   Sure they are lucky to get -usually within 3 days- 50 additional visitors for 20 cents instead of spending three to five $ for different ad spaces on other CMF blogs to achieve the same result (within 30 days) if you can achieve so many clicks at all.
   
   
2. Some members are EntreCard members, but again with just a small portion of traffic and mostly not very active in EntreCard, as always there are exception when we talk about more than 175 spikes advertiser (Admaster and Frugal Housewife, Kitchen Retro, Virtual Dime Museum).
   
   
3. The other members are Adgitize members who are not advertising, so they don't get automatic traffic to their blogs. It's the same reason like in No. 1 - it's cheap traffic.
   By calling it "cheap" i really mean cheap!

Looking at the numbers from my Spikes #2 and #3, especially after you strip them down into real statistics and not just the average numbers of received visitors shows a complete different picture of the visitor's quality - not like the Admin's of CMF want to tell you that they give you better visitors than EntreCard or Adgitize or that their system is better as you don't have to write an article/daily to earn points, waste time by visiting other blogs!

Spikes - 2- just 31 seconds stay (average) but from the 46 recorded visitors (60 visitors overall including the additional 10 free visitors from 29th December) only 5 stayed longer than 0 seconds!
Spikes -3- getting better after i published the CMF Spikes poll -but only 25 visitors gave their votes yet- even when there have been 50 CMF visitors?

CMF Ads - SPIKES Poll: Your experience!

Today i want to know what did you experience when you bought a Spikes at CMF Ads.
Was it worth the 20 cents to get 50 visitors in around 2 - 3 days or wouldn't you buy it anymore?

What effects had the Spikes caused on your blog?

Choose the effects of your Spikes in the poll (multiple answers possible) and show us how effective the Spikes have been or haven't been.

If something is missing or if you want to add some numbers, leave a comment!

What's your experience with CMF Ads - SPIKES?
	Good traffic
	Poor traffic
	lower bounce rate than average
	high bounce rate
	don't stay long on my blog
	stay longer than other visitors
	no comments
	some comments (1-5)
	more comments (6-15)
	not many new visitors
	many new visitors
pollcode.com free polls

CMF Ads: My results of the SPIKES

Image by hongiiv via Flickr

I tried the new feature in CMF Ads called Spikes at the Christmas weekend. It took 3 days during this time from 24th - 27th December until i received 50 "unique" visitors from CMF Ads.

Let's look at the numbers from Google Analytics:

• 32 from 50 visits have been recorded - which leaves 18 visits as Drop & Run visits (36%)

• From the 32 visits only 43,75 % (14) have been NEW VISITS (unique)
  
  
• The average time on the site from these 32 visitors has been 1:32 minutes (40 seconds more than my usual average time)
  
  
• Bounce rate & Page views (can't be calculated as my code was duplicated and i just changed it to the new Analytic codes on 26th December) - therefore i bought a new spike to test it again :)
  
  
• The recorded visits (32) accounted for 3.3% of my overall visitors (946) in these three days.
  

My Conclusion

As we usually shouldn't count Drop & Run visits because there is no real value in them, i paid 20 cents for 32 visitors (0,625 cents/visitors) who stayed longer than the average visitor on my blog.

The longer on-site time could be connected with my article about CMF Ads and the comments from CMF admins as only CMF members visited me through CMF Spikes.
We will see what happen when i don't update or have another topic as myr first article in the future.

As CMF Ads doesn't know which member visited me already from EntreCard or Adgitize the uniqueness lacks in my opinion. New visits have been just 43,75% which means there are more than 50% who visit me regularly from EntreCard/Adgitize/CMF Ads.

At the moment i believe the drop & run visits will increase as there is nothing that stops the member (like EntreCard where you have to "look for" the Drop box or in Adgitize for the next ad to click on), especially if they have already visited me from EntreCard/Adgitize on the same day!

The Bounce rate might increase as well as more and more members have already visited your blog from the previous Spikes purchase, following this the average time on the site will decrease.

Using Spikes as a permanent way to drive traffic to your blog is not the best way if you DON'T UPDATE YOUR BLOG before you buy a new SPIKES.

The Spikes will be used up during the weekdays (and after they are now established) faster than during the last few days as more and more members see this as a way to earn easily money for their advertising campaigns (DROP & RUN TRAFFIC).

Actually there are have been more than 109 Spikes member which would give you already 21,8 Cents if you have visited them (enough to self-fund a SPIKES) and new blogs are added each hour.

UPDATE:
After 4 hours i received -for my SECOND SPIKES- 10 CLICKS from CMF Ad members, only 3 got recorded by Google Analytics with an average time on the site of 0 seconds and 1 new visitor (who also didn't like to read)!
That's being said, i seem to be right that it's more for the incentive of 0,2 cents than for staying and reading the actual blog (after the blog might have been visited in the previous days)!

What should YOU DO?

• Give it a ONE-TIME try, 20 cents is not much for getting up to 50 visitors who stay a while on your page.

• Don't expect many comments (got 5 comments from CMF only members, the other comments were mainly given because i commented on their blog!)
  
  
• Write about your experience with CMF SPIKES or a topic related to CMF members/blogger to attract them a little longer on your blog, express your views in the CMF forum :)
  
  
• Members with mainly paid post may get visitors but i doubt that Google Analytics will count this visits (after a second Spikes is purchased) as the first impression of a blog counts - similar to Adgitize where many members avoid ads which haven't Adgitize ads on it themselves, members remember "bad blogs".
  
  
• Buy a second SPIKES after some days not immediately after your FIRST ONE has expired!
  

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NEW @CMFAds - Get a Traffic Spike!

I just logged in at CMF Ads and what did i see a new way to get TRAFFIC to your blog! And it's a cheap way, too.

You just pay 20 cents and can get 50 visitors (0.4 cents/visitor) to your blog with the new TRAFFIC Option called Spikes.

The Advantages of Spikes

As an incentive to use this new TRAFFIC Option called Spikes the members who click on your Spike will receive for each click 0.2 cent.

That means if 50 blogs have bought an Spike (at the moment: 60), you can get 10 cents when you visit all 50 blogs. This money can be used "immediately" (i had around 5 minutes delay in recording these spikes in my funds) to buy an ad on other blogs. No longer waiting for 30 days until your first ad on your blog has finished!

As a security to get unique visitors, you can't click more than once each day on these blogs. After you refresh the page the already clicked blogs will disappear until 24 hours are over (UPDATE: or if already 50 other members have clicked on that blog it won't appear on the same day and on the following days, only if the advertiser buys again a spike!).

This system is only for Publishers, advertiser can't take part in Spikes!

The Disadvantage of Spikes

I think it will be the same like we can see in EntreCard and Adgitize with an incentive system to produce clicks (visits) for the members who bought a Spike - not only your visitors will spike but your BOUNCE Rate will SPIKE, too :)

I just clicked the 20 available spikes and that's it, you don't have to click through to another ad (like you do with Adgitize) or look for the Drop box of EntreCard. The visit may last just for a few seconds in a worst case scenario.


Conclusion

The Bounce rate seems to get a problem (for the advertisers) as i had already visited most the Entrecard/Adgitize-Blogs which have been in the Spikes list.
Perhaps i will use from now on this Spikes List as my start for dropping my EntreCards and Adgitize clicking. As it will give me the incentive of getting some cents for advertising or recovering/reducing the costs of my own spikes.
But nothing really new when you already a member of EntreCard - there you get ECs for each visit on a members blog- or Adgitize - there you get click points which convert at the end of the day in cents, too.

It's kind of a new paid-to-click opportunity with less cents than from Neobux but it won't turn into scam like many other PTC-Sites as it is funded by the paid advertisers!

For me a good opportunity to find some new "CMF-Ads only"-Blogs which i have never visited in the past!

What would you think about producing not only some traffic for these members but also giving them some COMMENT LOVE for getting some cents incentive from CMF-ADS?

After i missed out to comment on the first 20 blogs, i started to comment on all the other 40 blogs and will further comment on the newly added blogs!

We will see in the next weeks how many members will renew their spikes and how it affected their visits/bounce rates!

If you like to use this new cheap system at CMF Ads or if you want to place an CMF ad on my blog for 33 cents (between 5.500-6.500 ad views/month for your blog, 8.000+ pageviews/month), simply sign up here.