THE WAR IS ON! Who has the best targetted PPC text ads for gaming sites...

Okay...I have an arcade I run that gets a fairly large amount of clicks (not going to plug it here but it's over 1,500 clicks per day). Google was paying out great until recently when they dropped down to a ridiculously low rate. I confered with a few other fellow gaming sites and they make roughly twice as much per click, but it's still relatively low. (For fear of losing my Google account, I will not divudge the actual figures). Is it smart pricing? Who knows...no point in speculating. Either way I think it's crap. I know the word game, arcade, etc in my adwords account costs 3 to 4 times as much as they are paying out. I did notice that they are not filling the full inventory (only displaying 3 ads in a 4 ad block) so I have no idea what the deal is. I tried MFA filtering but it only made things worse.

Anyway...it's time to try something else. I am setting out to find the best PPC that uses text ads that are targetted.

The test bed:
My arcade has the typical 4 ad banner up top with pictures by it (divided by a bar of course ) I also list the games and intermix two single ads randomly in the listings. In order to not violate TOS and to keep the test fair I am running all ads by the same advertiser every twenty minutes.

The test:
I started the test last night at 9PM. Right now I am alternating Bidvertiser, Adbrite, and Google.
I will post the results tonight at the end of the 24 hour run.

I also have an account with Clicksor, Adengage, and bidclix. I plan on testing them out next.


So...sit back and enjoy the war. If you have a particular company you would like me to apply to and test out please post them. To keep the test clean please make sure they do text ads with targetting...even if it is manually targetted that's fine.

~JT

 

Try this new site out for gaming ads the link is in my sig called GAMING PPC EARN MONEY and see how this gos.

 

Spoke with Matt at Reachads yesterday and they do not accept Arcades at the moment. They plan on it in the future.

 

Getting a cold so I'm posting the results a few hours early so I can hit the sack. I will have to say I am quite suprised

SmartStats shows 2184 Unique Visitors, 901 Return visitors, and 7678 page views

Google:
1047 impressions
461 clicks
(Baseline for pay)

Adbrite:
1872 Impressions
224 clicks
Made 93% of google's total

Bidvertiser:
1215 Impressions
54 clicks
Made 25% of google's total

Funny...I expected adbrite and bidvertiser to shave impressions but they don't. You can most certainly expect they are shaving clicks heavily though . Ad's are placed next to pictures so people aren't even reading the ad. Adbrite ads aren't even blended that well and got more clicks then Bidvertiser. Bidvertiser blends in better than google adsense does. To say the least I am dissappointed. Adbrite is paying twice as much as Google and Bidvertiser is paying almost 3 times as much. Yet Bidvertiser was horriffic....and I had heard such good things about them.

So there you have it. Adbrite held up well and bidvertiser bit the dust....badly too I might add .

Just put bidclix in the rotation so stay tuned tomorrow.

 

Are these based on a days clicks , few days , week , ?

 

Tests were done for a full 24 hour period....well..almost a 24 hour period. I cut it short yesterday by an hour.

Update on bidclix....they have the nicest interface I have seen for a PPC. The ads they have filled have a nice 10 - 12 CPC. But the network ads are going for 3 CPC. Looks like they don't have much inventory. THey do show you a sheet with every click, every ad it showed, and every IP. I really hope these folks do well.

 

have you tried YPN? almost all of my arcades are running YPN with much better results and adsense. all of my other sites do better with adsense...

 

Unfortunately I do not have a YPN account. I wish I did. Got a reply back saying they weren't taking anyone else until public....

That being said it brings me to the nightly results:

Google:
Impressions: 1236
Clicks: 426
Payout (baseline)

Adbrite:
Impressions:1971
Clicks: 306
Payout: 80% of Googles

BidClix:
Impressions:3915
Clicks:172
Payout: 81% of Googles

So...we have a new contender! Bidclix ousted Adbrite for the number 2 spot. Let me also mention that the BidClix interface is completely awesome. It shows an IP address for every single click as well as the payout. They also allow you to set the minimum click price which is something I have always wanted. Hands down this is the finest interface I have ever used for PPC. They don't seem to have a very large inventory for gaming, but I plan on sticking with them...I really hope they do well in the future. Note tha I could probably improve payout by altering the minimum click so RoN ads get avoided.

So....the next round has started. This time it's AdEngage. For those of you that have never checked them out they have contextual ads with pictures next to them!!! They also have the most intensive ad designer I have ever seen.

Stay tuned for tomorrows update....If anyone would like me to test another company please post. Unless YPN magically approves my account tomorrow I think AdEngage will be the last tester.

~JT

 

This is an interesting thread!!
Do you test CPM also?

 

Great work JT! I will have to try Bidclix out...never heard of them before.

 

No CPM as I only go by clicks.

K...the test is over for now. Here is todays results:

Google:
Impressions: 1411
Clicks: 500
Payout (baseline)

BidClix:
Impressions:4252
Clicks: 192
Payout: 73% of Googles

AdEngage:
Impressions:3915
Clicks:163
Payout: 52% of Googles

Again I love bid clicks...I can tell how much was international traffic and what was US. I also wonder how payout would improve is someone chose to advertise on your site. These folks are definitely going to be my alternate for google ads when they can't serve

AdEnage didn't perform but here's why....rather than just display text and use my pictures I chose to try out thier picture ads. Using just thier text ads with my pictures would have been a much fairer comparison. Interesting note though...when I tried running ads on my arcade with no pictures I lterally got almost no clicks. AdEngage had excellent clicks considering I was not tricking the clickers in any way.
Adengage has an excellent integration interface but their earnings layout could use some improvement. They only show earnings and clicks...no other stats. They update fast but could really use more info here.

Another note on AdEnage...on my arcade I normally put a text ads above and below my games and usually get a really pathetic click rate. I changed over to AdEngage ads and now my income on those pages have over doubled!! I truly believe on pages that aren't arcades with trick pictures, that these ads are going to take over.


So in conclusion....you can't beat google...but bidclix makes a great back up and I am using adengage on my game pages. I have another search engine site and I plan on running adengage ads along with bidclix since google won't allow you to play with other.

Hope this helped...if anyone wants me to test some other services please feel free to request it!

~JT

 

Nice work JT; very insightful. Cheers!

 

great thread, rep given

Can you try our clicksor,too?

 

Clicksor is a joke. I tried them for one hour and got ZERO clicks. I know that's a crock because the people are clicking on the link next to a picture and not even reading the ad.

I tried them a long time ago as a backup for adsense. I normally get about 500 impressons with 30% ctr. Using clicksor with 500 impressions got a big ZERO.

THat's why I didn't waste time with them again.

~JT

 

up, i'm having issue deciding which ads system to use on my gameing forum...

please keep this thread updated

 

Update....Adengage is working out nicely for my above and below game links. I am also using them as my backup for google now too. I haven't recieved payment from them or bidclix so the jury is still out on payment.

JT

 

Another Update...Bidclix mailed a check. Bidvertiser hacked up my stats even more (terribly pathetic company), and adbrite hasn't paid yet (net 60).

I applied for YPN on all my sites and hope to have an invite soon...I'll be ready to test them out too.

 

JT,

Just out of interest, what type of ads (in terms of categroy, etc) would you say work best with your site?

 

Let me suggest you try a test with chitika, I run chitika on my site http://www.arcade-world.net and the respose has been good so far.

 

Google is untouchable so far. I would love to try YPN if I could ever get approved

Jason