To this point I have considered the ad network to be of value solely for the purpose of obtaining targeted backlinks. However, I recently read Shawn's history of the network here: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/history.html where he says his click-thru rate is 1-3%. Not sure how he calculates this but this is better than a typical banner and it therefore raises the question of whether we can all derive a secondary benefit - traffic! Up to this point I have been adding the coop adverts in the footer of my sites using a style that does not highlight them. I am now modifying my sites to give the ads a more prominent position and will look for a way to "measure" their performance as traffic generators. Anybody else know click-through rates on their sites?
I've been watching the refferers in my webserver logs and seeing a few hits here and there from various sites that do not have a link back to me... so even as a lightweight <700 I'm drawing some traffic.
Hi Dakar Thats good to hear. Still haven't found a way to track outbound referrals from my sites yet though!
The only way that I have found is by crawling through my log files. I know enough about my user traffic to spot referrals from the coop. I just filter out all the referrals from search engines and typically the rest are my link partners and the coop.