Kontera 30 Day account hold before you can remove their ads

In short, Kontera began good but earnings dropped and we needed ways to earn more income. I asked my friend to switch the sites to Kontera and they immediately said we violated their terms by not giving them 30 days advance notice and placed our previous earnings on hold.

Long story is that Kontera has been well when we started but in the long term, like many other sites, they really drop your earnings. When we went to remove Kontera code we immediately got an email from an account manager saying our account is on hold from removing their code. They said they have campaigns for our site, I don't see any increase in earnings but Infolinks on the other hand at least gave us above a buck for 5000 impressions.

Their earnings are really bad compared to Infolinks, with a traffic of about 10,000-20,000 a number actually went below $1. We've switched that site to Infolinks and we never earned below $5.

Anyway, this is a warning to people thinking about using Kontera. Don't do it. Don't sell your site away. 30 Days warning and near penny income? It's not worth it.

I mean if they depend on your site for campaigns then its clear they are getting money but why do publisher earnings suck?

Here is the In-Text Agreement
publishers.kontera.com/kontera/agreement_print.html

 

Hi JusttirLeon, this is Pamela from Infolinks. I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad experience in your previous efforts, but I'm so glad to hear that everything is working out with Infolinks. We don't have any strange policies about removing scripts or punishments for doing so. Keep up the good work with your earnings!

Happy blogging,
Pamela

 

Hi JusttirLeon,

This is Jonathan from Kontera. While I totally understand your frustration, the 30 day notice on pulling your Kontera tag is not something we're trying to hide, and is part of the Terms of Service document that every publisher agrees to as part of the sign up process. Kontera is primarily a brand advertising platform, and the 30 days notice policy is actually pretty standard for brand advertising platforms. For networks that rely primarily on ad feeds and unscalable small campaigns, they don't have the same responsibility to advertisers, and may have a different policy.

Regarding your Kontera earnings, your account manager would be able to get into the specifics more, but general speaking when your users are seeing ads from big brand advertisers like Microsoft, Kmart, L'Oreal, ABC, Sprint, GM, Blackberry, etc... 10 times out 10 you'll see better performance through Kontera. However, since our ads are both relevant and geo-targeted, if you have content that our advertisers aren't targeting or have the majority of your readers in regions our advertisers aren't targeting, you won't see that same level of differentiation. As new campaigns start every day, that's a fluid situation, and even if Kontera isn't a match for your traffic right now, it might be again in the near feature.

Thanks,

 

Hi, this is Leon from Justtir.


I'm going to highlight this point to viewers, "For networks that rely primarily on ad feeds and unscalable small campaigns, they don't have the same responsibility to advertisers, and may have a different policy."


10,000-20,000 is a small site to us but I'm glad the site that just hit 150,000 for yesterday is on Infolinks. The site you guys are putting that 30 days notice on stable 6,000-7,000 Impression, Kontera logs about 3,000.


In my short time switching to Infolinks, Infolinks is logging the impressions correctly. Our earnings went from Kontera $2 to $6 Infolinks. Some may say "its because you just switched", wrong. We have another site earning impressions of about 10,000 - 20,000 and we switched that months ago without a problem. And note that site Kontera earnings actually dropped below a $1 coin. When we switched to Infolinks we never earned below $5 for months.


Oh on top of that Chitika is earning higher than Kontera.


@your "big brand name" our site is a brand name. It's based on a brand name. As a result we don't need the brand name of advertisers "to make our site look good". In fact, our site will encourage purchases to your advertisers as well as brand name recognition. Our sites has valuable information in which only our site contain which is why in 1-2 months our site can grow to 5,000-10,000 PV but the mistake was to use Kontera. We're getting rates in which we cannot even pay our servers for.

$25/month for one of the site, my friend using Infolinks on another site with less impression and less visitors got $50.


Simply put the Big Brand Name is a marketing gimmick if the site owner needs it.


Yes, I'm sure a lot of people know there's a lot of problems with Kontera. Like geo-targetting, tagging and the list goes on, however at the end of the day people want results. It's like you can terminate a website in your inventory if they are not providing you results but we need to give 30 days to terminate? And it wasn't even terminate yet, we were simply testing.


One of our site is growing pretty well with exclusive content within a month it hit 5,000 impressions range already and growing and I can't wait to get it off Kontera because it's logging 2,000 impressions.


Now anyone with a site, can you imagine this, if your site impression is 160,000 but using Kontera is logging 75,000 earning terribly, when you switched to infolinks its logging 150,000 with tripled increased earnings for months. Which Ad Network is the problem here?


Excuse my harsh tone, unfortunately any normal user will lose 50% of their earnings and impression with Kontera. However you do get great brand name advertisements to your site! It's just not recommended by people that are not as so special.

Last point Kontera customer service stinks below pennies worth. They reply you within minutes when they need it, like want the sites using Kontera again. But after you place their tags back on it's been over 24 hours and no reply. I love how it's like a bad long distance marriage. When you guys want something you reply when you don't you can take over 3 days or even a week.

Edit: However, I don't mean Jonathan Cohen. He actually replies you within good time and faith. He just works for Kontera. However, Kontera Account Managers are terrible. They hide behind their take days and weeks to reply you. The only time they reply you within minutes or hours is when they are enforcing their TOS on you. Like the above bad marriage bad marriage.

 

Hi Leon,

Concerning impressions, by design Kontera is going to be the last element on a page to load, so for instance if someone clicks on an article and leaves after a second that will register on Google Analytics as an impression but not on Kontera. Additionally, what the "Net Impressions" column shows you in your Kontera publisher center is the number of pages our engine was able to successfully inset ad links. Since we place such a high premium on relevance and geo-targeting (which is in part what I was talking about with our responsibility to advertisers), if we don't have an ad that meets that criteria, we don't place an ad on that page, and it doesn't get counted as a Net Impression.

With comparing Chitika and Infolinks to Kontera it gets a little tricky. Chitika provides a completely different type of advertising, and while Infolinks has some overlap, specifically around in-text, they also take up a far larger area of the page, encroaching on areas usually reserved for AdSense. Which is fine, but in order to get a more accurate 1:1 comparison, you have to factor in how they match up against AdSense.

Regarding big brand ads, I honestly wasn't trying to use that as a marketing gimmick. What I was saying is if you get these ads, you will have much higher earnings than through alternate providers, but if your readers aren't receiving these ads for any variation of the reasons I brought up, Kontera will not be a good match for you.

Finally, with customer service, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Do to the high volume of inquiries we get, our policy is to get back to publishers within 3 business days. Occasionally, when we're especially swamped, it takes a little longer. That said, you're more than welcome to e-mail me anytime at jonathanc at Kontera dot com anytime. I field any number of requests from both advertisers and publishers and almost always get back to them within 24 hours.

Thanks,

 

Lol. Thanks for the personal vote of confidence in the edit. By the way, I just stumbled across our previous correspondence on your website... we're going to have some announcements regarding mobile in a few weeks that I think might interest you.

 

Wow that sucks

 

Hi Jonathan,

I know when I'm comparing Apples to Orange - or Green Apples. However, we do a lot of tests like other web masters and Kontera proves to be a bit behind. I'm not specifically writing towards you yet a clear evaluation to help others determine the best results for their site.

Chitika yes, Infolinks I'm not sure but here's the scenario with Kontera.

Day 134
Chitka - $50
Infolinks - $70
Kontera - $5

Day 135
Chitka - $30
Infolinks - $50
Kontera - $2

Day 136
Chitka - $80
Infolinks - $95
Kontera - $10

Readers, please be advise this is only an example.

Now AdSense as you mentioned - Note this is for one site

Day 134
AdSense - $20
Kontera - $5

Day 135
AdSense - $30
Kontera - $2

Day 136
AdSense - $100
Kontera - $10

Again this is an example to illustrate my experience it has no real exact stats.

Perhaps you are right, Kontera is not a good fit. However, your program Account Manager is not allowing us to remove the ads until 30 days later because they have some "campaigns" running on it. If they rely on the site for campaigns to that degree to enforcing this TOS then I seriously don't feel like its being calculated correctly through my earnings report.

Your stats and all results are on your company side and just about everything. From day 1, the day anyone signs up for Kontera their site is affected by this 30 Days notice in which they cannot remove Kontera ads. This is in the agreement. And is a warning post to others. This is like signing your life away - for 30 days. I have never experienced this with any other ad network.

 

The mobile announcements does seem interesting - thank you kindly for letting me know. I'll have to check it out if possible, but unfortunately, Kontera picks only major sites to test drive new products, and they are probably on an entire different plan, which will probably make it hard for normal publishers to test.

That being said, some of your account managers are showing very bad customer support. With Infolinks they reply us within a day and now within 12 hours. The day we pulled Kontera ads they emailed us. We emailed them back and was told they were "speedy" in their emailing, within the hour clock. We placed Kontera ads back on and sent them an email regarding these claimed "campaigns" that is on our site. No reply, no nothing. Regardless, I'm just letting you know.


Now the important question

I am grateful if you decide to answer this question because I believe your answer is better than the account manager.

The question is, can publisher place a rotator to rotate between Kontera and other in-text ads?

Edit: I think the question to be asked is, if its against Kontera terms to rotate Kontera and other in-text ad services.

 

It's against Kontera's Terms of Service to use Kontera and a competing in-text provider at the same time. This is for a few reasons but a major one is if two or more in-text providers are trying to place an ad over the same keyword or phrase, that's not going to work, and you'd never get an accurate picture of how well Kontera will perform for you. We also don't allow rotating in-text providers, we prefer you try us for period of time, and then try a competitor for the same period of time, on the same website with no other variables.

With the data comparisons you provided there are still a bunch of variables. You said that it was just for illustrative purposes, none of it is actual data, and in reality I'm assuming you wouldn't use 5 different ad networks on the same site, at the same time. Again, you'd have try Kontera on a single website for a period of time, then try a competing in-text provider on the same website, under the same conditions to be able to make a true apples to apples comparison.

 

Thank you for your reply.

The question wasn't about placing two In-Text advertisements at the same time. That is against the Terms I know.

This line "We also don't allow rotating in-text providers, we prefer you try us for period of time, and then try a competitor for the same period of time, on the same website with no other variables. "

I was wondering if that is in your terms of service. From what I understand you wrote that Kontera prefers that. However, I'd like to know if it is in the agreement, and if so please direct me to which line I should be reading.

@Second paragraph

No publisher can give an Apple to Apple comparison because Kontera is geo-targetted and has many variables. In most cases, I believe as a "normal user" it is the end results that counts. I can back off my opinion about it because there is already a lot of articles on the net about it. I'm sure you've seen it as your daily task so that's all I'm going to say. We just want to move forward with it and be done with it.

However, we'll see how your mobile announcement fairs.

 

It looks like the section of the publisher agreement covering exclusivity is "3.5". It actually talks about exclusivity on the website level, so it wouldn't be an option to rotate it so Kontera appears on some pages and an in-text competitor appears on other pages.

 

Thank you kindly for taking the time to reply to that question. I guess publishers can rotate it with an empty <div> tag or other non-competitor ads for example Adsense.

Regardless,

Going through the agreement section "5.2" states that Kontera shall pay Publisher the Revenue Share on the first day of the second month.

Why is that many publishers never get their revenue share according to this agreement? From experience I hear about 1-2 weeks into the month. Isn't that a violation of your own agreement? Or perhaps there's something missing in that section that's somewhere else?

Again thank you for the reply.

 

Kontera is not easy to work with, because of their stupid rules, plus they pay less than infolinks.
From a test I made about in-text ads with the 3 main companies, chitika linx was the real crap, then came Kontera second then infolinks first.

Now, I don't know about infolinks I haven't yet studied their TOS in detail, but I'm sure they are not as stupid as Kontera when it comes to exclusivity or even the simple fact of adding infolinks to a new site. Although infolinks requires you to submit any new site for review, at least they have a proper form to do it, not having to use the generic contact form like Kontera.

Well, honestly I don't know if Kontera has improved, I got fed up with their bullshit mentality, so I gave all my business to infolinks.

 

I'm waiting for Jonathan Cohen from Kontera to give me a clarification on the agreement on section "5.2" where it states that Kontera shall pay Publisher the Revenue Share on the first day of the second month. And I haven't received payments "according" to this first day of the second month yet 1-2 weeks in for the past months payments I've been with them and currently still not paid for June.

I'll be sure to comment about their service after I receive an understanding to that portion of the agreement.

 

Oh Sorry to hear about Chitika I have good experience with them so...yeah.. When we started we earned pennies on Chitika though but now we're getting about $50-$120/day and that being said we just hit 120 yesterday =) On top of that Chitika for us is earning a lot more than Infolinks which is less even with traffic spikes but the eCPM goes down. Kontera we wouldn't dare to place their code on that site.

 

I'm talking about chitika linx, not chitika ads. I have been comparing the in-text ads of the three main companies. Of course using chitika ads should earn more than any in-text ads because it takes much more real estate / ad space.. I'm not comparing apples and oranges.

 

What is chikita linx

Edit: all information on it on Chitika have been removed did they discontinue that program?

 

Yes, I've checked and there is no mention of linx anymore. It was the same as infolinks and kontera but the earnings were even more ridiculous, here is my old thread about the test:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1596258

I guess the test should be done again to see if things have changed between kontera and infolinks, plus it should be done without informing anyone at infolinks or kontera, otherwise we don't know what they can manipulate in your account since especially infolinks representatives are active on forums and blog, they probably have google alerts on their name, as soon as you mention infolinks someone comes commenting/posting, which is good indeed, but not for testing the best performer

 

I got the reports from my friend and here is the site that kontera is holding compared with AdSense

Adsense
Impressions 6761
Estimated earnings 6.92

Kontera
Impressions: 2,571
Estimated Earnings: $1.81

4180 impressions lost using Kontera. Still awaiting the reply about the agreement saying Kontera will pay publishers.