My experience with AuctionAds

I cover my head in shame every time this happens.

Really gives a bad impression of my site in the mind of my visitors.

 

it's not all that bad.. no matter what the subject of your site, your visitors have interests outside that subject.. so if your site is about knitting and you're getting screwedup targeting for motorboats or baseball cards you might still get a click.. and remember the cookie from that click can make you money for 30 days.

 

I try pretending that its not happening and find something to do like sleep

 

as i posted in page 2 that i have started using AA, and here my stats :
9/Jun - 17 Jun :

I have 2 notes about AA :
1- usually, same ad appear more than once in the same spot .
2- Sometimes auctions with naked pictures appear which is something i don't like to appear on my blog.

 

This whole thread has got me thinking about AA... Seems that it doesn't work on every site - great if it does, like for the original poster of this thread, but it strikes me that it is always going to work better on product-based sites. But even that is no guarantee - for instance, my mountain-biking blog sees enough traffic that I would expect some kind of results from AA, but the clicks just aren't happening, and even less the actions...

 

It works really well on my wolfmother fan site. And on the forums, where adsense previously earned nothing.

But you are right - I guess think about your visitor - if they are there just for information, it's not so likely they are going to click through and buy something. If they are collectors (as fan site visitors often are) or researching a product, it's more likely.

 

I think for most of us it comes down to a targetting issue and understand the needs of our users, being able to know there interest and being able to target products with the highest return.


Edit: Based on suggestions from DB members I have completely redone the keywords on my sites, I am now focusing more on Video Game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, Ps3 and xbox 360 , I still ofcourse have ads targetting the overall keyword for my site which is Naruto. I'll report in if I see any real changes, I'm guessing that this might result in fewer clicks but it might change the overall quality of a click for example I can get 100 clicks on Naruto products and make only $5 while I will get only 10 clicks from Video Game related products and make $25 , it is rather scary since you always worry about messing with a good thing but life is about risk. Thanks again to everyone for thier suggestions.

 

The ad delivery network is very poor. 10 hours later, I'm just about ready to take these off my site for good.

I have a technology site, and I am showing ads for ladies purses right now.

Gimme a break. I know my demographic, and it's males 18-34.

 

I would like to thank you once again, my earnings has increased, still nothing spectacular but it's looking good now

Hopefully it will continue, I'll post an update in a few days,

I believe i added rep yesterday when you first suggested it, so can't add rep again...

 

I am doing an experiment with AA right now. Tech site and I am advertising unrelated items... first Wii controllers which was not so bad, but now purses.

= experiment on hold.

 

Yeah. At this point in time I must say that AA pretty much sucks. Irrevelant ads served much of the time, like now and for the past few hours. I've pulled it from my higher traffic pages. No reason to put it back since I can get reliable ads with my ebay affiliate account. But I made the mistake of putting it on many recently added long tail pages over the last couple months. A lot of hand editing to make changes now. Should have waited and watched everybody else suffer and moan.

 

Strange, my mountain-biking blog tosses up MTB-related ads every time. Fairly low traffic, though I would expect BETTER targetting with multiple hits every second... Or maybe not - maybe the servers can't keep up...

The advantage of AA over your eBay affiliate account (apart from making it very easy for non-techies) is surely the country-specific targetting?

 

I think the mixed emotions and results is just proof that not everything will work for everyone! That's the same with pretty much anything in life.

To say it is rubbish is a little harsh, so AA has had some issues with targetting and uptime. What site doesn't these days.

 

its getting better and better for me. Sadly i dont have a PayPal account... lol


05/30 <aggregate> 1101 33 3.00% $0.00
05/31 <aggregate> 4689 80 1.71% $0.00
06/01 <aggregate> 4401 91 2.07% $0.00
06/02 <aggregate> 3455 72 2.08% $0.20
06/03 <aggregate> 3789 90 2.38% $0.64
06/04 <aggregate> 4739 131 2.76% $0.01
06/05 <aggregate> 5896 120 2.04% $4.62
06/06 <aggregate> 7055 157 2.23% $0.62
06/07 <aggregate> 6521 150 2.30% $1.90
06/08 <aggregate> 7117 155 2.18% $3.99
06/09 <aggregate> 6333 177 2.79% $1.80
06/10 <aggregate> 4063 95 2.34% $0.91
06/11 <aggregate> 6349 137 2.16% $5.30
06/12 <aggregate> 6314 144 2.28% $1.26
06/13 <aggregate> 6697 122 1.82% $1.03
06/14 <aggregate> 6440 134 2.08% $2.28
06/15 <aggregate> 9813 171 1.74% $25.19
06/16 <aggregate> 7181 159 2.21% $2.39
06/17 <aggregate> 7303 127 1.74% $24.82
06/18 <aggregate> 6357 121 1.90% $0.00
06/19 <aggregate> 1433 16 1.12% $0.00

 

Hey don't worry man, you can use mine

 

So far I have earned around $140 for this month with auction ads and for the most part it hasn't really effected my google earnings however the major issue for me like everyone else is the downtime and the number of irrelevant ads especially on the days when my site recieves the most traffic, also because of recently targetting my keywords differently I am getting fewer ad clicks now but the each click potentially will earn more so the number of irrelevant ads and ad spot failure are really beginning to show there impact since time is money and the more time irrelevant ads are shown the fewer clicks I will get for that day.

 

i think for auction ads to work well you need to include it for the long run and be creative about it.

you need to get a decent amount of new users setup aswell as referring the winning bids and BIN's

2 months is still hsort term i would try auction ads out for a year or so i think.

 

Why would it be better for US based webmasters, if they can easily sign up with Ebay???

Just wondering..
Thinking about Joining as I am soon to leave the US.

 

Hm. I am still not sure what to make of AA. Yesterday the targetting was completely off at times. I think I will wait and see what the fallout from yesterdays traffic will be.

Date	Campaign	Impressions	Clicks	CTR	Revenue
06/02	<aggregate>	584	14	2.40%	$0.00
06/03	<aggregate>	3206	54	1.68%	$0.00
06/04	<aggregate>	3332	61	1.83%	$0.00
06/05	<aggregate>	4243	71	1.67%	$0.00
06/06	<aggregate>	2979	71	2.38%	$0.00
06/07	<aggregate>	3154	47	1.49%	$0.45
06/08	<aggregate>	3233	68	2.10%	$2.31
06/09	<aggregate>	3331	42	1.26%	$0.00
06/10	<aggregate>	2022	25	1.24%	$0.00
06/11	<aggregate>	4321	53	1.23%	$0.49
06/12	<aggregate>	3962	42	1.06%	$0.13
06/13	<aggregate>	3488	35	1.00%	$6.35
06/14	<aggregate>	3452	38	1.10%	$0.00
06/15	<aggregate>	3266	49	1.50%	$1.16
06/16	<aggregate>	3687	44	1.19%	$0.00
06/17	<aggregate>	4850	45	0.93%	$1.26
06/18	<aggregate>	90549	941	1.04%	$0.00
Total	 	143659	1700	1.18	$12.15

Code (markup):

I had a referral yesterday, but it doesn't show in the revenue (yet). I guess I am getting paid a share of his revenue right?

 

Geo targeting is a big draw for me, but the way it works is a little funky. From my understanding it shows only US ads but if a non-US user clicks, it will take them to a search results page at the correct non-US ebay site.

The bigger pay out is also just fine by me

The fact that it is easy to use AA, is fine in of itself, but it doesn't allow me the flexibility of the standard eBay formats, ie. flexible destination tool, editor kit, etc etc.

If you need something that works reliably the standard ebay route is probably better right now. The perks of AA are really nice though and I hope it gets better because it has great promise.

I like AA enough to continue testing it out. The targeting problems needs to get fixed. It would also be nice if they replied to their "contact us" form...