Hey Everyone, Here and there I like to get an idea of what everyone is looking for and what their expectations are on specific topics. So I have a question for you, please feel free to vote. Do you solely chose networks based off their payment schedule? (if so, how often have you not worked with a network due to payment schedule?) I have spoken to many people throughout the years, more so since I got involved in the publisher side of client services and many of them complained about NET terms like NET 30 or NET 45. I could go on for days about why networks payout on NET terms there are so many factors to it. So final question, what is the highest terms you would ever work with a network / exchange on? All of these potential answers are actual payment terms. The ones toward the end of the list are used mostly by large exchanges, clearing houses, and agencies. - NET 30 - NET 45 - NET 60 - NET 75 - NET 90 - NET 120 I'd love to hear everyone's feedback and thoughts on this subject!
I wouldn't ever go further than NET60 even for well established networks. Basically no network I was interested in would ask for more. Settling for NET60 was already difficult, but earnings should've been worth it. The issue is to trust those earnings. I've found myself seeing legit earnings cropped to 1/4 60 days after the end of the month. Last thing that happened in these days, ValueViewMedia closed down, with NET60, effectively not handing 3 months of earnings. If I had known earlier, I would've used any network with NET30, and would've lost much less. I also happened to need the funds earlier because the site would grow to the point of needing new infrastructure. If the advertiser is more reactive with payments, the earnings will reflect the current state of the site better, and it's likely that the publisher will benefit. Of course this is valid only for certain kinds of sites. Would care to briefly explain what could improve with longer NET?
After being a member of dp forum for years I have noticed that webmaster run after daily payments and they do not care about quality and reliability of ads and to some extend I can understand because it gives them security and not everyone can afford to wait net 30-120 because a lot of us has to pay hosting and other expenses, though what I think is those are short period webmaster who look for daily payments, a well established webmaster care for quality, support and reliability of network. Conclusion I would go with net 45 with a network which is well established and has good support, but again it does involve risk because many time even well established network makes excuses in payment, though this is part of online business and to get accepted in more network I would go with net 45, if a network take more than net 45 than it increases risk even higher, so I would say net 45 is best. you should have added daily payment option in list then there should not be any confusion, 99% vote will go for daily.
May be you did mistake in choosing right network, I would not even consider waiting net 60 from network like ValueViewMedia and I do not even consider such network reliable and established. According to me, you should accept payment terms according to network reputation and I do not see ValueViewMedia has been long for business and even has any reputation, just by getting higher rate is even more risk, so from such network its better to get payment as fast as you can negotiate.
So allow me to do my best here. Generally when you are dealing with a network which is powered by reliable technology which completely review, research, examine everything about a network before they allow them to use their technology (such as Appnexus), you know that network is going to be at a higher quality as far as reliability. Sure there is a risk, but again if the network is using a reliable or well known ad serving technology which usually requires huge minimums of like $20,000 per month just to use the platform, then you know they are serious. Now to follow that up, most major exchanges, platforms, agencies, and trading desks payout net 60 - net 120, AppNexus, LiveRail, etc. So a lot of these networks which payout daily are not at that caliber of business by a long shot. Now I will say that it is actually far more risky knowing this and using a network which is weekly, bi-weekly or daily. You are far more likely to not be using them a year from now, its just a fact. Most networks with those payout schedules are small, are paying out small amounts, and are generally not floating (time passed between paying publisher and being paid for the publishers revenue) a lot of money for a long period of time. So I would say in a lot of cases the NET Terms being longer also introduce a higher caliber of business/advertisers which ultimately results in higher earnings. Of course 99% would go with daily, but I didn't add it because daily payments are not an industry standard, and you are right. LOL If anyone can name 1 major network at the level of CPXi, Conversant, Casale, etc which does daily payouts - I would faint. But it isn't going to happen cause no one in the industry does that, except for the little forum networks. Which is why I consider that a far greater risk than waiting for a payment. Generally networks pay NET terms because it also allows them time to collect money from any advertisers who are on net terms and also allows them time to make arrangements if there are advertisers failing to pay on time. You should expect NET payments to be far more stable as there is much more time for companies to prepare them. I would agree with this in the respect that ValueView was not an established network, just cause it had great reviews today doesn't mean it will not fall apart tomorrow. Thats how everyone on forums is, if you pay them great today they will post how they love you, and if you pay them bad tomorrow they will post how they hate you and you are public enemy number 1. See looking at everything about ValueView makes the situation that much more shaky, Ad Serving technology, Ads running, etc. If you really review this stuff before putting their ads on your site (even if you sign up with them) then you get a far greater understanding for the kind of network you are dealing with. Clearly if a company is using some ad server which no one has heard of or is using one thats highly problematic, or known to be - then the chances of them being in business the next 3 years are even less than they would be normally. I think that is far more important than the reputation because the reputation can be fabricated easily. But knowing a company has payment proof, and does pay, and knowing they are active in webmaster forums and always helping, I think that adds a level of trust and security all in its own. What do you think?
I would like to strongly disagree. We have been doing daily withdrawals for like 4 years now and I do not think that PopAds is a "little forum network". Indeed, we might not be the biggest market player, but remember that we do only one format of ads. Still, we are at around 200 Alexa rank. Every day we pay out around $10 000 USD via PayPal, sometimes much more. And it is not about collecting money. Most of our big advertisers pay us on NET30 or even NET60. This means that we pay our publishers BEFORE we get paid. All is needed is a financial buffer, which is not a problem with the right management. We continue growing at a nice rate and I am pretty sure that even if our traffic/withdrawals increase 10x, we will still be doing daily payouts.
Not to be-little you (you singled your self out) but the only way I ever heard of your company... was via a forum(and i honestly just kind of grouped you into all the pop networks which sound the same PopMyAds, PopAds, etc). Not because I was at an industry expo (which I attended industry expo's regularly). Not because I googled a pop network and you came up. I'm not surprised your networks site is an Alexa 200 - you are a pop network. That should be easy to accomplish as a pop network. Don't really think it matters though; doesn't mean you guys are making more money than a company out there with a lesser alexa rank. Paying out daily is really not the smartest either if you are collecting NET 30 or NET 60, puts you in an extremely vulnerable position and much more susceptible to fraud as you are unable to track volume averages/consistencies/inconsistencies before paying out but I will get to that. As much as you would like to disagree there are hard facts to what I am saying. You are no where near on the level of companies like Conversant, or CPXi who does well over $100,000,000 (approx. $270,000 daily revenue) a year in gross revenue. As far as a "financial buffer" thats one of those things that comes out the publishers pocket in the long run. Factoring, Investors, etc. Truth is no matter how good your management is, when you get to a certain point it absolutely is about collecting money. There are several main ways to handle it, 1. a company is big enough to out of pocket the difference (but if the company grows over a month that gets even more difficult), 2. Investor. Ultimately means more hands in the pot, 3. Loan. 4. Factoring. 5. Adjust the pay schedule. Here are the down falls with each, if a company grows a substantial amount in a given month or over a stretch of 2 months, floating out of pocket is most likely out of question. If a company is at the size of putting big numbers on the board, even finding investors to help float becomes difficult due to the fact that theres only so much stock to give out. Banks usually have strict requirements on loans, and good luck getting a loan for 1 - 3 times your normal average gross amount (because now your business has grown, but you aren't showing stable revenues at the level). Lending institutions and factoring institutions a like also have limits. Which leaves Adjusting the pay schedule. I would say based off my experience working for many different networks over my career, companies doing $300,000 - $750,000 per month are considered small to medium sized networks. Thats also why its possible to find a "financial buffer" when you start doing the bigger numbers - those possibilities and options start quickly disappearing. There are far greater vulnerabilities to a company which pays out daily. Other than being an obvious and even bigger target for fraud...being on a constant float is not a sustainable or secure business model. If you can name 1 major network which pays out daily, I would say the opposite, but in my 15 years of experience in the industry; I have not seen 1 company doing business on a large scale sustain such a business model. I have been present when companies started debating doing it, and the negatives far out weigh the positives which is why I haven't seen one company which was started pre-2008 doing daily payouts, grossing over $750,000 per month, and still existing.
Actually, it is much easier to get much higher Alexa with banners as far as I know. Anyway, PopMyAds seems to be very very "inspired" by PopAds(as well as some other similar networks). What it means is that PopAds is big enough that other people try to copy it. Your point about fraud is very valid indeed. Yet, the problem is that most of these big players run on platforms like Appnexus. Such exchanges have virtually no fraud filtering. The only fraud prevention is chargeback and banning publishers. We have solved it differently, with realtime traffic filtering and quick statistical anomaly detection. As we run on our own adserving system, so we have full control. Of course I totally agree that we are a smaller network, no doubts about it. And we are grossing over 750k a month and we've been doing daily payouts since 2010 I am not saying that NET30 is wrong. I am just trying to show that it is technically possible to do daily payments with enough buffers and technology that allows to manage risks.
I would say easier for pops (with the alexa). Although a specific niche - people can easily buy pops and boost alexa ranks. Can't buy banners to boost alexa ranks as easily. As for the other networks, thats understandable but none the less it creates clutter. Its also harder to standout from them, when its not like you guys have a stand at every AdTech event or industry expo. You know? So being someone active in the industry its hard to distinguish the companies which have a much larger forum presence which I would say you do. As for AppNexus. Believe it or not they do have a security system called sherlock. Where I work right now we use AppNexus. There are absolutely difficulties with it. But no system is ever going to be 100% .. ad fraud is a billion dollar a year business and its much harder when there are companies which come out like Spider.IO which develop technology to detect bot traffic, but end up getting bought out by google. What it comes down to is fraud filtering the old school way; manually seeing traffic trends, and looking for obvious signs like a blog with RSS Content, and no signs of social engagement, an alexa in the high millions, but getting several million impressions per day. Not likely to be legit by a long shot. That takes time to prove out though. Not sure how accurate quick stat anomaly detection can be if you only have 24 hours to collect data. Thats an extremely tight amount of time to collect and process data to draw a conclusion on fraud. I'm sure you would completely agree having your own ad serving platform just adds an entirely new liability. But as time goes on that eventually proves it self out too. As for the grossing/size part. I think thats great, and I'd really like to see where you guys are 3 - 5 years from now. You have the deck stacked against you so to speak. I have sat through the meetings with discussions about this at companies I used to work at which are now striving for valuations of $300,000,000 and yeah those meetings ended up with there being more harm/potential harm/than good in the long run. A buffer in this case is the same thing as a bumper; in a car crash it doesn't mean you will always survive.
Heh, I am completely aware of the Expo part. I always want to go, but somehow I am never determined enough to get it all organized. Regarding fraud detection - indeed, it is very little time, but we have totally unique technologies(like passive user agent spoofing detection) which together with anomaly detection can notify us about fake traffic with as little as few hundred impressions. And yes, own platform is lots of liability, but I still think it is worth it. That's the only way to offer something new in the industry. For example, in next few months we will offer artificial intelligence based campaign optimization system that will automatically adjust ALL targeting parameters in order to achieve target eCPA.
Thats interesting. I know a bunch of security firms which do some amazing detection. There is some great technology out there. Yeah - expo's are difficult to make it to but always worth it. Great networking and exposure. The AI sounds very similar to a tech feature of AppNexus, they have a learning engine and you can set a CPA goal on a campaign which it will automatically optimize to meet. Its pretty cool stuff. So I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks about this thread topic, what other people's opinions are on this subject.
I wouldnt go higher then advanced payment I believe there was a topic about some network doing this. Seriously now, my vote Net45
Theres a huge risk amongst networks prepaying - most networks who prepay, have been burned so many times. But in a lot of cases being the company receiving the prepay there is a huge responsibility placed on you to perform for that client. Generally that comes with huge headaches.