Got Kicked OFF FastClick

"Poor Performance" apparently led to the removal of my site

[chris surfrider]

Hi,

Well, today I got the dreadful news. Yep, they're cancelling my site because of "poor performance".

Don't really know what to say; the site was averaging $40/day, and the traffic is continually growing. This is a result of some intensive marketing on my part in the last week or so, and the site has very quickly achieved about an average of 10,000 uniques per day, from a mere 150 uniques a day at the beginning of the month.

But for some unknown reason, it's not "quality" traffic.

The site is sort of like a gallery site, where people vote on weird and bizarre pictures if they believe them or not. Entertainment category.

I called FastClick immediately and they just kept on talking about ads not converting, etc. But I didn't get any straight answers.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is it because of the relative youth of my site - even with that much traffic?

I'm really stumped, annoyed and somewhat devastated.

I'm going to try and use caselmedia and a few others, but FastClick seems to be the bread-winner for most sites of my category.

What would you suggest? Why do you think my site was booted?

Thanks

-Chris

[otc_cmnn]

I would guess two things:

A) the advertisers they have are not well targeted to your vistors and as a result CTR and conversions were dismal. Your people are looking for entertainment, not buying a new BBQ or earning airmiles.

B) CPM is dead - companies like fastclick are desperate to reinvent themsleves and are doing everything they can to retain their advertisers. Publishers are easy to find, easy to fire. Advertisers are hard to find, and MUCH harder to please.

[chris surfrider]

Perhaps the ctr rate was dismal... perhaps alot of traffic was non-US... but that doesn't account for EVERY other entertainment site out there that uses FastClick (and they ALL do).

Here are some of my stats from the last 10 days:

Total paid impressions: 799,989

Total clicks: 1379

Combined eCPM on all media: 0.75

Just feels like I'm being picked on, for some unknown reason.

I dunno, should I basically just give up?

Very discouraged,

-Chris

[longen]

With so many impressions could you not sell them dvd'd, books, etc

[chris surfrider]

My experiences with affiliate programs so far have been horrid, literally $0.00 balances across the board, even though CPM did VERY well, while it lasted.

Tried selling ringtones, books, dvd's, etc. but nothing budged. It's the wrong site to try and sell anything except maybe porn or "adult finder" types of PPC ads or memberships - which is something I am NOT interested in doing.

Adsense isn't suited for entertainment sites, and the keywords are all low bids as it is. Avg. about $3.50/day on the site in question from adsense.

Anyway, I've got an account with Adtegrity now, I guess we'll see how it goes with them. They promise 100% fill rate and no defaults, but then the eCPM is really low, I've heard, and payouts of only 55%. Probably just a temp. fix.

I've also applied at Casale Media, I've heard they're the only ones comparable to FastClick.

Others I've applied for but not really sure about is Azoogle, TribalFusion and ValueClick.

I actually have ValueClick running on another site, but their eCPM is terrible - awful, actually. And they serve defaults about 90% of the time.

I think maybe it would be better to simply serve my own ads, or to simply scrap the whole thing altogether and forget CPM, as it seems to be a very, very dying thing lately.

I know that eventually everything will be CPA, but that is such a different medium altogether. There is no way a neutral-topic entertainment site could ever sell a specific product for a decent ROI. It could never compete with CPM revenue, even with low rates.

Looks like its either Porn sales (not an option) or ValueClick's whopping 0.10 eCPM, unless something else comes thru...

Anyone else experiencing the whole "short end of the stick" thing as well?

It would be nice to have some kind of consolation knowing that other publishers are facing the same poverty-payout rates and sudden cancellations for "poor" performance.

Tired and jaded,

-Chris

[ferraristi]

I had a similar sort of message from Fastclick that they were considering cancelling my account due to poor performance. I sent them an email asking them to clarify and some helpful chap responded by suggesting that certain add types were not converting well. I removed those add type and took the hit on revenue (dropped about 40%), but I never heard from them again.

The pages are similar in that they are gallery pages but I have found that In Vue ads and Interstitials perform really well (InVue generates over 10% CTR). I have managed to keep normal banners on there but had to get rid of the bigger banners.

I now keep a close eye on the CTR for all the banner types I use and have also tweaked the ads that are allowed on there by generally only allowing ads with a $0.40 eCPM or higher. This stops the screensaver and other tacky looking ads from appearing which I don't think people were clicking on. The result was that my revenue actually recovered a bit and my CTR went up.

[FourDegreez]

Don't want to go into details, but the same thing happened to me after I got a quick increase in traffic/impressions. That seems to trigger suspicions and a manual review, I guess. Got kicked out of an advertising program. Funny thing though, I never took all the banners down and I still get checks in the mail every month. =) I just make sure to keep the impressions in the "safe zone" these days and I guess no red flags are raised.

[MovingOnUp]

Sites like that have two things going against them.

1) They have a high number of page views per visitor. Advertisers like unique visitors. After a few pages, visitors become blind to the ads.

2) Your traffic is totally untargeted. Advertisers like audiences with demographics that are likely to be interested in their service or product.

One thing you can do to help improve your results is to dynamically change things up. Make 2-5 different page designs where the navigation and ads are moved around. They should have the same look and feel, but the navigation and ads should be in different places. As the visitors navigate the site, randomly show different versions of the pages. It'll force your visitors to look around on the page, and they'll be more likely to see the ads.

[methodman]

Adsense and entertainment sites = flop.

Over 200 clicks a day, $11. Is that garbage or what?

Secondly, whatever you do, do not go with "adOptimal.com" they are a scam, and have not paid me for my earnings.