Will Media.net be a Viable Alternative to GA?

[alika]

Media.net is a Yahoo/Bing contextual network. For years, we've been looking for a strong competitor (and alternative) to Adsense. So far, not one has emerged

For those who've tried Media.net, do you think it has the potential to go up against Adsense? What's your experience so far?

[netmeg]

I haven't tried it, but from what I've heard, nothing really goes up against AdSense. Unfortunately.

[ember]

I like media.net. So far, it competes well with Adsense, and we've been using it about six months. It probably depends on the niche. I also like that I have a responsive, dedicated account manager whom I can contact at any time.

[littlecubpanda]

Bing and Yahoo have put my sites 100+ deep in their listings, while Google has mine in top ten. So there you go. On that level, I'm not impressed.

The customer service is much better, however. I'll give this a try.

[levo]

@ember How long did it take for media.net ads to match your website's content?

[LifeinAsia]

We tried them for several weeks doing A/B testing against AdSense. Not even close! My account manager asked for several more weeks of testing, but we were losing money during the testing, so we pulled the plug.

The vast majority of the ads were not targeted. The remaining ones were vaguely targeted, but not enough to be competitive and encourage users to click.

I'm not going to lose money out of my pocket just so they can "prove themselves."

[ember]

Levo, on one site they targeted immediately, similar to Adsense. On another, it took about a month.

And I should say that occasionally I'll get an email from my account manager saying that they're trying a new color or new design for a certain ad block. I just have to go along with it, but the changes usually, although not always, improve the RPM. They have even called me out of the blue to chat about my sites, etc. They also pay on time. Their stats aren't nearly as detailed as Adsense, though, and don't even show CTR or EPC. Just pageviews, RPM and earnings per channel.

I know that they do not work for everyone, but I'm satisfied with them.

[Chris13]

I am currently running a split test with adsense and media.net. Today is day 5 and I've limited it to a single city rather than my entire site. I'm running a balance of pages for each with identically placed ad units.

My adsense income is and has been in the toilet since March and nothing I do, including reorganizing the pages, new ad placement, anything seems to make any difference. My overall taffic has 10x'ed since Oct 2012, but adsense income is now barely above that of Oct '12.

Hence, I believe that G is simply dumping their excess ads on my site and as nothing seems to change this, I believe this is permenant penalty and not part of any algorythm. Zero communication from G on the matter, no email that I've violated anything, nothing really except advice to put up more ads, which seems to be robotic and unless advice.

Media.net on the other is very much in communication. Despite my sites relative newness I was assigned a contact who will actually talk to me, although he is in India. To be honest I'd rather have an Indian who will talk to me than an American who snubs me.

Thus far, the RPM from media.net is slightly higher than that of adsense over the same period and very similar pageviews. But that has to be taken with a grain of salt since the adsense rpm is being artificially depressed and has been even lower the last 4 days from that city.

All of that said, neither rpm is acceptable. I began this test with idea that I'd let it run for 30 days to be completely objective and let everything settle in. Who knows, I may find my way out of the penalty box or I may just place a single adsense link unit on the page and give the better ad spots to someone else.

[littlecubpanda]

Thank you for the contribution, chris.

[Chris13]

Thank you for the contribution, chris.

I will post my results in percentages at the end of the 30 days, if there's any interest.

My site is a niche site, so the results may not transfer well to other subject matter though. I can add that the context ads from media.net seemed to sync up rather quickly. There are no interest based ads, which I was pleased about.

[freitasm]

I ran Media.net when it came out a few months ago. Seriously disappointed with the quality of ads - mind you we're outside the USA so I don't know if they have enough of an advertiser base to justify moving to them.

I am not sure how it is now, but when I tried I had to ask my account manager to block certain websites and ad categories, as there was no way of doing it through the web interface.

Those "You won an iPad", "work from home and make money" and "diet" ads are really the lowest of the low of the ad industry.

[azlinda]

Chris13, I would be very interested in seeing your 30-day stats.

[Chris13]

azlinda,

Things proved out to be eratic. This is from a single city, rather than site wide.

Total pageviews that contained ads: 53805; pages with adsense ads: 28,821 (53.6%); pages with media.net ads: 24,984 (46.4%)
Days: 30
Total Income (in % of total): Adsense: 65.6% of total income from 53.6% of the pageviews; Media.net: 34.4% of total income from 46.4% of the pageviews. So on a per pageview comparison adsense produced better. But, I'm of the belief media.net's best days are ahead for it. Can't say that for adsense.

There were days where media.net had a higher RPM. There was a week at the start were they were basicall even, then adsense started to rise. The last 3 days of the test adsense took a complete and total dump and gave me the worst numbers that I had seen for the entire 30 days.

So, now I'm testing mixing adsense ads and media.net ads on the same page. I've opened it up to the entire site. I'm going against the grain on this one in that I'm turning off the most clicked on adsense adunits and replacing those with media.net ads and the adsense adunits are entirely new adunits with new positions on the page.

What I've found thus far is that my highest clicked on adsense adunits were producing the worst CPC. My site was one of the 5000 sites (give or take 3,000,000 sites) that lost the Nessie buttons and subsequently had crap CPC/RPM. I've done many things to try and prevent inadvertant clicks, but no real recovery in income.

So I'm now checking to see if the adunits themselves could somehow be specifically the problem. So I'm using different sized units with different names in different positions for adsense. I've put media.net adunits at the top of the page.

This new test is proving to be fruitful. First off the CPC and RPM from adsense has improved and media.net, now that I'm giving them more pages is producing more as well.

[azlinda]

Thank you for your response, Chris13. I'm going to use media.net myself. Nothing can be worse than AdSense for me. It's in the toilet big time.

[intheshadows]

I'm in the process of making the switch on my largest, oldest (12 yrs) site, which has previously run adsense from the beginning.

Google's antics have tanked me so much I've nothing left to lose at this point.

I've only begun so I can't make any bold statements as yet, but I am so incredibly relieved at the ease of their interface, the lack of constant hammering and messages and notes and suggestions and demands and just general insanity out of google that I am going to switch out the entire site and see what happens.

As others mentioned, it's wonderful to have an actual person to reach out to. In my case, this person sent me an invitation to join and he has been a true pleasure to work with since the get-go. He was incredibly patient while I struggled with making the decision - it is a big move, a big job and a bit scary. But he answered my questions, understood my concerns and never pressured me. I was very impressed with that alone.

As for performance, I only did a handful of landing pages at first, then waited 2 weeks. I began seeing clicks immediately and from what I see on my computer, the ads are all relevant to the page they are on.

Sorry, I'm rambling, so I 'll just wrap it up by saying I am eager to give this a chance. So far I couldn't be more pleased.

[JonRhodesUK]

I tried them recently and they probably do have the potential to compete, but they are a long way off yet. The payments were negliable when compared with the traffic I was getting. It's probably the best option of you can't get on Adsense though.

[JonRhodesUK]

I tried them recently and they probably do have the potential to compete, but they are a long way off yet. The payments were negliable when compared with the traffic I was getting. It's probably the best option if you can't get on Adsense though.