Anyone still use in-text advetising as a complement to AdSense?

[atladsenser]

Been away a long time, but still a fairly frequent reader of the message boards here.

Once upon a time, I was making what I considered really nice income from an in-text advertising provider. Through the first half of last year, it was great -- then revenue fell off the table and never recovered.

The in-text provider I used later re-configured their product lineup so that in-text ads were no longer their emphasis, and instead they promoted a much wider range of ad products, of which in-text was just one.

I was also told by my in-text ad provider that the times when I experienced strong revenues were thanks to them directing campaigns toward my site. Because they didn't expect to do that again in the future, they basically said they were fine with it if I didn't use them anymore.

Just wondering if anyone else has had the same experience, and what the state of in-text advertising is today -- is it still viable in a world where mobile is growing more important? Or has it gone by the wayside, and are other ad products on the rise?

Interested to hear you guys' two cents.

[ember]

We were using one particular network, and last fall it tanked. Something about suddenly not enough advertisers in our niche, even though we are hardly a small niche. So we switched to a new network and have their in-text ads on a few pages. They earn about 1% of what Adsense earns. I should probably just remove them.

[IanCP]

Mine still performs as it always has. They do need reminding when to make payments though. Nothing new there.

Is it worthwhile? Well, any "money for nothing" is always worthwhile. It doesn't interfere with anything.

[nomis5]

In text for our largest site is about 25% of our total earnings - very variable (by a factor of 10 some months) but overall a solid and significant part of our earnings.

Some time ago I realised that in-text ads were not suitable for mobiles and that was a downer with mobile views increasing all the time. Recently though they introduced "in-picture" ads and these perform well on mobile pages - very early days though.

"Swanny" persuaded me to give them a try many moons ago and I am many thousands of £s in his debt now because of the success of the ads.

Bottom line is that they work very well for some sites but are a total failure for others. Give them a try and see how they work for you.

[moTi]

Is it worthwhile? Well, any "money for nothing" is always worthwhile. It doesn't interfere with anything.

i don't share that philosophy. it interferes with good user experience. 99,5% of people are annoyed by these ads. and if i'd earn like 1% of adsense income from them, i'd kick it all the more, instantly.

i think it's similar to the occasional 1 cent click from adsense. supply and demand? it's an insult to quality publishers. i'd rather go without those pennies and vote for a fixed minimum price.

[Leosghost]

^^^Ditto..

[nomis5]

99,5% of people are annoyed by these ads

Your opinion or do you have any facts to back that statement up?

[jpch]

72.345% of Statistics are made up.

[netmeg]

100% of netmegs are annoyed by them, so I have never tried them (and tend to shear off when I land on a site that uses them)

[JCKline]

I find them bothersome myself, so I've never subjected my users to them.

[Swanny007]

You really need to name names, not all in-text ad companies are the same.

I've had good success with Vibrant, tried nearly all the others and in my niche they don't perform nearly as well. Vibrant has been "down" the last year or so for me but overall it's still very worthwhile to run the ads (approx. 15% total revenue is in-text). It supplements the AdSense income and no one complains. Mind you, I don't show in-text ads to logged-in members.

Prior to being with Vibrant, I was with Kontera for years as I had a fixed CPM which was fantastic. When the fixed CPM was taken away, the result was a big drop and that led me to test out Vibrant and make the move.

If you're not happy with one in-text company, try another. Then another. Find what works.

nomis5, how are the in-picture ads working? I haven't tried them yet due to I don't really care for them...

[nomis5]

Agree with Swanny007, not all in text companies are the same. I also use Vibrant and was referring to the performance of their ads not other networks.

Have pm'd you re the in-picture ads.

[Broadway]

I've been shedding in-text advertising.

I think user experience will only play a bigger and bigger role in your Google rankings as time passes. For me, there is no question that their presence degrades the user experience (and detracts from the appearance and usability of the page). And of course, this ultimately gets reflected in your website's stats (bounce, time on page, etc...).

I've spent a lot of time revising page content, and on every page I work on that I see them, I find them quite offensive.

I'll also say, in-text advertising has never come close to paying me what Adsense does. Yet the real estate that those ads occupy couldn't be more prime (right in the center of the content, right in the center of the page). I personally feel that when using them I'm giving up way more than I'm earning. (In terms of visitor first impression, website reputation.)

[atladsenser]

You really need to name names, not all in-text ad companies are the same.

I was using Kontera. Was very happy with them, until of course the earnings fell through the floor. My question was more around where in-text is going, and whether it has a future.

That occurred to me when I looked at Kontera's website after the earnings had tanked and I was no longer using them. Their site doesn't promote or even use the term "in-text advertising" at all now, so I'm guessing they've taken their company away from that.

I also tried Vibrant, but for me the earnings were way less than Kontera's. That doesn't mean Vibrant's not great, just that it's not for everyone -- could have been the advertiser mix they had available at the time.

Getting rid of in-text ads has helped my page load speed, that's for sure.

[1script]

I've ran Kontera for a couple of years and they were great. And then they simply stopped earning any money. Looked like they lost some anchor advertiser or something. These smaller ad companies (basically anyone other than Google) go from boom to bust in a matter of one month, easily. Always have to watch them.

Anyhow, I do still run Infolinks. They are a-OK, nothing to write home about. But I do suppress in-text ads until the parts of the page where no AdSense can appear. So, it's basically unused real estate anyway.

[Swanny007]

I'm still with Vibrant. My good times with them (LOL) were back in 2010 & 2011. Even though my site traffic is up quite a bit since then, I'm earning maybe half what I was making back then. Plus, the earnings fluctuate quite a bit during the month. The month might start of slow and then get a bit better.

I'm still with them because the money is "OK", not great. If revenue happens to go below a threshold of mine, I will drop them. My understanding is that the big players in my niche either don't advertise with them, or slashed their budget with them. Now that I look back, it was April/2012 when the big drop happened.

I gotta say I don't like Infolinks ads. I see their ads around and they seem worse somehow.

[atladsenser]

That's exactly when mine saw a steep drop also. I went from earning an average of $50 to $70 per day (a few days even topped $200) to earning like $1 or less, if that.

So, that made it easy to remove them from my sites.