PubMatic idea

PubMatic solves you your problem: it allows you to use at the same time the following affiliation programs:

• AdSense
• YPN
• ValueClick
• Komli
• Blue Lithium

Raising all revenues: that’s PubMatic system

Once subscribed to this service, you insert your account for any listed affiliation program. Then, PubMatic code will be used instead of the pay-per-click ones.

The system works this way:

1. All visitors open your blog page containing PubMatic tag;
2. PubMatic tests which one among all affiliation programs guarantees a higher revenue in that particular context;
   
3. Once verified which circuit allows us highest revenues (more CPC), you will be shown its ads.

A part from this, the control panel joins either statistics and revenues, that will be still controlled by each circuit (in other words revenues will still come from AdSense). This service, in beta version, is now completely free.

For a more detailed description as for subscription, implementation and control, you should read Micheal Pick article.

PubMatic: risks and advantages

Strictly speaking, most publishers have a huge interest in increasing their blog revenues, increasing AdSense revenues that during years revealed to be the most well performing and steady one.

Still have to understand whether PubMatic can be useful for this goal or instead it just does an idle comparison among ads profits deriving from different affiliation programs (as it really seems to be).

On the contrary, it could be a very good tool to start considering new independence strategies from AdSense so to avoid any unpleasant situations as many people had in the past (as for instance Master New Media case, or the bad experience I personally ran in the period November 2006 – January 2007).

So, I tried some sort of Web feedback. Cris Adams says on Webware.com to be very disappointed from the very low assistance level he received and from the impressions and clicks misalignment of PubMatic compared with AdSense report.

ItaliaSW.com is even more categorical: “Is it suggested for Google Adsense? NO, here you have all the reasons”, and a list of problems follows:

• Lost impressions for too much engaged servers
• WordPress troubles
• Impossible to delete one’s own account

Use it or not?

The choice is a personal one, even if I think it is quite unsafe to give one’s own good working affiliation account to such an unstable service.

A part from this, the possibility of doing an on-the-fly comparison for ads performances of different pay-per-click affiliations (and in different contexts) has a serious importance particularly for online marketing and advertising.

Actually, whoever invests on online advertising, especially on pay-per-click programs such as Adwords, knows pretty well that this drop might be connected to the world economical crisis and understands the reasons why the clicks have paid less and less (not considering willingly other factors as smartpricing).

Photo Credit: Domen Colja

How cost-per-click is built

Advertisers using Adwords to promote their products/services in the Adsense circuit must, first, choose relevant keywords for the kind of ad they wish to be visualized. Those keys (simple words or phrases) are used to show Google the kind of website and post the advertiser wants theirs ads to be displayed on.

The next step is to insert in each key a certain cost to be paid for each click received on the ads linking to their services. As each Adsense block receives around 5 ads, what will happen if 1000 advertisers are willing to display their ads using the key-word? It’s simple: Adsense will prefer those who pay more per click.

In fact, for each key-word there’s a real auction in which who bids the highest will have more guarantees of seeing their ads displayed on websites and on more quality pages (which guarantees a higher ROI).

For the most popular and requested key-words, Adsense imposes a real limit, that is, a minimum value to be offered for only one click it won’t guarantee the ad to be shown if this value is lower.

In the image above, I offered one cent to have an ad displayed on a relevant page linking to a specific key-word, and further to the left, Adwords tells me that there’s no negotiation for less than 4 cents.

What’s the impact of advertisers competition on pay-per-click

It’s obvious: the higher the number of advertisers wanting to have their ads linked to one specific key-word, the higher the price of the cost-per-click, just like in a real auction, and the higher the minimum cost-per-click value demanded from advertisers will be in order to get into the competition.

The value of a single click depends by  the number of advertisers that bid at specific keywords (actually, there are other factors but I don’t want to complicate the things too much)

Check how much a simple click on a loans and financing ad is worth:

As you can see, the economical crisis has caused an increase of CPC on this kind of ad. To create this kind of report, use the KeywordToolExternal.

Drop on click costs

In times of economical crisis, there’s less money around to invest, therefore, budgets destined to advertising campaigns are cut down. Check the influence on the cost obtained per each click:

1. the number of companies investing on online advertising drops and that reduces other companies’s budgets
2. the number of competitors disputing for an ad to be displayed for a certain key-word drops as well
3. less bids on key-words mean less minimum bids, and maximum as well, consequently
4. online publishers (like you) are in for a drastic reduction on the average click revenue standing before an unchanged click through rate, or even a higher one sometimes.

In other words, it is like having a short audience auction: you can buy the object in question for a much lower price than the usual, what will make the seller (you) receive a lot less.

Some advice

The best thing to do is not to worry too much. In a year’s time, a lot of factors can be chained to determine the increase or fall of online revenues.

It is advisable to strictly evaluate your costs on a yearly basis, otherwise, you’ll take the risk of making choices based on the heat of the moment which, besides not being helpful, can cause things to get worse if there are changes in the mechanisms unrelated to revenue drops.

They could, however, constitute a valuable alternative and create a second leg to stand on in order to avoid depending on one source only.

But, let’s speak clearly: banners and graphic ads can’t compete with contextual ads on blogs, unless…

… you find a system to hyperlinks relevant keywords in every post, instantaneously and on-the-fly.

Image Credit: cre8tiv88

Now things would become interesting because, with only one action, you can add a remarkable amount of links. Check out how to proceed in each one of the cases:

• On a CMS developed in PHP
• On WordPress
• On VBulletin (one of the most common forum platform)

Generating links on-the-fly with WordPress: the Cross-linker plugin

Cross Linker is a great plugin for WordPress that generates links to determined keywords when the post is visualized without changing the source code (download version 1.3.2 here). Besides specifying the keywords with relative URLs for the link, it allows you to:

• ignore keywords included in determined tags
• insert the nofollow option in the anchor text
• search for the keywords to be linked also on comments

and much more.

Geek Auto linker Lite 4.5.0 for vBullettin

It’s the analogous plugin for that popular forum platform. It’s much more simple than Cross-linker for WordPress, but is executes its job perfectly. To download it, you need to register in the forum.

Generating links dynamically in a generic CMS developed in PHP

If you don’t have WordPress or vBullettin, but you do have a CMS in PHP, there’s a source you can use as a base to be perfected and adapted to your demands:

$anchor_keys["anchor1"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation1″;
$anchor_keys["anchor2"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation2″;
$anchor_keys["anchor3"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation3″;
while (list($anchor,$link) = each($anchor_keys)) {

$key_linked=”<a href=”$link” rel=”nofollow” style=” … “>”.$anchor.”</a>”;
$post = preg_replace(‘{b’.$key.’b}’, $key_linked, $post,3);
$post = preg_replace(‘{(<A[^<]*)’.$key_linked.’([^<]*>)}i’, ‘$1′.$key.’$2′, $post);
$post = preg_replace(‘{(<A[^<]*)’.$key_linked.’([^<]*</A>)}i’, ‘$1′.$key.’$2′, $post);
}

This code performs the following task:

1. Before viewing the post, search in the text the words to be used as anchor texts indicated in the array $anchor_keys
2. Once you find them, link them to the corresponing URL
3. Check if they’re not a part of a link (as an anchor text or URL), if so, it removes the link that’s just been created
4. Preview the post

Cautions

You’d better not exaggerate on this possibility and avoid forcing links not relevant that send the user to unexpected places. If, for example, you spontaneously link Skype to your posts, you could, in some cases, do it through an affiliate program that recognizes a commission. The user will get to Skype.com anyway regardless it’s a direct link or not.

Furthermore, it’s advisable to use the nofollow option for affiliate links since, even they forward the user to a relevant content, they do so through an intermediate path that is not relevant, and they could play not very pleasant games from an SEO point of view.

In relation to the most popular affiliate programs, I suggest two among all:

• Commission Junction
  I’d dare to say it’s the number one affiliate program in the world
• Tradedoubler
  It has all kinds of advertisers