I made a passing reference to having ethics when it came to advertising a few days ago, and scared a friend of mine. This was probably because I was using his ad network. I’m not anymore, but that has nothing to do with ethics.
The ethics comment stemmed from why the link to DreamHost on my site is not an affiliate link. Could it be? Probably, but I get free hosting by working here.
In the last decade, I’ve used three main sources for ad revenue on sites. Originally I used Google Adsense because, like everyone else, I used Google. At a certain point, I got upset because I couldn’t remove ads I didn’t like without having my revenue bottom out. I don’t like having ads for things I find to be distasteful on my site. This is actually a pretty big deal to me. I don’t like not being able to say “Rand Paul is evil, get him off my site.” At that point I moved to Project Wonderful, and then in the last year I was able to opt in to the Beta project for WordAds on self-hosted WordPress sites.
I’m going to ‘review’ all three on a scale of zero to five, where zero is ‘not at all’ and five is ‘the winner.’
- Ease of Registration: How easy it is to sign up and get added to the system?
- Ease of use (on WordPress): Getting it added to WordPress. Is there a plugin? Is
- Ease of use (non WordPress): What about outside of WordPress? Is this available for any CMS?
- Customizable: Can I decide what ads show when and where?
- Control: Can I reject specific ads and block certain advertisers?
- Analytics: What does the tracking look like? Can I see how my ads are performing?
- Modernity: How do the ads and the interface feel? Do they keep up with mobile and design trends?
- Revenue: How profitable is it?
Those are the items that are important to me, in no real order.
If you want to know what I’m using, it’s currently a mix of Project Wonderful and Google Adsense. This is not a full measure of the worth of any of these products. I’m using them in a non-WordPress only world, which colors things differently than one might think.
In additional to advertising networks, I’ve used a number of affiliate programs from StudioPress to Amazon, and had interesting results with those.
By no means is this an exhaustive set of reviews. It’s just my experiences with them.
Comments
4 responses to “On Site Advertising”
thanks… hadn’t heard of Project Wonderful before… so far in review, I’m not super thrilled with some of their TOS
for instance, it seems I am giving up my ability to engage in public critique of serivce if I agree I will not
https://www.projectwonderful.com/ptos.php
though I do understand that their intent is likely to control unethical behaviors of various kinds, this seems rather broadly phrased…
…thoughts?
@Max:
…also, since I’m taking the time to comment on the arcana of TOS… really, I am just over the sex-negativity stuff… obviously ‘adult-realated’ needs special treatment, yet, honestly, I am usually actually kinda offended to see it lumped in with all the hate-related, violence, and other heavy-hitting etceteras.
@Max: (s) is their don’t be a dick clause, don’t pretend to be us, and don’t make us look like assholes.
(g) is just ‘We don’t want this stuff on here’ – Rather than have two clauses and people bicker about being an exception, they lump it together.
In another place they phrase it as this: “Shall not provide content on their Properties that is obscene, offensive, pornographic or adult-related, harmful to minors, invasive of any person’s privacy, or otherwise inappropriate.”
It all comes down to this: If we don’t like what you’re doing, we’re going to kick you out.
It’s their service, they’re allowed. Google’s ToS is similar if you read their prohibited content.
They all say that.
@Ipstenu (Mika Epstein):
just because ‘they all say that’ doesn’t prove it to be the way it ought to be… my general point was that (imho) seemingly regressive legalistic/policy inertia is irksome to behold at times… (messy topic, my apologies =)
generally though, yeah, I hear all that… still… (s) seems overly broad to me, seems to go waaay further than need be in constraining speech (to the general benefit of Project Wonderful, and possible detriment of the publisher)… though, as I am not a lawyer, these thoughts are only imho.