We’ve used AdSense on our site for years, with relatively minor earnings. Early this year, our earnings went up very significantly due to a massive increase in traffic. As a result, we’ve been contacted by various other ad networks such as ValueClick and Lijit.
We don’t want to switch entirely, especially as we have a significant number of non-US visitors, but both networks have suggested using AdSense as a backup if they can’t meet a certain fee for an adslot.
However…we’re completely stumped as to how one best sets this up. We have looked at passbacks and at Double-Click, but it all seems really complex.
Is anyone doing this sort of thing, where they have AdSense as a fallback if another network doesn’t pay enough? Passbacks apparently aren’t ideal since AdSense doesn’t get contextual information from the page then.
And if any of the above makes little sense, apologies. We feel like we’re in way over our heads with terminology and help instructions that we don’t quite get.
when you join valueclick they will offer you an option to add a default banner, just make adsense banner as your default banner.
before you do this , let me ask you what’s your average cpm with adsense? if you are makeing an average of $1.00 eCPM with adsense in my opinion I do not think it’s necessary to switch to valueclickmedia
Thanks for answering. What I’ve read elsewhere is that if AdSense is specified as a default ad for another network, you don’t actually get contextual AdSense ads when it does default, which seems like it would be a drawback?
Our eCPM is does not get up to $1.00 in average, its more like 0.3-0.4. What ValueClick and Lijit have said (but of course, they are trying to promote their products) is that they think they could do better than AdSense a lot of the time given our traffic. Though right now its lower than it was at its height since the site relates to a TV show so it becomes seasonal in part.
That .3 or .4 is probably largely driven by your more premium traffic (US etc.) anyway, so using valueclick there may yield very similar or better results.
Setting adsense as the default could actually work, I’ve done it in the past with good success. I was running the CPM ad’s and was getting about a 60% fill rate, so 40% of my traffic still got adsense.
I think what I’d do in your position is try value click with adsense as default for maybe a 2 week trial and then compare with the 2 weeks prior to that of running solely adsense ads. From there you can look into tweaking further.
I run AdSense as a default without much trouble on a few of my sites.
AdSense works extremely well on some sites as they contextually match their ads to the content - but traditional ad networks like Casale Media, ValueClick, and AdConion can produce better results for some sites as they are targeted more on general content niche.
Interesting. Will have to experiment and see what it does for us. The site is basically in three parts: a “regular” site (news blogs, information sections, etc), a forum and a wiki. The latter two have their own subdomains. The wiki has been by far our biggest earner with adsense (and also our highest traffic part of the site).
ok, are you isolating the CPM of the wiki on it’s own? To see how it is performing, is it possible it might out perform alternatives hands down? In that some train of thought, maybe certain areas of your site are more suited to cpm and some more to cpc (adsense).
What I’ve read elsewhere is that if AdSense is specified as a default ad for another network, you don’t actually get contextual AdSense ads when it does default, which seems like it would be a drawback?