Shopzilla unveiled its publisher program on May 1st, 2007. One of the leading comparison-shopping sites on the internet, Shopzilla boasts an index of over 30-million products from more than 92,000 stores.
Acquired in 2005 by The E. W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP), Shopzilla also operates the BizRate consumer feedback network that collects millions of consumer reviews of stores and products each year.
Shopzilla’s publisher program differentiates itself from other shopping/product affiliate programs in that it does not pay out a commission rate such as CPA, but through CPC instead. According to David Weinrot, Shopzilla's Vice President of Content Marketing and Operations, "The program marries the monetization of pay-per-click syndicated advertising programs such as AdSense with the product breadth of Amazon's Associates Program.”
Features
Shopzilla’s publisher program is currently in beta mode, but is up and running and accepting publishers. However, since it is in beta mode, there are a few minor glitches and missing features which should hopefully be resolved soon.
With access to over 30-million products, Shopzilla is comparable to Amazon in terms of product scope and size. With such a large product database, publishers are offered a lot of choice in terms of creating ads for particular products.
Unlike the vast majority of shopping/product programs, Shopzilla does not pay out in CPA or by commission, but through CPC. Like Google's AdSense, Shopzilla does not publicly diclose its revenue share. Another resemblance to AdSense Shopzilla shares is that there is no quick method or calculation a publisher can calculate to estimate their earnings, since it can vary greatly depending on the niche and conversion rate.
Thus, unlike other ad networks such as ValueClick Media and Tribal Fusion in which publishers can see the exact CPC or CPM for each ad before they try them, publishers with Shopzilla will need to actually implement and test Shopzilla's ads to see how they perform. Again, this is similar to AdSense which can perform great on some sites but not-so great on others.
Signing Up
Signing up to Shopzilla’s publisher program is fast and easy, but does require US citizens who are not tax exempt to enter their tax identification or social security number.
While they list no prerequisites or requirements for publishers on their site, Shopzilla does turn down applicants whose sites do not seem of decent quality. Thus, publishers looking to use Shopzilla on a small personal blog or website with very little traffic or content will probably not be accepted.
Approval (or declination) to Shopzilla’s publisher program typically takes between 1-2 business days if sent outside of regular business hours, otherwise publishers can expect a representative to follow up within an hour or two.
Control Panel
Enlarge (Pop-Up)Shopzilla’s control panel is very easy to use with its clean and crisp interface which loads fast and is very responsive. It’s intuitive and allows publishers easy management of their account and access to ads.
Reporting is updated daily at around 8:15am Pacific Time, and reports are available for download.
Shopzilla offers a tracking system which they refer to as Placement IDs, and publishers may create up to 99-unique Placement IDs. This is a useful feature as tracking ads and learning which positions and sizes perform best is a very important step in obtaining better ad optimization. Publishers can label each Placement ID for easier identification (Ex. 1 = Top 468x60 Banner, 2 = Side 120x600 Skyscraper, etc.).
Ad Creative
Enlarge (Pop-Up)Due to heavy demand, Shopzilla recently implemented custom ad integration to both the Top Search banners and Product Pods. Publishers can customize the background, border, link, and text colors in order to make the ads more integrated. Unfortunately though, ad customization is limited to these two formats only and is not available for other ad creative such as Search Boxes or Banners.
While Shopzilla has a large selection of products to choose from for use of their Product Pods ads (similar to Amazon’s), their number of various banner sizes for linking to Shopzilla categories is severely limited usually only offering 1-2 banners per category. Shopzilla needs to dramatically increase their number of banner creative available for categories if they expect publishers to use them.
In addition to Product Pods and category banners, Shopzilla also offers product banners (which are available in many ad sizes unlike their department category), text links, search boxes, and RSS feeds.
Payment
Shopzilla pays out in monthly installments on Net-30 payment terms. There is a $50 minimum payment requirement, and payments can be sent via check or PayPal.
Referral Program
Shopzilla does not currently offer a referral program.
Customer Support
The only way to contact Shopzilla is through their contact form, although their response time is pretty fast, usually responding within one business day.
Summary
Shopzilla's complete absence of ad customization unfortunately hinders its use since it is commonly known that proper ad integration is vital to optimizing earning and converstion rates. In addition, their availability of various ad creative for their banners is severely lacking.
While Shopzilla certainly needs to work on their ad creative department, they do have the benefit of being a reputable company, having been in the industry since 1996 and being one of the leading comparison-shopping sites on the Internet. It is also important to note that Shopzilla’s publisher program is still in beta, so hopefully they will confront and resolve some of the issues pointed out in this review.
Nevertheless, when compared to other shopping and product affiliate programs available such as Amazon’s Associates program, Shopzilla falls short and wouldn’t be recommended at this time when there are other plenty of alternatives available. However, if Shopzilla continues to work and improve on their publisher program which already has a strong foundation, they may give Amazon some competition.
Showing posts with label advertising programs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertising programs. Show all posts
2008-11-20
Tribal Fusion is a very large, respected ad network in its fifth year of profitable growth. They are a popular CPM solution for high volume sites due to the high quality publishers they attract.
One of the largest networks on the Internet, Tribal Fusion currently serves over 19 billion monthly impressions and is viewed by over 160 million unique visitors. Because of its size, this network has the advantage of drawing advertisers from many different industries, and there are many advertisers in all categories. Tribal fusion enables its publishers to choose the ads they serve and different ad formats carry different publisher CPM rates.
Features
All of Tribal Fusion's advertisements are on a CPM basis and they have no CPC or CPA advertisements in their network. You can choose from a variety of ad formats to display on your site. They allow various rich media and expandable advertisements to get the attention of the visitor. Tribal Fusion's ads are all written in English and only support sites written in English.
Controls
Enlarge (Pop-Up)After you sign up and are given the capability to login, you simply visit Tribal Fusion and login with your information. After logging in, you have the ability to do a variety of things.
The most important is the ability to choose your advertisement category and choose whether you want it filtered from sexual and offensive content to suite your site's content. Once logged in, you may also view your ad performance statistics. Their statistic-reporting facility enables you to view your CPM earnings from the date and the specific time you choose so you can see how different ads have been performing. The rate you receive for the ads in the network is given to you. In the menu, you also have access to your profile information and have the ability to change certain information you have submitted in the application.
Overall, the menu is easy to use and navigate and if you need help your dedicated customer helper can answer any questions.
Available Ad Types and Formats
Currently, Tribal Fusion has a large variety of ad types mainly focusing on rich media ads with flash and dynamic content to grab user's attention. These ads feature moving objects and possibly even banners that make noises so they may grab user's attention better.
The rich media ads that Tribal Fusion supports are banners in the following sizes: 728x90 leaderboard, 468x60 banner, 336x280 square, 300x250 square, 120x600 skyscraper, 160x600 leaderboard, and pop-unders which carry a higher CPM rate.
Reporting
Once logged in, publishers may view their statistics by pressing the reporting button in the publisher menu. Using this menu is very straightforward in letting you enter specific dates and times. It’s a simple thing to view how individual advertisements have performed with an impression and click count displayed by the date you have chosen..
How to Get Started
Click on the Smart Publishers section and go to Apply. There, fill out the form and proceed. They will send you an email letting you know whether you have been approved or declined as a publisher within a few days. There is a list of minimum requirements for publisher sites to meet in order to be accepted.
For example, users are not allowed to use any type of robot or fake traffic mechanism to boost revenue or they will be removed from the network. A minimum of 2000 unique visitors is required each day to the site where the ads are placed. Sites with users must have an active user base and must have a professional site design with updated and good content relating to the category of ad they display. If all these requirements are met, you will likely be approved and can go ahead and earn high CPM rates with this network.
New users have to follow a rather lengthy procedure of setting up their account information into the system, and while it can take a little while to do, it's also very easy with their help system guiding you along step-by-step.
New publishers must put Tribal Fusion's ads on their site and wait for activation before being fully activated into the network.
Payment
Tribal Fusion pays Net-45 meaning every 45 days when the minimum $50 payment has been reached. Tribal Fusion only pays Publishers 55% of the revenue they generate for your site, meaning you get only 55% of the revenue share, which is lower than the industry standard.
Offsetting this is that Tribal Fusion has some of the highest CPM rates for a CPM Ad Network, meaning that even if you only receive 55% of their revenue, you might still get a very decent rate depending on your category.
Currently, Tribal Fusion only supports paying its publishers via cheque.
More Information and Support
Tribal Fusion's support is usually very fast but can sometimtes take between 3-4 days which is still pretty good. In addition, their support staff is friendly, helpful, and informative.
They do allow ads on forums, but require publishers to tag them separately with their ad code in order to better serve their advertisers, as many advertisers prefer not to advertise on message boards.
Summary
If you have a high-traffic website, Tribal Fusion is definitely a good way to monetize your site. With high CPM rates and good customer support, Tribal Fusion is an ad network to consider using if you want to display CPM advertisements. With targeted ads that give you full control over your own ad filtering, you will receive better results and fill your ad inventory quickly. Even without a referral program, this network is definitely one of the best solutions for Large Volume Websites seeking to display CPM advertisements.
One of the largest networks on the Internet, Tribal Fusion currently serves over 19 billion monthly impressions and is viewed by over 160 million unique visitors. Because of its size, this network has the advantage of drawing advertisers from many different industries, and there are many advertisers in all categories. Tribal fusion enables its publishers to choose the ads they serve and different ad formats carry different publisher CPM rates.
Features
All of Tribal Fusion's advertisements are on a CPM basis and they have no CPC or CPA advertisements in their network. You can choose from a variety of ad formats to display on your site. They allow various rich media and expandable advertisements to get the attention of the visitor. Tribal Fusion's ads are all written in English and only support sites written in English.
Controls
Enlarge (Pop-Up)After you sign up and are given the capability to login, you simply visit Tribal Fusion and login with your information. After logging in, you have the ability to do a variety of things.
The most important is the ability to choose your advertisement category and choose whether you want it filtered from sexual and offensive content to suite your site's content. Once logged in, you may also view your ad performance statistics. Their statistic-reporting facility enables you to view your CPM earnings from the date and the specific time you choose so you can see how different ads have been performing. The rate you receive for the ads in the network is given to you. In the menu, you also have access to your profile information and have the ability to change certain information you have submitted in the application.
Overall, the menu is easy to use and navigate and if you need help your dedicated customer helper can answer any questions.
Available Ad Types and Formats
Currently, Tribal Fusion has a large variety of ad types mainly focusing on rich media ads with flash and dynamic content to grab user's attention. These ads feature moving objects and possibly even banners that make noises so they may grab user's attention better.
The rich media ads that Tribal Fusion supports are banners in the following sizes: 728x90 leaderboard, 468x60 banner, 336x280 square, 300x250 square, 120x600 skyscraper, 160x600 leaderboard, and pop-unders which carry a higher CPM rate.
Reporting
Once logged in, publishers may view their statistics by pressing the reporting button in the publisher menu. Using this menu is very straightforward in letting you enter specific dates and times. It’s a simple thing to view how individual advertisements have performed with an impression and click count displayed by the date you have chosen..
How to Get Started
Click on the Smart Publishers section and go to Apply. There, fill out the form and proceed. They will send you an email letting you know whether you have been approved or declined as a publisher within a few days. There is a list of minimum requirements for publisher sites to meet in order to be accepted.
For example, users are not allowed to use any type of robot or fake traffic mechanism to boost revenue or they will be removed from the network. A minimum of 2000 unique visitors is required each day to the site where the ads are placed. Sites with users must have an active user base and must have a professional site design with updated and good content relating to the category of ad they display. If all these requirements are met, you will likely be approved and can go ahead and earn high CPM rates with this network.
New users have to follow a rather lengthy procedure of setting up their account information into the system, and while it can take a little while to do, it's also very easy with their help system guiding you along step-by-step.
New publishers must put Tribal Fusion's ads on their site and wait for activation before being fully activated into the network.
Payment
Tribal Fusion pays Net-45 meaning every 45 days when the minimum $50 payment has been reached. Tribal Fusion only pays Publishers 55% of the revenue they generate for your site, meaning you get only 55% of the revenue share, which is lower than the industry standard.
Offsetting this is that Tribal Fusion has some of the highest CPM rates for a CPM Ad Network, meaning that even if you only receive 55% of their revenue, you might still get a very decent rate depending on your category.
Currently, Tribal Fusion only supports paying its publishers via cheque.
More Information and Support
Tribal Fusion's support is usually very fast but can sometimtes take between 3-4 days which is still pretty good. In addition, their support staff is friendly, helpful, and informative.
They do allow ads on forums, but require publishers to tag them separately with their ad code in order to better serve their advertisers, as many advertisers prefer not to advertise on message boards.
Summary
If you have a high-traffic website, Tribal Fusion is definitely a good way to monetize your site. With high CPM rates and good customer support, Tribal Fusion is an ad network to consider using if you want to display CPM advertisements. With targeted ads that give you full control over your own ad filtering, you will receive better results and fill your ad inventory quickly. Even without a referral program, this network is definitely one of the best solutions for Large Volume Websites seeking to display CPM advertisements.
2008-09-28
Blog Counter
Since it ad passed one day after the “great creation” of my Blog. I decided to add a blogcounter button to my blog, just to count the millions of persons rushing to be the first to see my blog, after all it was my first one. After almost melting my brain with the HTML code for the button (thanks to the nice people of blogcounter.com it didn’t melt), I was ready to go watch the blog traffic.Made my login and for my surprise there was 5, it must have been a mistake or probably the 5 means 5 millions and I didn’t see it in the FAQ. I decided to send a text message to a friend asking him for help, his answer was “you need PUB” and as always he was right, I definitively need a drink.
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