Why I’m Dropping Kontera
I’ve been using Kontera for the last few years as an additional revenue source on some of my sites. What Kontera provides is in-content links. I’m sure you’ve seen sites that use them or a similar service- generic words within your content will have a double underlined link. When you hover over those links a small javascript pop-up shows up in the same window with an ad, often a video ad. But after considering it for about a month, I’m dropping them from my site. Here’s why.
When I first starting using them the revenue was decent. Kontera gave me the option to only run the links on posts older than a week, so I figured that the only people who would see the links are search engine traffic or people coming from other sites. My regular readers would not see them. And the additional revenue was obviously very welcomed. But then a few months back it suddenly changed.
Whereas before I was getting anywhere from 5-25 cents per click, which is slightly lower but relatively on par with Adsense for my main niche, suddenly I was getting significantly less. My revenue went from $5-10 per day to under $0.50 per day with roughly the same number of clicks. Clicks were now only paying a few pennies. I went below the threshold for monthly payments and their accounting system is slightly maddening. At this point I have no idea if I’m close to a payout or not. I might be leaving money on the table with them, I’m not sure. But either way the amount they were giving per click was way too low to continue.
I know that I find those type of links annoying, especially when you accidentally just move your mouse over them and the ad pops up. The double underlined links do nothing but trick users into thinking they are legit outgoing links and not an ad. I decided that for pennies a day it was simply not worth it to devalue the user experience on my site. I’d rather give visitors a chance to click an affiliate link, click a higher paying Adsense ad, or to share the content or become a subscriber. That’s maybe 25-50 clicks a day I’ve now given a shot at going somewhere more lucrative.
I don’t want my sites to be so cluttered with ads and garbage that they look spammy. You need to think about what the goal is with every visitor. Do I want to make 2 cents off someone? It’s not worth the clutter. I’ve been removing other low paying ads and things too. Clean design is important. In the end I think the minimum I would have needed with Kontera is about $3 per day to keep them on the site. That’s roughly $1000 per year which is a fair amount of money. If I’m going to lessen the user experience, I better be making some money off it.
Has anyone else used Kontera or similar in-text advertising networks? Have you seen a decrease in payouts? What’s your experience been like?
August 27th, 2010 at 1:27 am
as a postscript- i “signed up” to be an affiliate knowing i’d be writing a post about them on this site and they pay a referral fee. and by “signed up” i mean filled out a form weeks ago and then never heard back from them again. total fail on their end in multiple ways.
August 27th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Hi – I work for Vibrant Media. I’d be happy to talk to publishers interested in joining our in-text network. We offer the leading technology as well as the most relevant, most premium, and highest paying ads. You can reach me via email at accountmgmt@vibrantmedia.com. I’ll reply within 1 business day.
August 29th, 2010 at 5:47 am
Hi JMoney,
This is Jonathan from Kontera. If you’d like to find out how close you are to a payout with Kontera, please feel free to e-mail us at support@kontera.com or me directly at jonathanc@kontera.com and I’ll be more than happy to track down that information for you.
I can’t comment on the specifics of your account without seeing it, but I’d also be happy to discuss that with you via e-mail and I can see if there’s anything we can do to further optimize your account. In general, thanks to our Synapse engine, which can read your content for meaning not just scan for keywords, and our exclusive ad inventory from such brands as Microsoft, L’Oreal, Ford, and National Geographic, we’re able to provide our publishers with the highest CTR and best CPC of any In-Text network.
Regarding how readers respond to Kontera, a recent study by comScore, the leading digital marketing research firm, found that users regard Kontera In-Text ads as one of the least intrusive forms of online advertisers. You can read more about the results of that study here: http://www.kontera.com/advertisers/research-results
The reason Kontera scored so well is because In-Text ads are 100% user initiated, meaning only people who are actively curious about our ads scroll over the highlighted words and even see them. We double underline our ads because we don’t want them to be mistaken for normal links. We make every effort to make our ads as un-intrusive and clearly labeled as possible. Because of our unparalleled contextual relevancy and the previously mentioned exclusive ad inventory we’re still able to provide high CTR.
In terms of your affiliate application, I’d be happy to look into that as well. As the person who primarily deals with affiliate applications, based on experience, the most likely problem was that your application accidentally ended up in our Junk Mail folder. While we periodically search through the Junk Mail folder, as we receive thousands of e-mails a day, it’s possible that your application went accidentally unretrieved.
Thanks,
- Jonathan Cohen
Kontera Community Manager
Jonathanc@kontera.com
Monetize your site with Kontera In-Text ads
Thanks,
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Maybe a lot of this is down to users ad blocking / script blocking as well as overuse and confusion.
I know a friend of mine who just got a new machine asked me if he could do something about these inline ads (he called them messages) so I adblock / script block his browser and he is happy. I allowed a couple of sites as to not totally lock it all down.
What people forget is that just as some when reading trace the lines of text with their finger tips, many older users will actually follow the line with the mouse making reading a Kontera laden site a frustrating task.
If anyone would like more info about what I have learnt about kontera and in-line ads in general for older users then I will post it up somewhere.
Cheers, and great to see a response from Kontera.
Sy
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
> The reason Kontera scored so well is because In-Text ads are 100% user initiated, meaning only people who are actively curious about our ads scroll over the highlighted words and even see them.
See my response below for how you are not taking every user / configuration into consideration with your answer here. I admit it is not obvious, but you could do better perhaps, both for users and your advertisers maybe.
S
September 6th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
I have noticed a significant drop in Kontera earnings in the past few months.
Traffic is the same, but earnings are way down.
September 13th, 2010 at 1:44 am
What’s the point if you have traffic but your earnings are not improving? It’s useless, yeah I think you should find another one.
September 17th, 2010 at 12:27 am
I have been using Kontera, Despite good traffic, clicks and eCPM was so low. Don’t know why but thenafter i switched to InfoLinks which is now being used by plenty of webmasters and offers Good ROI.