What Does AdXpose Mean for Online Publishers and Bloggers?

As some of you may have seen last week during ad:tech San Francisco, Mpire Corporation -- the parent company of WidgetBucks -- launched a new branded service called AdXpose. To clear up any confusion, AdXpose is completely separate from WidgetBucks.

AdXpose helps give interactive advertisers more insight into how their brand campaigns are actually performing online, no matter where their display ads run, including multiple ad networks (even those outside of WidgetBucks), exchanges and/or direct publisher placements.

At first blush, this may seem very advertiser focused and of no interest to you, the publisher. But alas, AdXpose has significant implications for all publishers, whether in the head or Long Tail.

The bottom line is this: Publishers have the potential to earn more money because AdXpose provides verification information around ad placement and reach to agencies, networks and advertisers. In other words, advertisers and their agencies now have a system that tells them if and when ads ran in view on properly targeted sites or blog -- and this confirmation means the ad placement carries more value (i.e. you get a higher CPM, assuming a couple of things about your site -- see below).

Last week, Mpire's CEO Matt Hulett demonstrated AdXpose to a room full of publishers during the conference and the response was tremendous. Many publishers approached Matt after the panel wanting more information and asked lots of questions, both tactical and challenging.

So, as a publisher, what do you need to do to empower your site or blog business to reap the rewards of AdXpose technology? Publishers need to ask themselves two questions when it comes to addressing this shifting paradigm of online media:

1. Does my ad inventory strategy provide value to advertisers? That is, is there a blend of above and below the fold placements? Do they complement the content?

2. Does my site content appeal to advertisers who want to maximize their spend and/or that are hyper-protective of their brands?

AdXpose is currently in invite-only private beta for key partners, so WidgetBucks and non-WidgetBucks publishers likely won't see the impact of placements and targeting for a few weeks.



We'll provide updates along the way here on the WidgetBucks blog, as well as the AdXpose blog.

- Dean

WidgetBucks December Payments Distributed

WidgetBucks earnings for December 2008 were distributed to publishers today. Our apologies for the delay in payment this month.

WidgetBucks Publisher Payment Update

Last week we announced WidgetBucks payments would being made today- Feb. 17 - due to the odd timing around the previous weekend and U.S. President's Day holiday. Unfortunately, due to an unrelated technical glitch with PayPal, those payments are further delayed and are now scheduled to be delivered no later than Feb. 23.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Reporting: Enhanced (and Proud of It)

Gary Kamikawa, VP, Interactive Marketing

Don't say we didn't warn you. When you use WidgetBucks' updated MyWidgets reporting pages, you are knowingly and willingly using performance-enhancing data. That's what WidgetBucks publishers are going to find when they log in to MyWidgets reporting pages today. Publishers can now:

• view by-country reporting within their MyWidgets page
  
• download data reports as a CSV file (to view within Excel)
  

We heard from many publishers who wanted this feature given their amount of blended domestic and international traffic, so the wait is over. This change ultimately helps you as a publisher figure out exactly how much you are making in the U.S. versus the UK, Germany or France, for example. (See WidgetBucks' full list of CPC and CPM countries)

In all, publishers' MyWidgets pages now consist of four reporting sections, or tabs:

• Summary. This view continues to roll-up of all impressions, earnings and total eCPM, along with the graph of daily earnings and all the widgets you've created listed below.
• Widget Detail. This view breaks down the performance of the widget by the type of advertising "views" (as we call them) of CPM, CPC, and International CPM (that is, CPM ads for countries not supported by a CPC widget) advertising.
• Referrals. This view lists all your referred WidgetBucks publishers and what amount you've earned through them. In case you haven't heard, WidgetBucks has increased its Referral Program payout to 15%! Check out our new referral creatives here.
• By Country. As discussed above, this view breaks down the traffic at the country level for impression, click, and revenue volumes. Each of these reports can provide useful information for optimizing our advertising to best fit your site and the type of traffic you receive. Note that the country-level reporting is only from February 5th forward. We had to change some of the ways we tracked data and this could not be applied retroactively to provide a more historical view.

Combine all four tabs (click the screen shot above for a better view) with the ability to download any report to a Excel/CSV file and the analytic crowd can have some fun playing with the data. We hope these new features prove useful to you and as always, we welcome your feedback on things you'd like to see added to the WidgetBucks platform.

If you feel you are having trouble with these new features, please contact us at WBHelp [at] widgetbucks [dot] com

- Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Marketing
WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks December Payment Timing Alert

This post is to alert WidgetBucks' publishers that December 2008 commission and referral payments will be distributed on Tuesday, February 17 -- exactly one week from today. Funky calendar timing has February 14 & 15 falling on a weekend and February 16 is President's Day, a national U.S. holiday, meaning payments are being pushed to the next business day. Thanks for your understanding.

- Dean

What's in Your Affiliate Marketing Toolkit?

Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing

As many of you may know, WidgetBucks increased its Referral Program rate to 15 percent recently, so as referred publishers earn money through their ads, affiliate marketers get more bang for their WidgetBucks.

What you may not have noticed is that WidgetBucks has also updated its Referral Toolkit, a whole new set of pre-designed ad creatives with related code for easy placement on your site. (Note that you'll need to be signed-in to your WidgetBucks account to view this page).

There are 20 various sizes and new creatives from which to choose, including six of the popular 125x125 size option, animated ads and plain text referral links to include in your email and forum signatures. Each is also integrated with TypePad, WordPress and Blogger. Just grab the ad code, drop it into your site and you're done.

WidgetBucks Referral Program highlights:

• You earn a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the publishers you refer.
• You receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.
• Payouts to you are monthly, along with your commission payment.

Here's how one WidgetBucks' publisher used the code on their blog.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Ups Affiliate Referral Program to 15%

WidgetBucks is boosting its Referral Program payout to a generous 15 percent (up from 5). This means that when you refer a new WidgetBucks user, you will receive a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You'll receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.

Your referral fees will be credited to your account and paid monthly, along with your commission payout. So, if you refer someone, and they make $100 in commissions, we pay you $15; if they make $1,000, we pay you $150. This continues for a whole year on all the commissions they earn.

Be sure to access our Referral Tools page for pre-designed affiliate ads, tag lines and logos of various sizes. Here are some serving suggestions for your affiliate referral code:

- signatures (email, forums like Digital Point)
- sidebars on your site or blog
- Twitter feed
- Facebook, LinkedIn & MySpace profiles


- Dean

WidgetBucks Publishers Earning More with YieldSense Without Lifting a Finger

Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing & Social Media

Chances are you're into online publishing and blogging to create content that interests you, and not necessarily because you're passionate about online advertising. But truth be told, you probably spend significant time on your advertising because, well, it's an income stream and there are bills to pay.

Well, we hear you. Today, WidgetBucks has launched a solution designed to help you out. It's called YieldSense, which is new ad technology that maximizes the rate of return on your WidgetBucks ad widgets. And what's even better news? You don't have to lift a finger.

Once you've signed up and created your widget with a self-selected product category (laptop computers, for example), YieldSense automatically tests (translation: you do nothing) your selection's performance against a whole variety of other product sets to determine the one that makes you the most money (highest eCPM). Essentially the top-earning earning products categories on your site get the highest rotation.



YieldSense has been beta tested for about three months with thousands of publishers across millions of impressions. The results have been nothing short of fantastic. On average, publishers have seen around 60 percent increase in their CPC eCPM and some have even seen 200-300 percent booms in their CPC eCPM. Across the board, four out of five publishers have seen improvement.

On particular publisher -- Techno4.us, a social networking site that serves 75 million ad impressions a month -- saw the eCPM of one particular WidgetBucks ad grow 156 percent to an amount nearly two and a half times the industry average eCPM for social networking sites.

Techno4.us owner Rigo Rojas: “WidgetBucks is my top earning network because their ad widgets don’t look like typical ads. They are different and catch the attention of the audience, making them more effective. Plus WidgetBucks is easy to deal with and treat me like a business partner."

So today, YieldSense analyzes shopping products. In the coming months, it will determine the highest yielding channels/content feeds (shopping, text, local, travel) and ad models (CPC, CPM, CPA) for your site or blog.

To find out more, view the YieldSense product overview or this demo.

- Dean

Putting the 'e' in CPM

Having recently spent a week in Las Vegas enjoying Affiliate Summit West, I had an interesting conversation that I thought might benefit some of our own publishers. It’s about the importance of “e” in eCPM. Most people that do any advertising are pretty familiar with what CPM, CPA, and CPC stand for. And I’m sure there will be a host of people which will defend the benefits of each one for being the best way to make money online. Fortunately when you enter the world of “eCPM” it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day it IS all about eCPM.

eCPM is really “effective CPM.” It means if you took all the revenue you made from CPM, CPA, and CPC advertising and adding them together to determine how much you are truly getting paid per 1000 visitors to your site. When evaluating any mix of advertising it’s always best to calculate your eCPM. I see CPA offers that garner $100 on a lead, while others $0.50. And while one may look more impressive than the other, it depends on how well it’s converting to determine which has a higher eCPM.

At WidgetBucks the same math applies since we mix both CPM advertising and CPC advertising. Since you’re able to earn revenue both in the volume of impressions as well as how many click through on the Shopping, Local, or Travel widgets, we boil everything together as your eCPM value. It is because of this performance companent that placement of widgets becomes essential to optimize your site visitors to earn you the most money. A widget placed in the footer of your site might receive a lot of impressions, however due to the placement will probably not have great CTR to lift the eCPM.

Thus when trying to evaluate the performance of your widgets, spend a moment to look at the Widget Detail tab and compare how your widget is performing both in CPM and CPC revenue and determine if changes should be made on placement or styles. Put the “e” back into CPM by letting WidgetBucks be more effective for you.

WidgetBucks November Payments Distributed

WidgetBucks payments for November have been distributed via PayPal and check. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

Publishers should note that their MyBucks account ledgers will be updated early next week.

- Dean

Holiday Report: Just Another Manic Cyber Monday

By now, most people have heard of Cyber Monday, the day after the long Thanksgiving weekend (U.S.), which includes Black Friday. While Black Friday is brick-and-mortar stores' day in the sun, Cyber Monday has been hyped by the National Retail Federation as the day that online retailers see the spike in clicks and sales once people get out of the crowds and back to their laptop to shop, usually at work (and lots of other places, too). This year, about 72 million people are expected to shop online on Cyber Monday.

In preparation for Cyber Monday, a new poll from the NRF's digital division, Shop.org, shows a whopping eight in 10 are offering some kind of price promotion, up from 72% last year. Promos include specific deals (38.8%), email campaigns (32.7%) and one-day sales (24.5%). And 22.5% are offering free shipping on all purchases. InfoWorld profiles the report here.

With all this online retailer promotion in mind, ad placement becomes a key issue to taking advantage of this season. Yesterday's post here on the WidgetBucks blog highlighted some key aspects of placement:

1. Think about the placement of your ads and the goal of each ad
2. Marry the type of advertising with where it’s going to be most effective
3. Avoid burying a CPC widget where the user is not likely to see it
4. Place ads where the users' eyes are more drawn and possibly see a product that interests them

One final reminder: Give our Sensible Santa skin a try on your WidgetBucks' ad widgets. With site visitors in the shopping frame of mind, it's sure to catch their attention.

- Dean
Marketing Director
WidgetBucks

Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Other Ways to Make Money Through WidgetBucks

Like Christmas week, here in the US, Thanksgiving week seems to be all about spending money.

Whether it’s the countless dollars spent on Thursday’s feast or the highly anticipated shopping deals Friday morning, the retail sector loves Thanksgiving!

Well here at WidgetBucks, I’ll be honest in that we love it as well because this time of year is outstanding for taking advantage of shopping widgets and optimizing them for maximum earnings. You owe it to yourself to take advantage of the shift in shopping mentality and to improve your earnings this holiday season.

With that in mind let’s go over the best tips for providing some extra cash in your wallet using our shopping widgets.

1. Not all product categories are created equal. Too many publishers I see pick the categories they feel are the higher RPC (revenue per click) or the perfect product match to their users without ever rotating in other product sets. A perfect example is a recent test we did on a large social network geared towards Hispanics. The default product set chosen was "Laptops," however in doing additional testing, 3 other categories performed higher (Digital Camera Accessories, Celebrity Kitchen Wares and Strollers). While I won’t try to determine the reason those performed better, the point is that sometimes the best-performing product set isn’t the most obvious. And in case you’re wondering what the increase was, it was between 5-35% higher eCPM.

2. Placement matters. I see a LOT of sites each day that are understandably a broad range of quality and content. And of course in viewing a few of them, I really think that more ads do not mean more money. A lot depends on how you’re gaining your traffic, but if you’re after repeat traffic, having a page plastered with ads, pop-ups, and interstitial advertising may not be the best strategy. Consider what experience your users are looking for on your site and if the level of ads shown is driving away traffic or an accepted part of your service. Gaming and video/news sites are great examples where most people have no problem with the level of advertising because they really want the content.

Also with that in mind, think about the placement of your ads and the goal of each ad. You want to marry the type of advertising with where it’s going to be most effective. CPC ads by their very form of payout are all about getting that user to click. So why would you bury a CPC widget where the user is not likely to see it? If you are running multiple ads on your site, then it is very easy to spend a couple of days playing with swapping around networks in different places to determine who does best where. Maybe the WidgetBucks hybrid widget does best on the Right rail instead of a Leaderboard because as it switches to shopping products, that’s where the users' eyes are more drawn and possibly see a product that interests them.

3. Geo-targeting is your friend. Understanding where your users are coming from is a big “Aha!” moment in helping to maximize your revenue. I’ll assume everyone is using some kind of analytics solution like Google Analytics (if you’re not…do yourself a favor and get started.) Knowing where your traffic is coming from can help you optimize your advertising to those users. Of course WidgetBucks does a bunch of leg work to geo-target and show appropriate advertising, however the honest truth is we don’t cover every country and our CPMs may not be optimized for the country from where your traffic comes. There are a number of ways that you can do your own geo-targeting that are not too complicated and you can look for advertisers that might service countries that we don’t cover. For a current list of countries we serve please click here.

And lastly to re-emphasize all of the above, the best way during the holiday season is to Test, Test, Test. This time of year, many people are on vacations so historically big internal development projects for sites go quiet, but advertising testing is relatively easy and non-impactful to your users, only providing opportunities for more revenue.

Next post I’ll spend a little more time talking about how you can effectively test and make sure you’re getting the lift you’re seeking and understanding the data.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Marketing
WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks September Payments Have Been Distributed

WidgetBucks payments for September have been distributed via PayPal and check. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

- Dean

PubCon Report: Have You Analyzed Your Traffic Lately?

Earlier this week I attended Pubcon in Las Vegas. This conference was a great way to keep up with current industry trends and tips for publishers, connect/reconnect and learn from others, and of course, escape the heavy rain in Seattle.

While attendance seemed a bit lighter this year than in the past, the quality of presenters always remains top notch. All panels and speakers have a pretty singular goal: to help publishers/webmasters grow their sites and business whether through organic or inorganic (paid) methods.

At a time where we continue to read reports over the decline of CPM in certain site categories, one thing to help compensate for that potential lost revenue is to increase traffic to your site(s). All of us would do well to spend a few minutes analyzing how our traffic is doing and where we can grow our traffic. If you aren't already doing so, here are three great sites to get you started:

- SEOmoz.org (SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin has this helpful video on Implementing Keyword Research)
- seocopywriting.com
- seobook.com
- Google Keyword tools (these help find the 2-3 keyword terms to optimize your site)

In addition to sites like those listed above, I recently came across this article on Problogger that might be helpful, specifically for bloggers. It discusses using forums as a way to draw readers/traffic to your blog. Darren Rowse, aka Problogger, has a ton of other great tips on driving traffic.

For additional PubCon perspective, check out the blog of affiliate marketer and Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins, who was a speaker at PubCon.

That's it for now but remember that to make money online, it helps to have both high CPMs and high traffic.

- Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Marketing
WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks August Payments Have Been Sent

WidgetBucks payments for August have been distributed via PayPal and check. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Celebrates First Anniversary With $25 Sign-Up Bonus

They say that time flies when you're having fun -- and in a flash, WidgetBucks has just completed its first year. To celebrate our first anniversary, we're reinstating our sign-up bonus that we offered during the first three months for all new publishers: $25 bonus when your account reaches $50.

We're letting this run throughout the month of October, but the sooner new publishers and bloggers get in, the faster they can begin using our recently launched new travel and local ad widgets, along with our shopping ads.

What a first year it's been: tremendous growth, constant innovation, exciting prospects for next year, and yes, even our share of growing pains. We'd like to thank all of our publishers who have helped (and been patient at times) make WidgetBucks the fastest growing ad network on the Internet during our first year, going from launch to 1.5 Billion impressions a month.

If you are an existing publisher, be sure to send any referrals to this special, anniversary link -- http://widgetbucks.com/anniversary -- during October so you can get 5% of their earnings for the next 12 months. Read more about our referral program here.

Thanks again to all WidgetBucks publishers!

- Dean

This Weekend Only: $25 Sign-Up Bonus

If only 2500 of the 15 million active bloggers are attending the BlogWorld Expo this weekend in Vegas, where does that leave the other 14,997,500? With enough time to take advantage of WidgetBucks' BlogWorld Weekend Sign-up Special!

New publishers who join WidgetBucks this weekend will earn $25 bonus when their account reaches $50. Just hit our home page -- widgetbucks.com or click here to be on your way to better site earnings in no time.

Here & There: WidgetBucks' Local, Travel Ad Widgets Arrive

WidgetBucks today announced the release of its two newest ad widget verticals: local and travel. New publishers can now apply for access to these new ad widgets, while existing publishers and bloggers will have these verticals come available within their accounts over the next 7-10 days.

Local ad widgets are targeted to user’s specific geographic location and offer a combination of highly-relevant information such as weather and gas prices along with performance-based ads such as local businesses and services. Click here to see local ad widget examples.

Travel ad widgets show real-time airfares and deals for multiple U.S. destinations based on a user’s closest major airport. Publishers can also choose from among several snappy looking ad creatives that rotate through destination hot spots, such as Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. A hot deals module is also available at launch. Click here to see some travel ad widget examples.

Both of the new ad units pay on a CPC basis.

These new ad verticals introduce new ways consumers can interact and immerse themselves in an ad. Smart, application advertising provides people with interesting snippets of real information to help publishers monetize their ad space and brand advertisers see greater return on investment for each ad unit.

“Our publishers are telling us they want the best mix of application-style ads and performance-marketing widgets, and these two new verticals address those needs,” said CEO Matt Hulett.

New Reporting Page
WidgetBucks is also introducing an overhauled reporting interface that provides more digestible earnings figures, trends and charts. As WidgetBucks has expanded its revenue types and sources being paid to publishers (including CPC and CPM in the U.S./Canada, CPC and CPM in Europe and CPM around the rest of the world and more), we felt it was important to provide a simpler way of quickly capturing essential data.

Specifically, publishers will be able to view number of impressions, net revenue and eCPM per widget per day. The widget detail tab will break out the views and net revenue for each revenue stream per widget per day.

You will also notice that the pie charts have been replaced with a bar graph. Under the summary tab, the bar graph will show total net revenue earned by all widgets for that particular day. Under the summary tab, the bar graph will show the total net revenue earned by all widgets for that particular day. Under the widget detail tab, the bar graph will show the total net revenue earned, color coded by revenue stream.

- Dean

July Payments Distributed

WidgetBucks payments for July have been distributed via PayPal and check. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

- Dean

WidgetBucks June Payments Processed Today

WidgetBucks payments for June are being sent via PayPal later today. Checks are being processed and sent this afternoon as well. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

- Dean