Bigger is not always better! When it comes to performance of different online ad dimensions, 300 x 250 medium rectangles provide better exposure than bigger ad units such as 728 x 90 leaderboard and 160 x 600 skyscraper ads, because users spend more time viewing medium rectangle ads, findings of a Lotame study suggests. What does it mean to you? Let’s discuss some related points here.

Lotame is a platform for brands that enables targeted advertising to customizable audiences through social data. Based on 148.3 million ads served in 2009, Lotame conducted a study to measure if there are any differences in the average time spent on each of the IAB standard ad sizes. It found that internet users spent an average of 13 seconds viewing each 300 x 250 medium rectangle, 5.4 seconds viewing each 728 x 90 leaderboard, and 1.9 seconds viewing each 160 x 600 skyscraper ad.

Adsense Medium Rectangle

It means internet users tends to ignore the ads that looks bigger? I think yes. Notice the difference between 13 seconds and 1.9 seconds. In my view, this is a big difference and it may have great impact on the success of an ad campaign. Well, the Lotame study didn’t looked at click-through rates and there is no way to tell how time spent on viewing ads is related with click-through rates.

What we can learn from this? From the point of view of an advertiser, more time spent on viewing an ad means more exposure and increases chances of a successful advertising campaign. Yes, there are many things such as geo-targeting, that you may need to consider while posting an ad. But can you expect better conversion from ads that not even make an impression at all? Think about it. Size does really matters in online advertising.

From publisher’s point of view, I always believe that medium rectangles offers better click-through rates and thus may help in increasing ad revenue. Now the Lotame study shows that users too love those ads. At least they look at them! Does it mean that you will get more clicks? Well, there is no evidence that more time spent on viewing an ad means more clicks. Still, you can expect some when compared to ads that users hardly look at! What you say?

But, the advertising rates depends on your website, ad position, content and other factors. So, your ad revenue will also depend on those factors. Then, how to maximize your income from ads delivered by ad networks such as Google AdSense? No matter what kind or what size of ad you use on your website, better placement of ads is most important for maximizing your ad revenue. Try to experiment with different ad sizes on different positions on your website. Monitor their performance and choose the one which performs best on your site.

Want some free money? Chitika is giving away a total of $200 to it’s publishers, for revealing the most interesting/cool/unique placements of Chitika | Premium ads. The first place winner will receive $100, and 2 runners-up will receive $50 each. All you have to do is find some interesting and unique placements of Chitika | Premium ads, that generates very high CTR/eCPM.

Chitika | Premium is a smart ad solution from Chitika that displays behaviorally targeted CPC ads to search engine traffic. According to Chitika, it was designed to be a highest performing ad unit (eCPM)  for it’s publishers. Right now, I am using it on some of my blogs and it really performs well. If your blog or website receives a good amount of search engine traffic, then Chitika | Premium will definitely help in maximizing your blog or website revenue.

So, if you are a publisher of Chitika ads, then this is a right opportunity to grab some free money! Just think about interesting placements of Chitika | Premium ads and implement them on your blogs or websites. Then send your entries with links to your interesting Premium ad placements to specialprojects@chitika.com. You can also drop your entries in the form of a comment on this official blog post. Just don’t forget to include one sentence or two about your ad placement and why it is unique or cool. All enrties must be received by 12:00pm US EDT on Monday, November 10. Hurry!

Want to maximize your online income? Think about the ad solutions offered by Chitika. What is Chitika? Chitika is one of the leading online advertising companies with a network of thousands of blogs and websites. The eMiniMalls is their flagship product and it will enable you to supplement your existing ad revenue while providing a completely new revenue stream through interactive merchandising. The good news about Chitika eMiniMalls is that it can be run alongside Google Adsense.

Besides Chitika eMiniMalls, they also have a number of other ad solutions for publishers. It means that you will have more options for better utilization of your ad space. You can run their ads on multiple websites as long as all your websites meet their terms and conditions. Let’s take a quick look at all the ad solutions offered by Chitika.

Chitika eMiniMalls

Chitika eMiniMalls is Chitika’s flagship paid per click (PPC) product. With eMiniMalls, you can provide your users with relevant content and comparative shopping information without sending them outside of your site. Chitika eMiniMalls will perform best if your site contains information about products.

Chitika Premium

Chitika Premium is an interesting cost per click (CPC) ad solution that is said to be designed to become your highest performing ad unit (eCPM). These ads are behaviorally targeted and they will displayed only to your U.S. search engine traffic (including certain other traffic). So, if your website gets a lot of U.S. traffic, then Chitika Premium ads are just perfect for you. Chitika Premium ads are available in all standard IAB sizes and they are compatible with Google AdSense.

Multiple Product Unit (MPU)

This PPC ad unit is similar to Chitika eMiniMalls but displays ads for various products instead of just one. More products means more chances of genuine clicks by visitors and more income for publishers.

Chitika AdPro

A hosted ad management platform for publishers that will enable you to start, promote and manage your direct ad sales. After sign up, Chitika will create a Direct Ad Sales storefront for you. Then you can promote, monitor and approve your direct advertising campaigns. Chitika will take care of your approved advertisers’ campaign set-up and ad serving, and processing of payments.

Chitika Linx

This is Chitika’s text link ad solution. Chitika Linx will automatically identify important keywords on your web pages and will hyperlink those keywords to interactive CPC-based product listings. This is a non-intrusive form of advertising and your users will see the ads only when they mouse-over those links.

Chitika for Parked Domains

This solution is perfect for making money from your parked domains. It will convert your parked pages to sleek shopping store fronts featuring a variety of products, offers and promotions. You will earn revenue on PPC basis from these product listings.

Chitika’s Referral Program

The publisher referral program of Chitika is also a good way to earn some extra money. You will earn 10% of the total CPC revenue that your referrals earns for up to 12 months. You can also earn money by referring advertisers to Chitika. For each $100 spent by your advertiser referral, you will get $25 as commission.

What about Payments?

Chitika will pay you 60% of Chitika’s revenue. They makes payments to their publishers via PayPal and check. All payments are sent around the start of every month. You will receive your payments about 30 days after the end of the month in which your account’s total generated revenue exceeds $10 (for Paypal) or $50 (for checks).

In my view, Chitika is the best alternative or companion to Google Adsense. If you run a blog or website focused on poducts, then Chitika eMiniMalls may give better results than AdSense. Chitika Premium ads are also a good option if you get a good amount of US search traffic. Right now, I am getting really good results from their Premium ads on one of my blogs. So, I would highly recommend you to join Chitika today.

WidgetBucks is expanding its cost-per-click (CPC) network with addition of United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium into their CPC country list. The expansion started yesterday with United Kingdom (UK). So, a visitor from UK will now see a short-duration cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) display ad followed by a CPC shopping widget featuring UK-based merchants and products, listed in British pounds. According to WidgetBucks blog, within next two weeks, CPC ads will also be shown to traffic from the other eight European countries.

Earlier WidgetBucks CPC ads were served only to U.S. and Canada traffic. With addition of these new countries, WidgetBucks publishers will get two ways to earn revenue from the Western European traffic. This is really a good news for all WidgetBucks publishers, as it will maximize their ad revenue to some extent. On the other hand, WidgetBucks CPM ads will be shown to traffic from the following countries: Australia, Austria, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and United Arab Emirats. Not yet a WidgetBucks publisher? Join WidgetBucks today.

Recently I tested a cool Firefox extension called ScribeFire. It enables me to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Internet into my blog posts and optimize my ad inventory. ScribeFire comprises of two different functionalities - ScribeFire Blog Editor and ScribeFire QuickAds. You can use the Blog Editor to enrich your blogging experience, while the QuickAds will help you to serve ads on your blog.

What is ScribeFire Blog Editor?

The Blog Editor is the core feature of ScribeFire. It is an easy way to update and manage your blogs right from the browser. It works with Firefox (2 and 3), Flock, and SeaMonkey. But, it does not work with Internet Explorer. It is very easy to install, even easier to manage! After installation, you will see an icon in the browser status bar. Click the icon to open ScribeFire and take help from the account wizard to connect your blogs. Once your blog is connected, you can start using it to write and manage posts. With ScribeFire Blog Editor, you can write, categorize and tag your blog posts. Even you can upload images, save posts as drafts and share your posts on social sites.

ScribeFire supports the following services: WordPress.com, LiveJournal, Xanga, Windows Live Spaces, Performancing, Jeeran, Tumblr, MySpace, b2Evolution and Splinder. And the popular blogging platforms that are supported by ScribeFire includes WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Textpattern, Roller, Blogger and any software that uses MetaWeblog API.

What is ScribeFire QuickAds?

ScribeFire QuickAds is the first service to enable publishers to serve fully optimized banners ads on their sites with point and click functionality. It means that you can insert a fully optimized banner ad to your blog without adding a single line of code. Just click the “$” tab on your ScribeFire blog editor, choose an ad size and position the ad in the desired location on your site. That’s it. It takes only a few seconds to set up ads. You can also set up ads from within your account at www.scribefire.com.

QuickAds serve three different ad formats: 728×90 Leaderboard, 300×250 Medium Rectangle, 120×600 Skyscraper. Based on historical and real-time data, their special technology selects the optimum and highest paying network for the ad space on your site. So, it increases the chances of earning more from your ad space.

With QuickAds, you can take advantage of over 100 ad networks to maximum revenue from every impression your blog serves. It offers comprehensive reporting and you can track all your earnings from a single, all-inclusive dashboard. The payments are made on 7th of every month and there is no minimum for PayPal payouts. For payments by checks, $25.00 is the minimum amount you should earn.

ScribeFire QuickAds is currently in close beta and invites users on a first come first serve basis. So, you can give them your email ID, in order to get an invitation.

In my view, ScribeFire is a cool and handy tool for bloggers. It supports over 15 different blog hosting services and blogging software. Besides enriching your blogging experience, it also gives you an opportunity to maximize your ad revenue. Try it today.

Want to make money online from your websites or blogs, without sacrificing your precious advertising real-estate? Go with Kontera’s ContentLink in-text website advertising solution. I am sure that you will make some good amount of money from you existing websites or blogs. To know more about Kontera, read on.

The ContentLinks are contextually relevant ads and information units dynamically linked to keywords on a publisher’s web page. These links appears as double underlined links and upon mouse-over these links opens a small bubble like box that displays and links to ads from Kontera’s advertisers. The ContentLink ads are displayed on cost-per-click (CPC) basis. This means that advertisers pay only when your visitors clicks on their ads. You will receive a portion of the amount paid for each click on your website.This is all about Kontera’s ContentLink ads, in simple words.

Kontera’s Online Contextual Advertising Program is based on sophisticated technology which enables real- time analysis of both static and dynamic content. Even it can handle pages that search engines cannot crawl, such as password-protected sites, form-based content, and cookie authentication. Kontera’s special contextual ad technology serves the most relevant In-Text keyword advertising, and therefore generates higher CTR’s than most other contextual advertising solutions. So, with Kontera you will definitely see a boost in your online income.

The good thing is that Kontera’s ContentLink doesn’t require extra space on your website and you can use it along with Google AdSense or other advertising programs.

How to start with Kontera?

In order to qualify for ContentLink Website Advertising, you must have a content-rich, clean site that uses English as the primary language. And you must have more than 50 words per page on the majority of the site. If you meet the requirements, you can apply for a Publisher account with Kontera.

After approval of your account, you will need to add the ContentLink code to your websites. They have official plugins for WordPress and Drupal. For Blogger users they have a one-click code installation button. Well, you can use add the code manually to your website template. After implementation of the code, it will take 24 hours for the system to update and for ContentLink™ ads to appear on your site. They provides extensive reporting for your ads, that you can review from the Publisher Center.

With Kontera, you can add multiple sites to your publisher’s account. Just go to the “Help” section of Publisher Center and email them with a list of the domains you would like added to the network. They will review your sites and create up to 5 new sets of tags for you at a time.

Payments:

Their payment terms are Net 30, first week of the month, when balance exceeds US$100. This means they will send your revenue by check, PayPal or EFT, the first week of the month, 30 days after the month that they have earned this revenue, when your account balance reaches US$100. If your account balance is less than US$100 at the end of the month, earnings over US$5 is rolled forward to the following month, until the payment threshold is reached.

What I think about Kontera? If you get a good amount of traffic to your websites or blogs, then you must use Kontera’s ContentLink. There is no doubts that it will help you in improving your online income. But, if you are with PayPerPost or some other get paid to blog services, then there may be some problems in using Kontera. Some of these sites doesn’t allow in-text link advertising. So, decide it wisely as per your requirements and convenience.

Popular Blog Advertising network Smorty has started a new Pay-Per-Click product advertising service. They named it as “Digxa Mini Store”. It is an innovative service that shows relevant advertising links on blog posts. When a visitor clicks on a product link, the blogger gets a commission. I think bloggers can use this service to maximize the income from their blogs.

Smorty’s unique “Digxa mini store” advertising links work based on your blog content. If our system finds a suitable keyword in your blog, then a Javascript link automatically appears. If an advertiser places their mouse over the link, a mini store with a related product showcase appears. Every time a visitor clicks on a product, you make money.

How this link advertising works? For example, if your blog post has a word such as “mobile phone”, then a link will be automatically placed on that text. If a visitors rolls their mouse over that text, it will open a mini store banner showcasing related phones. If the visitor clicks on the phone they will be taken to a shopping comparison site where they can buy that product. For the click through, you will receive a commission from Smorty. They will also allow you to use customizable banners on your blog.

How to use Digxa Mini Store on your blog?

• First sign up for an account with Smorty.
• Once approved, login to your blogger account.
• Go to the “Digxa Widgets” section and click on the ‘Get Widget Code” link.
• Customize the widget design to match with your blog and copy the widget code.
• Go to your blog’s control panel and paste that code on your template/theme.
• Start making money!

Smorty have a range of criteria to approve your blog for mini store advertising. Most of these are the same as for their paid blog advertising. So, if you are already a member of Smorty, you will be able to use it on your blog instantly. Your commission will depend on the products clicked on by your visitors and you can earn upto $0.60 per click. They will pay the commissions on a monthly basis via PayPal. Join Smorty today.