Trying a new ad network

As you may have noticed our Project Wonderful revenue has been very low for certain parts of the site over the last few months (under 1 cent per 1,000 views). The site can't manage without that revenue stream due to sponsorships not being paid for.

Our restrictions on ads (no video, no sound, no popups/unders) make it hard to find a partner even with 2,000 unique visitors a day. Now, we've found one.

We're now trying the new network out. Their leaderboard footer is visible on the boards footer alone for the moment, so please if you have any issues with this, let us know immediately. Many people here will remember the damage caused by our last ad partner, and we have no desire to repeat that. Once we're happy with it, it will migrate to the main site.

 

I've seen the screenshot. We've asked Uber how to ban them as there doesn't seem to be a fast option for me to easier reject the ads, but since I haven't had a response and the problem ads are still showing up, I've just dropped them a chasing note.

I am very sorry about this. It's rather like what PW served when we asked for SFW ads...

 

It should have vanished after multiple messages to their support. If anyone else sees it, let me know as soon as possible. We're not entirely happy because instead of telling us how to block the ad, they want us to "upgrade to another network". We've only been on them 2 days...

Tirial's fixed the settings on PW to see if we can get better results with that, as it is a known quantity and gives us the ability to block ads.

 

No, right now we're back with Project Wonderful. They don't pay well, but they exclude problem ads which is invaluable. Project Wonderful pays simply by views, so people don't need to click ads or purchase things for us to get paid. "Your ad could be here" is a standard link to PW where people can bid for ad space.

Amazon affiliate links are effectively banned on free book sites since 2013, and Amazon will either close the affiliate account or confiscate all earned revenue if you generate too many clicks through to free books. A lot of free book sites closed when that rule was brought in. The Bargain section uses them for some pages. As we partner with Amazon for a lot of the site, we don't want to annoy them!

There are also strong rules in place in the UK that actual reviews may not benefit financially from the product they are reviewing - otherwise the site should label their reviews 'advertorials' or they may be shut down (Competitions and Markets Authority).

 

I think they got tired of people giving away free ebooks on their sites, and then having to pay out when people who bought the free ebooks bought other products. What seems most unfair is that if a user buys a product through a site and then downloads a set of free ebooks sometime during the next month, the site that referred the original product gets penalised. Once someone has left a site, that site has no control over what they do.

We have just introduced a new ad network into our mix. It has been running on the main site for a week without issue, so we have added one of their banners to this board for a four-week test. The content may not be book related, but they are paying CPM at a very good rate, with a bonus for clicks, and we've already had our first payment.

If anyone experiences problems, malware, objectionable content etc, please let me know as we have disabled those options on set-up and all we are seeing is an ad for a Bitcoin lottery.