Internet Business Daily

A little over a month ago I was contacted by a Kontera rep who referenced a blog post I wrote a while back comparing Kontera vs. Vibrant ads. Both of these networks provide in-text advertising for both large and small sites.

My first comparison determined Vibrant Media to be the winner, because they paid more and were more of a well known brand. Since switching back to Kontera a month ago, my revenue has stayed pretty much the same. My eCPM is around $1.25, which is actually decent. Assuming Vibrant and Kontera were making me the same amount of money, the question now becomes what other factors play into choosing an ad network.

My account manager, Katherine, has been very helpful. This is one of my most sought after features of any company, not just on the Internet. Customer service and quick response time I value more than making slightly more money with an ad network. Any question I have had she responded to in the same day. For this reason, I am going to continue with Kontera until I get more data to review. Hopefully I can get my eCPM up to $2 through optimization. More updates to come.

You can sign up with Kontera here.

I wrote a post comparing Vibrant to Kontera (in-text ads) about a year ago, and decided Vibrant was the clear winner at that time. Since then, Vibrant has been making me less and less money each month. They recently lost their Microsoft advertiser account, which could be the reason for the drop.

Right when I was getting fed up with my income from Vibrant, a Kontera account manager emailed me asking about the post I wrote 1 year ago. She said much has changed since then, and asked if I would be willing to try Kontera again. Since I was ready to switch from Vibrant when she contacted me, she did not have much trouble convincing me to switch back and try Kontera once again.

I have already installed the new code and made decent money on the first day of advertising. I got about 35 cents per click on day 1, but reporting has not updated since then. It has been about 5 days since the last day of revenue was posted. One of the major factors I look at when deciding between ad networks is their reporting. Some of the questions I ask are:

• How detailed is the reporting? (Can I see exactly click for click how much I made?)
• How frequently is data updated? (I want my revenue updated every hour, or daily at the very least)
• Does it give optimization suggestions? (I want suggestions on how to improve my campaign)

Kontera has already shown poor update frequency, but I will email my contact to see if this is normal or a fluke. Hopefully I will be making more money than I was with Vibrant, but only time will tell. I will post a follow up post in a few weeks showing either the success or failure of Kontera the second time around.