Mixing AdSense With Kontera On DealOfDay.com

25.11 Mixing AdSense With Kontera On DealOfDay.com

Ever since Google changed its policy to allow publishers to combine different ad programs on the same page, finding ways to make the most out of multiple ad units has proved an exciting challenge.

I talked about how I blend horizontal ad units into my forum on DealOfDay.com but recently, I’ve also been playing around with adding Kontera’s ads on those pages too.

Earning revenue from forums isn’t easy. I’m more likely to plan a forum as a way of supplying a service to my readers and building a community than as a way of earning income. People are just too focused on looking for answer to their questions to spend their time clicking ads. CPM ads often do better here.

But blending AdSense into the forum can work very well. And now I’ve found that adding link ads helps even more.

Notice how the two sets of ads look different and offer different things too. The AdSense ads look like category headings. In fact, this thread category was specifically about bargains on baby products, so I couldn’t have asked for a better keyword there.

The Kontera ads though focus on specific products. That’s their strength, and that’s why it pays to use highly targeted terms when you’re using Kontera (so “Tylenol” not “painkiller,” “Playstation” not “video game system”).

The result on this forum was that I got to offer my readers a range of different types of ads... and picked up two different kinds of income.

Fig. 25.15 Increasing my earning potential by combining ad systems on the DealOfDay.com forum.