New Squidoo Animated Ads – Good or Bad?
Seth and the team over at HQ have been super busy, as always. The latest in the line of Squidoo Developments is experimenting with a new ad setup.
The New Squidoo Ad Setup
The old Google Adsense Ads remain on the page. A new 300 pixel ad has been added in the upper right hand corner, a tower ad to the right sidebar, and a banner ad at the footer of every page.
These ads appear to be part of a CPM (Cost Per Impression) network where Squidoo (and therefore lensmasters) get paid based on how many times the ads are seen, not clicked on.
In Seth’s year end letter he mentioned that they get 6 million unique visitors a month and about 12 million visits. That a ton of impressions with three ads a page…
Is there a precedent for these ads?
The ads don’t really bother me but I wanted to see if they were over the top so I started checking out some other news sites. Surprisingly, the ad placement is very consistent with other major media sites on the web, from the big blogs all the way up to CNN.com .
Is everyone screaming about how they are the end of the world?
Are the new ads worth it?
Well, lets do some quick math here.. 12 million visitors at 2 pageviews a piece with 3 impressions per page is 72 million ads served in a month. If Squidoo get’s paid $0.50 CPM (which is pretty cheap) that brings in $36,000 in extra revenue. After Charity and Squidoo’s cut that leaves an additional $17,100 every month for Lensmasters.
To give you an idea of how much this is, that is enough to raise the top adsense payout tier to $10 per lens and the second tier to over $2.00 per lens.
Potentially doubling the Captain’s adsense payout? Definitely worth a look….
-The Captain
December 27th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
The new animated ads don’t really bother me, they seem to be everywhere these days. As long as they don’t start pop ups (or pop-unders) all is well.
Maybe I’m just used to the video ads, I blog for b5media, and there’s one (usually) playing in the corner of my blog there.
I’m all for anything that increases revenue (especially my own:)
This is my first visit here, I’m having a great time looking around.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Welcome Linette!
Don’t be shy, feel free to ask any questions you have in the chat room or on any of the related postings.
-The Captain
December 28th, 2007 at 12:25 am
I have to say I hadn’t even really noticed the ads until the forum posts started. I have always just blocked advertising out, so I don’t really have an opinion on them one way or the other, although the tipping point is the potential for increased revenue. I’m happy to trust Seth and the team’s decision on this one, whichever way they decide.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
They don’t bother me at all – nor do they detract from the content on the lenses I’ve visited. Anything that brings more money to the pot for ALL of us, I’m willing to keep an open mind about.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I don’t mind having additional ads on my lenses, but I have never personally liked animated ads, and as a consumer I go to extra lengths to avoid clicking them. As for these new ads, I’d like the top right one to be not as wide and I hope not to see anything too racy for the G-rated lenses. But on the whole, I concur with the rest – if it brings in more revenue, it is fine.