I received a surprise and stern mail from Kontera. They noted that I have Infolinks which is a competing in-text advertising company. It seems according to their T&Cs that I am only allowed to display in-text context link ads from one company only. If I don’t remove the competing company ads I will have my account suspended. Thanks for the warning dude. So now I will have to decide which one is better, Kontera vs Infolinks, then drop off the one faring poorly.
And why they sent the message after such a long time that I have been testing it out? I think they found me because of my previous post after receiving a Kontera cheque and making comparison on the various alternative affiliate earnings which I have on my website.
Anyway, usually the best way to determine the winner would be to just compare the final earnings. However I think there are other factors like click through rate, impression and sCPM too.
So here goes.
The period in question is from 1 Oct 2010 to 16 Mar 2011-03-18
| Kontera | Infolinks | |
| Impression | 23,846 | 33,223 |
| Clicks | 138 | 431 |
| CTR | 0.58% | 1.3% |
| Revenue | $10.93 | $8.62 |
| eCPM | $0.46 | $0.26 |
| Monthly breakdown comparison | ||
| Oct 2010 | $2.30 | $1.43 |
| Nov 2010 | $3.99 | $2.56 |
| Dec 2010 | $1.94 | $1.51 |
| Jan 2011 | $1.69 | $1.24 |
| Feb 2011 | $0.05 | $1.01 |
| Mar 2011 (16 days) | $0.95 | $0.87 |
Hmm… judging from the above figure, the earning revenue from Kontera is higher than that of Infolinks. Except for the odd month of Feb 2011, on average the returns are better with lower impression rate and lower CTR generating a higher return (eCPM). Although my revenue from both are very small, just a couple of bucks here and there, I suppose the gap is not very great, only $10.93 vs $8.62 (Kontera vs Infolinks) which is only about $2.31. If I were to use the same figure as comparison against Adsense it would not make any sense because the variance would be even greater!
Since all things being the same in terms of comparison, it looks like Kontera is the winner and I will have to dismantle Infolinks in-text ads if I ever want to continue with the Kontera program. It would also mean I won’t be able to get a comparison data as to which in-text ads can generate a higher return.
Why do comparison? Because not all advertisement companies are the same. Their algorithm is not the same, their quality of advertisers is not the same and of course their sharing revenue too.
You will notice I have other ads splattered on this site and when they are compared against the almighty Google ad sense; their revenue returns don’t even come close.
It is also the reason I don’t usually plug in the other ads on my other site as it would dilute the main major earner. I don’t mind doing it here as personal blogs like this do not get good website traffic. Still, checking through my analytics the traffic is quite steady though and getting them through really weird search terms.
Although Kontera has a better returns, they are lacking in certain areas in their user account. Their reporting is not as great as Infolinks, and they have lesser control on the number of in-text ad link that will show on a web page. Kontera is also missing on the Related Tags ads, I should think Kontera won’t fault me on this if I still keep the Infolink Related Tags ads as that has nothing to do with in-text ads. (Unfortunately, Kontera read this blog, replied that I can’t have related tags with Kontera either! Bummer!)
Anyway, I have to follow Kontera T&Cs if I want to continue with their program, though fortunately they still allow for other ads, they just don’t want any rival on in-text ads. It would also mean I would lose 50% returns on in-text ads by removing Infolinks. Heck, it is only about $1 per month revenue, can’t even get me a decent Starbucks coffee (anyway too much coffee is not good for you), so no point kvetching about it. The only point of the kvetch is that I can’t get comparison data for my study and have to dig through multiple set of codes (since my site is split into several sub-domains) to remove the Infolink codes from my website.
Enough of blogging, time to do the code hacking…
Comments:
Dear Ellen,
Thanks for the message. Thanks for pointing out the error. Didn’t know about the javascript/cookies error. Just tried it and found the error too. now scratching my head on what went wrong with the website set up.
I think the earnings will depends on the topic and geographic location. since we can’t control what kind of ads will show up. So far my Adsense vs Kontera is at 20:1 ratio for this blog anyway.
So if Kontera works for you, go for it!
like some people say Chitika is better than Adsense, then go for it!
for me? Adsense is still number #1 for me for now.
Cheers and have a good day!
Jan.
PS: I will repost your comment here manually.
At http://www.janleow.com/life/kontera-vs-infolinks-in-text-ads-comparison.html, you indicated that you make a lot more from Adsense than Kontera. I’ve been using Infolinks. When the recession hit, my Adsense revenue tanked, down by more than 50%. It hasn’t gone up since. Meanwhile, my Infolinks income has risen and it now makes me more than twice as much as Adsence. So I was wondering if you experienced any change in Adsense. (I tried to leave a comment there but got an error about JavaScript and cookies-I think mine are on, so didn’t know what to do.)
Ellen Finkelstein
Fairfield, US
[update 14/12/2011]
With the recent Google Panda 2.5.2 update, I decided to do some fixing about too many advertisement in my personal blog. Going through my Kontera account vs Infolinks account, I decided it might be better to shift my focus to Infolinks. Kontera reporting format has not improved since my last comparison post in Mar 2011 of this post. To know your total earning balance, you need to send them an email to ask them what’s your balance. While Infolinks reporting format provides a balance brought forward figure so you know what has been accumulated so far. At the same time Infolinks has come up with some very interesting ads besides the inline text. They have the related tag ads, and another floating bar ad at the bottom of the browser. So Infolinks has surge forward with some increase in earnings while Kontera remains stagnant.