Ok, I’m going to pick on Adgator for this one as they’ve just blogged about their verticals.
Let’s get on with it:
AdGator tracks the content on your blog and places your blog into a vertical. Now, there are 4 main verticals:
- Lifestyle
- Technology
- Entertainment
- Business
Now, each vertical has probably around 6-10 sub verticals, such as:
Lifestyle: accessories, automotive, beauty, fashion, sports, travel, etc.
Ok, so for simplicitiy, I’m going to assume that each vertical has 10 sub verticals, which actually means that there are 40 verticals in total. Alright, so if you’re a blogger who blogs about sport, you fall into 1 vertical only.
This is how it works for advertisers – Advertisers approach AdGator and want to invest money into a campaign, AdGator will explore the advertisers target audience and various verticals will be chosen. Now, if a company is going to invest a lot of money into a campaign, naturally the advertiser is going to be extremely selective about which verticals they want their banners to be displayed in. I would say that most advertisers would only want to select a couple verticals, let’s just call it 4 for simplicity. So what this means is that the advertiser will advertise in 4 verticals of the possible 40, that’s 10%. This means that only 10% of the bloggers will receive revenue! Obviously the more advertisers the better, provided they select a wide spread of verticals amongst themselves.
My point here is that I don’t want you to get confused when you add the banners to your website and never receive any revenue. You will only get paid if an advertiser chooses a vertical, which your blog falls under. If you’re blogging about 1 topic, then you have a 1 in 40 chance of receiving revenue, that’s a 2.5% chance of earning anything.
What’s interesting about this is that it doesn’t favour niche bloggers unless you’re fortunate enough to select a vertical that an advertiser is interested in. Sort of makes me want to ask the AdGator dudes for a list of the 40 sub verticals so we can all do some targetting! Remember, you can fall into a myriad of verticals, so writing around a wide range of topics would work in your favour.
Disclaimer – This post was not written as a flame at AdGator, it’s obvious that I’m a huge fan – I wanted you to understand what really goes on and why you might never see an advert or a cent for adding the banners to your website.
Interesting points Chris.
I would also like to ask the adgator guys why there’s no terms of use on the adgator site. I see some blogs with 3-5 of the same ad banners on their site.
Ash, I think the main thing to remember is that it’s a new startup, which is finding it’s feet and naturally these things are not getting too much attention because they’re really busy finding advertisers so we can all be paid :)
Totally understand and i feel bad for ‘complaining’ about them, seeing as how I’m making good money off the ads this week but surely a terms of use is a necessary requirement. Or at the very least a FAQ would be nice. To answer questions like How many banners can we put on one site? Can we put banners on multiple sites using the same adgator account? etc
Just some constructive criticism.
I think their doing a great job as I’ve made more money in the past 4 days with adgator than what I’ve made with adsense over the same period, so the bloggers are definitely benefiting:)
Well, it’s alright for some. We will just have to look on enviously while you guys in SA coin it!
Seriously though, it does sound like a good thing, except when it interferes with the core business of Afrigator,since they have now stopped picking up our posts and feeds from all over Africa because of these ads.
Ye Denford, it’s sad that it’s so limiting, but I mean, there are no systems that are going to make everyone a whole lot of money, it’s just not how things ever work hey..
I’m very curious to see what happens this coming week, because I’m getting more and more emails from people who are upset that I recommended this system, yet it doesn’t earn them anything :/
Hi Chris – good post again – you’re asking the right questions and put out good info so as always I’m pleased to see you talking about this!
Your assumptions of how Adgator verticals work are spot on with one exception. While we do have sites in say 40 verticals we are only selling the 4 main verticals to advertisers.
The sub-verticals are too small at this stage to offer such detailed targeting but with time and growth we will start to offer sub-verticals.
So at this stage If you’re in one of 4 verticals you’ve got a 25% chance of being served a paid ad. So far – every advertiser has chosen at least 3 verticals and the nice thing with our new campaigns is that when you combine all 3 campaigns to be run concurrently then every single vertical is making money.
@Ash – in terms of the T&C’s this has been a work in progress. On Monday we will be launching a RULES page which shows people what they can/can’t do on Adgator. Our T&Cs are taking longer to finalise because they’re sitting with a bunch of legal eagles! But, having said that, we have noticed things that we don’t like and we need to make people aware of what the rules of acceptance are. (Watch out for an email from us on Monday).
@Denford – Afrigator is our core and we’re not forgetting it in the least. Stii is working full time on Afrigator development while I have been developing Adgator (technology) so we have dedicated resources to both. One area that we are struggling with a little is the support for both platforms because while Lester has been doing a fantastic job on support and communication we have so many requests coming in from both Afrigator & Adgator that it’s difficult to respond immediately to people.
@Justin – This is fantastic, EXACTLY the information all the AdGator users need to know. I would think about writing a part 2 of your latest post on the blog, just put it all out there.
25% is a hell of a lot better and if each advertiser is choosing 3 verticals, that’s 75% which is golden.
Thanks, once again, for heading on over and clearing everything up – it’s often the support and understand that sells a product effectively.
Can’s wait to see the new advertisers rolling out :)
Hi, I made some money from AdGator as well so far. Check the real stats and a breakdown with some screen shots on the link I provided. It doesn’t quite work as they they advertise it.
I took a look, well done.
I’m curious about Kalahari, what website are you displaying Kalahari links on? I wouldn’t mind giving it a go myself :)
I’ve tried Amazon before, but didn’t have too much luck, then again, Kalahari is more local than Amazon and a lot of my traffic is local..