Chaining with Advertising.com

I am going to give Advertising.com a try. Does anyone have any idea how I would chain it so that I can display something like AdSense if it can't fill? It allows you to "Upload a File" or "Enter a URL" to "redirect" if it can't fill the impression. I'm not sure what to do with that... I thought I should be providing a backup tag of some kind, a la AdsDaq.

Do I want to upload a file containing my AdSense code and hope it means it will put the code in place of the ad it otherwise would have served if it could fill it? Does anyone have any experience with this who can shed some light on the matter?

Thanks!

adsdaq is one of the few that do that.

i would make a hidden directory WAY up, like site.com/asd/23e4/dfs/fds/adsense.html and paste the adsense code on that html page, and then use that page for your url.

Ok, so Advertising.com's "redirect" is looking for the URL of a file that contains the code we would have pasted directly into AdsDaq, then, and will simply run the code contained in the file?

Unfortunately the site offered no documentation and I'm still waiting to hear from their customer support. Have you used them, by the way? If so, did you get a decent CPM/fill? I read they will take the first 3 impressions of each visitor or ip address. Or something. :-P

they denied me years ago.... never tried again

I joined yesterday and it doesn't look like you get approved or denied until you apply for a particular ad "placement." I held off on applying for a placement until I was sure I knew how to chain the unfilled impressions. I haven't applied for a placement yet because I'm still not sure and I haven't heard back from them regarding the question I sent them about it via email. They may well reject me once I actually apply for the placement.

I just got a canned "thanks but no thanks" from Casale Media.

I need a decent CPM network to chain with Adsdaq. :-(

Originally Posted by Johnny5

I am going to give Advertising.com a try. Does anyone have any idea how I would chain it so that I can display something like AdSense if it can't fill? It allows you to "Upload a File" or "Enter a URL" to "redirect" if it can't fill the impression. I'm not sure what to do with that... I thought I should be providing a backup tag of some kind, a la AdsDaq.

Do I want to upload a file containing my AdSense code and hope it means it will put the code in place of the ad it otherwise would have served if it could fill it? Does anyone have any experience with this who can shed some light on the matter?

Thanks!

I actually just faced this. I was trying to plug my adsense as backup tags for Advertising.com, as it was running at the end of my chain.

All you have to do is open up notepad with a new file, put ONLY the analytics tag in question into it, save that as .html and upload this file. When it calls the HTML file your adsense ad will load!

I"m sure this would work with any code.

Thanks, Man. What other networks are in your chain? I can't seem to find any that accept forums, pay half decent, and don't serve malware.

Originally Posted by Johnny5

Thanks, Man. What other networks are in your chain? I can't seem to find any that accept forums, pay half decent, and don't serve malware.

Hah - yeah man EVER the problem with forums. SO many of these ad networks don't want to touch you! I've always had wildly fluctuating levels of success with ad networks, so can't say one is better than the other in my opinion. The one thing that is great is vertical ad networks. For instance, we run one video game site, and we use GamerDNA, and though they tag the forums separately they value them since its all relevant traffic. If you can find a vertical ad network in your industry, then they'd be a great place to get some forum monetization.

As an aside rant, I think its incredibly stupid that networks don't want their ads in forums. Forums are the original social networking on the internet, and you can't find more dedicated groups of people to a topic than in a forum.

Anyways here's what my strategy is, though it is a long-term strategy...

I think of forums as a place to gather a community, and generate great traffic and page views. I then add onto those forums things like news content, photo galleries, video galleries, information pages, etc.

When it comes to tagging, I separate into 3 categories, Homepage, ROS and Community. Really you're splitting the site into two categories, content and community.

Ideally, you drive your forums users into viewing your content pages as much as is humanly possible, though this isn't always easy to do.

Then, you can use the reach of your traffic with both forums and content, and apply for the higher quality networks. Sometimes you can run their tags on both content and community, and sometimes you'll be asked to remove their tags from the forums.

Its a bitch to maintain the different daisy chains, but gives a great mixture of higher and lower quality networks. You're right though, straight monetizing forums is a bitch! I'll make you a deal: First one of us to find the perfect monetization network for forums post it here.

My final rant is that it is a crying shame that the CMS for vBulletin is not very good. There really isn't an elegant choice for a CMS/Forum combo that is properly integrated... only way we've done it is through just custom building a CMS around a forum.

Have you tried stuff like Driving Revenue and Skimlinks :: Simplified affiliate marketing for publishers - generate revenue from your site's content easily I've actually had decent success with them, and they're super unoffensive. Of course its never more than a few hundred extra bucks, but hey better than a kick to the face.