Propeller Ads
Review: Pros & Cons And Everything You Need To Know
BY MAHESH MOHAN ON JULY
21, 2015
Google AdSense is the
biggest (and the most popular) ad network with millions of advertisers and publishers. Thanks to
Google’s huge AdWords ad inventory.
However, it doesn’t
really mean that AdSense is always the best way to monetize your website. There
are a dozen other ad networks that are willing to pay a higher CPM for your
traffic. Propeller Ads is one of
them.
CPM (Cost Per
Mille) stands for Cost Per 1,000 Impressions. CPM networks pays for every 1,000
impressions you generate. If a CPM ad network is paying you $1 CPM then it
means that they’re paying you $1 for every 1,000 page views you generate.
Over the past one decade
I’ve recommended AdSense and only AdSense — on my blog
posts, blog comments, email enquiries, and everywhere else. And it was simply
because… AdSense has got an ad inventory that’s unmatched by any other ad
network. So, I imagined that no other ad network can beat the CPM
offered by AdSense.
But the problem is… we
can’t predict the AdSense income. As you can see… I’m not longer monetizing the
blog with any of those ad networks and the reason is none of them gives
guaranteed income (except private ads network like BuySellAds.com).
I used to average around
$0.50 per click on AdSense for several years and then it suddenly dropped to
$0.05-$0.15 per click for few months and then it started giving over $1 per
click. However, it didn’t last for long and I pulled off all sorts of ad
networks on the blog and started selling selective private ads only.
Why Propeller Ads
Propeller Ads is
an ad network based in U.K. that promises 100% of your international traffic
and the highest CPM possible. Traffic from the following
countries generates the maximum CPM: U.S. & Canada, U.K., and
Australia.
Unlike Google AdSense,
Propeller Ads is a CPM ad network which basically means that it pays for every
1,000 ad impressions you generate. So it doesn’t matter whether the users are
clicking your ads or not — you get paid! And that’s why large publishers prefer
CPM networks over CPC ad networks (like AdSense, Bing Ads, etc.).
If
your traffic and its quality is stable then CPM ads can generate
guaranteed income every day and every month. Have you ever noticed the way some
of the high-traffic websites display content as 10-50 slides? Yes, it’s to
increase the number of pages views per visit — and eventually the
CPM.
Propeller Ads: Types Of
Ad Products
Propeller Ads offers you a variety of ad products and that’s one
space where Propeller Ads outsmart other ad networks — including Google
AdSense. So it doesn’t matter what type of your blog or website you own —
there will always be an ad product for you.
But that
doesn’t mean that you can send them fake traffic (autosurf, traffic exchanges,
etc.) and make a lot of money. It won’t work that way. Obviously.
Here are the
different types of ad products offered by Propeller Ads:
1. OnClick PopUnder Ads
OnClick PopUnder Ads is perhaps the most effective ad
product by Propeller Ads as it offers the maximum CPM rate (up to $10).
It’s because you get paid for each ad impression (it works on mobile devices
too!).
According to
Propeller Ads, entertainment websites (music, movies, photo, downloads, games,
viral content, etc.) gets the best CPM for pop-under ads.
Here is what can
you expect from a:
Gaming Website
2. Mobile Ads
Propeller Ads
offers two types of mobile ads: Mobile Dialog Ads and Mobile Interstitial
Ads (apart from the regular mobile banner ads).
Here is what can
you expect from a:
Music Website
Mobile
Interstitial Ads
Mobile Interstitial Ads is a full screen mobile ad. It’s one of the top
performing ad product by Propeller Ads because of its higher user
engagement.
Here is what can
you expect from a:
Entertainment Blog
3. Classic Banner Ads
Banner ads are
still popular as it’s the easiest way to reach out to a massive audience at
minimal costs. The best performing banner ads by Propeller Ads are ad units of
sizes: 300×250 and 728×90. Other available ad units are: 468×60, 120×600,
160×600, 800×600, 800×440, and 320×50.
You can check out
their best practices for banner ads placement here.
According to Propeller Ads, entertainment blogs and download sites tends
to perform better than other niche.
Here is what can
you expect from a:
Movie Website
Mobile Apps Review Website
Gaming Blog
4. Layer Ads
Layer Ad is
a banner ad on steroid as it loads banner ads over the website content.
You can choose any of the available banner ad units but a bigger ad unit
such as 800×600 or 800×440 is recommended.
5. Slider Ads
Slider Ad is
again another kind of banner ad that fades in at the bottom of a web page.
Unless the user decides to close, it’s always visible even if he/she is
scrolling up or down.
6. Direct Ads
Direct Ads (or Direct Links) is a unique ad
product in which publishers are given a URL to promote. You can promote it by
creating your own banner ads, text link ads, buttons, or even redirects.
For instance, you
can monetize your 404 pages with a direct ad — without hurting user
experience. According to Propeller Ads, it works best on a downloads
website (ebooks, music, apps, wallpapers, movies, etc.)
Here is what can
you expect from a:
File Sharing
Website
Video Sharing Website
7. Video Ads
If you want to
monetize your video content then can try Video Ads. Propeller Ads offers
three video ad spots: Pre-Roll, Mid-Roll, Post-Roll, and Pre-Game.
Note: All the earning
screenshots are collected as part of the research (with majority of them shared
by Propeller Ads itself on request). I do not run Propeller Ads on my blog as I
prefer selling private ads only. I’ve included as much screenshots as I can —
from different industires — so that you can use it as a benchmark to find out
whether your earnings are on par with other publishers.
Propeller Ads: Pros &
Cons
First things
first. Propeller Ads is not exactly an AdSense alternative. Google AdSense is a
pay-per-click ad network and Propeller Ads is a CPM ad network. It basically
means, AdSense pays for each click-throughs from your website and Propeller Ads
pays for every 1,000 ad impressions.
Google AdSense
works best when your website is in a competitive niche with majority of traffic
from organic search (that is, from search engines). If you have a
high traffic website that’s in a non-competitive industry then the AdSense
earnings could be terrible (especially when its organic traffic is less).
Again, AdSense is
a good choice for file sharing websites, forums, downloads websites where the
traffic quality is low but the page views/visits ratio is very high. Luckily
Propeller Ads (and similar banner networks) works very well on such websites.
Pros
·
It’s super easy to get started as all accounts are activated
instantly. You can login to your publisher account and add all the domain names
that you wish to monetize and you will be notified via email when it’s
approved.
·
Propeller Ads share 80% of their ad revenue with publishers. But
it’s not a good idea to compare two advertisers based only on their
revenue sharing percentage as we don’t know the real size of their total ad
inventory. An advertiser with a massive ad inventory can easily beat the CPM of
a small ad network with just 50% revenue sharing.
·
The reporting of Propeller Ads is pretty simple. It shows your
earnings in a tabular way or on a chart. And the best thing? It’s real-time!
·
Propeller Ads supports the following payment methods: Wire
Transfer, Payoneer, Webmoney, and Prepaid Cards. The minimum payment amount
will be $500 for Wire Transfers and $100 for all other payment methods and is
based on a NET 30 terms. That is, if your total earnings at the end
of January is $300 then you will be paid in the first week of March.
·
Propeller Ads accepts all websites irrespective of their traffic
as long as it doesn’t violate their terms and conditions.
·
It generates the maximum CPM for entertainment websites
(including downloads, music, movies, viral blogs, etc.).
·
As a publisher you can refer other publishers to Propeller Ads and can earn 5% of
his/her future ad revenue — for lifetime.
·
You can even monetize your 404 pages with a full-screen ad. No
more wasted traffic!
·
You can run Propeller Ads along with ads from other
advertising or affiliate networks — like AdSense, Infolinks, CJ, etc.
·
If you are a new publisher and is looking for some personal
assistance then you get direct one-to-one support via email or Skype. Also, if
you have a high traffic website then you get a dedicated account manager who
will assist you to optimize the traffic.
Cons
·
Poor user experience. Your visitors may find full-screen ads,
pop-under ads, push ads, etc. as annoying.
·
Do not support PayPal payments. It’s really a big turn off
because even almost all top AdSense alternatives support
PayPal.
·
Once again, the minimum payout is also on the higher side. And I
suppose it’s because they do not support PayPal payments.
·
The best performing ad units are not traditional banner ads or
mobile ads — it’s pop-under ads and full-page ads. But users (including me)
hate it. However, if you have a high traffic file sharing website or a downloads
website or a maybe even a forum then pop-under ads could be the right choice.
·
It’s true that Propeller Ads is accepting all sorts of
publisher websites (unless of course it doesn’t comply with their terms and
conditions) but it appears like if you want to generate handsome income then
you need either a high-traffic website or a website with high-quality traffic.
·
If your traffic quality is low (it means you get few traffic
from U.S., U.K., and Europe) then Propeller Ads may not be a right choice
unless you want to try pop-under ads, full-page ads, etc.
·
Again, Propeller Ads considers conversions as well when
calculating CPM. A CPM network is supposed to pay a fixed income for every
1,000 pages views irrespective of conversions. But Propeller Ads offers more payment models to advertisers like — CPC (Cost Per
Click) and CPA (Cost Per Action). So your final earnings depends upon the type of ad inventory
too.
·
Your CPM could be extremely low if the traffic quality is poor.
Of course, AdSense also do not pay much for low quality traffic but
at Propeller Ads it’s much more worse. Here’s a screenshot of a popular
Spanish tech blog that receives no meaningful traffic from English speaking
countries. Its CPM with Google AdSense was around $0.20 but as you can see
Propeller Ads’ banner ads are not even generating a CPM of $0.05.
Conclusion
Propeller Ads is
not another network where you could fake traffic and money. Like AdSense or any
other reliable publisher network — you need real traffic to make real income.
Google AdSense do
not accept all publisher websites (especially new ones) as they have
strict guidelines. In fact, publisher websites are required to comply
with Google’s AdSense Guidelines as well as the Webmaster Guidelines. It
basically means if you’re doing black hat SEO or is selling text links on your
website then they can disable your AdSense account.
So should you
consider Propeller Ads over Google AdSense? Well, it depends. If your website
(or blog) is new then there’s every chance that Google will deny your AdSense
application and you can consider Propeller Ads.
Again, if you have
a small or large website that’s already running AdSense ads but is not
making enough — even though majority of your traffic is from English
speaking nations — then it makes sense to give Propeller Ads a try.
Or, it’s a good
idea to supplement your existing AdSense income with pop-under ads by Propeller
Ads (as it offers the maximum CPM). Just make sure that your users won’t be
annoyed about it.
Happy Monetizing!
:)
Disclosure: This review was sponsored (?) by Propeller
Ads. However, it hasn’t influenced my views in any way as they
paid for my time and not for a biased positive review.
Monetize your traffic with Propeller Ads
ReplyDeleteIf you have a blog or a personal website, add this banner link
http://www.propellerads.com/?rfd=TBx6