My (Dismal) Experience With EC’s Sponsor Ads, Part II: End Of The Story
Posted by
eli
on 12/20/09• Categorized as Consulting
My third sponsor ad with Entrecard ended just today, with dismal results, burning my money at the rate of $ 1.00 per hour.
image from riez-tech.blogspot.com
As I’ve written in my earlier post, I tried the EC Sponsor Ads after I have received an e-mail from Cindy Ung of Entrecard which was also sent to all members, and which promises, in part, as follows:
“Do you need extra traffic? We are slowly launching our sponsor program and are looking for sponsors. It’s easy, you can sponsor Entrecard for only $25! In return, this is what you’ll get:
Not only will Entrecard bring traffic to your blog, but you will see a HUGE increase in your widget ad price (up to 2000%!). Because of all the traffic you’re getting, many other entrecard members will advertise on your blog. This is an awesome way to earn MORE EC credits!!”
Entrecard Needs Funds
I know Entrecard needs cash for its operating and maintenance expenses, so I accepted the invitation to be a sponsor.
Results of FIRST Ad Campaign (Full Network Ad)
During my first ad campaign for $ 25.00 which run on full network or in Entrecard’s 20,000 blogs, I received 577 extra traffic, 41,776 impressions, a click through rate (CTR) of 0.0138, a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) of $ 0.5984 and cost per click (CPC) of $ 0.0433.
At that time there were 8 sponsor ads running, excluding 2 of Entrecard’s house ads, so my ad lasted for 4.5 days.
Result of SECOND Ad Campaign (Category Only)
My second campaign run on a Category Only, in Business and in Making Money Online categories.
After 5 days I only received 55 clicks, 12,301 impressions, and spending $ 10.00.
As a result, I archived the Category only campaign, created a new campaign for a Full Network , and added another $ 25.00 to my remaining $15.00 balance, making my total funds to $ 40.00.
Result of THIRD Ad Campaign (Full Network)
During my third campaign, my total $ 40.00 in my advertiser account was fast burning, at $ 1.00 an hour. At that time there were only 2 sponsor ads running, in addition to EC’s own house ads.
Hence, the frequency of my ad appearing on blogs, using the 15% ad inventory reserved by Entrecard, which also explained why my funds was burning faster compared to my first ad campaign.
My stats:
Budget: $ 40.00
Category: All (full network)
Impressions: 73,317
Clicks: 756
CTR 0.0103
CPM $ 0.5979
CPC $ 0.0580
EC Sponsor Ads is Expensive
Based on the foregoing statistics, I can say that EC sponsor ads is very expensive. Its cost per click (CPC) at $ 0.0580 costs higher than the other ad networks, like Adgitize’s $ 0.01005.
Advertising is expensive in Entrecard because, as mentioned, it is charging on a per impression basis.
So, when your ad runs across all categories and appeared even on the widgets of inactive blogs, with ad prices of 2ec, 4ec, and 8ec, EC counted the impression and deduct it from your funds.
Sponsor Ad Did Not Increase My Widget Ad Price
Entrecard’s promotion of its Sponsor Ads, as mentioned in its e-mail, promises that an advertiser can “see a HUGE increase in your widget ad price (up to 2000%!).”
This did not happen in my case, during the first, second and third ad campaigns. My blog’s widget ad price prior to my sponsor ad has remained the same, from a low of 1.024 ec / day to a high of 2048 ec / day, sometime going up to 3078 ec/day.
Entrecard’s projection of an increase of up to 2,000 widget ad price is only applicable if your ad price is 2ec / day at the start.
Sponsor Ad Did Not Increase My Advertisers
Entrecard’s promotion also states that: “Because of all the traffic you’re getting, many other entrecard members will advertise on your blog. This is an awesome way to earn MORE EC credits!!”
However, in my case, my advertisers has remained constant, at 12-13 advertisers on a waiting list (queue) for 13- 14 days.
The increase of the many entrecard members who will advertise on your blog as a result of the traffic you may get from your sponsor ad applies only if your ad price is at 2ec/day. At that price, any increase to 4ec, 8ec, 16ec and 34ec / day is very affordable.
But blog’s normal ad price at a low of 1024 ec/day is already too expensive for further price increases.
Conclusion
The results of my 3 ad campaigns are dismal.
Entrecard’s Sponsor Ads is good only while your ad is running or while your money lasts in your advertiser account. Its value lies in blog promotion and branding, or if you want a sudden burst of promotion.
However, if your ad runs on a full network, it is not an effective kind of targeted promotion and branding, for the reason that many categories are unrelated to your niche.
On the other hand, a “Category Only”, promotion is very slow and is not worth the expense. Your ad may run for 10 days but you will receive an intermittent kind of extra traffic, while your CPM increases at a faster rate.
Well, at least, I was able to contribute my share to EC’s operating and administrative expenses, knowing fully well that running an ad network with 20,000 member-users entails a lot of expenses.
However, in terms of cost-benefit ratio, my experience indicates that the cost is more than its benefits.
Maybe it’s high time for the EC management to evaluate the program for the purpose of reducing the rates, considering that for the past 7 days until today, December 20, 2009, it has only 2 advertisers.
Yes, I guess this just confirms it. EC is just not worth it. You could have had an extra one on Adgitize or some other with that 40bucks!
Once again, EC has shown a distinct lack of business acumen. If they made the advertising worth it (ie: Cheaper!) then more people would buy, and they’d make more money! Sadly it seems this rather simple logic is lost on them.
No surprises there I guess.
Maybe EC should put up some Adsense Ads on their site to gain some revenue.
@ Chinaren, thanks for your very sensible and intelligent comment. As you yourself posted in your blog, advertising using EC sponsor ad was expensive, with your funds burning fast.
After 3 ads and spending a total of $ 75.00 I’m now convinced that EC sponsor ads is not worth the traffic it generates. I think I won’t use that advertising medium again, unless EC reduces its rate to one-half.
Of course, Adgitize is better.
@ Kabalyero, your suggestion was recommended before in the now defunct EC Forum. But I think the management was not and is not listening to sensible ideas.
When they first started the paid ads you were able to choose whether you wanted to pay per click or per impression – per click was more expensive but much more worthwhile. When you pay per impression you are getting charged for the same people opening pages over and over when dropping. Of course the ads where running for a couple weeks and you really began to realize that EC although ec has a lot of traffic, a majority of that traffic is from the same people. For example, if I do 300 drops on each of my 3 blogs, thats 900 ad views – if 15% is your ad that would be 45 impressions of your ad (for this example yours is the only one running). Out of the 45 times your ad shows up, how many times would I be interested in clicking on it? Once. Per impression just isn’t worth it when you have the same people using up all of your impressions. I give myself a headache when I start thinking of these numbers – so, if it doesn’t make sense, sorry AND I’ll probably still use the sponsor ads every once in a while.
Sheila
Sheila
Eli- Well, thanks for trying this out for the rest of us! Since EC went to adding in 15% of their own ads the clicks that I get on any of my blogs from EC widgets is really dismal. They always said that there weren’t very many chain clickers, but I have to wonder, because of that drop, at that time. I no longer chain click, even though it was a great way to see new blogs. But you get stalled very quickly. When there is a sponsored ad that appears across the system you see that same ad over and over, and just get annoyed at that blogger for hogging ads (I know this may not be rational, but it’s how it makes me feel).
Meanwhile, there are sort of 2 levels of blogger society at EC now. If your ads cost 768 ECs or more, those in the lower bracket really can’t afford them. So those people will advertise on blogs that cost 512 or fewer ECs. Those who can afford the higher prices will pay them, and thus get more ECs back. Doing enough clicking to be able to regularly afford the higher priced ads, when your own blog isn’t bringing in those prices is just ridiculous. You can only generate 300 a day by clicking even at the best! So you would need to have another 460 coming in from ad purchases (since we no longer receive anything from those who click on us.) To get 460 a day from ads the ad price had to be 1024 ECs (I would get 512 of them). If the ad price were 764 I would only get 384… not enough to sustain the 768 ECs a day expense of advertising on even one high-priced blog. So, I can never break out of that position unless I can attract a lot of advertisers who will queue up and move me up the EC society ladder.
@ Sharkbytes, your observation is very correct and I fully agree with you about the situation in EC and the ad prices which are irrationable.
Our problem as users is that the EC management or owners do not listen to our brilliant and doable recommendations. They make decisiion from the ivory tower. You can’t also comment on the EC blog and post in the Forum since the comment section was disabled and the Forum was closed.
The EC owner is not like Ken Brown of Adgitize who always answer our questions and attend to our concerns promptly.
@ Sheila, thanks for sharing your ideas and observation about the EC sponsor ads and the manner of ad impressions. You have added a great insight on how the system works.
I haven’t tried paid advertising on EntreCard. My general rule is only to advertise with funds that I’ve already earned from the advertising platform. I advertise with Adgitize and CMF Ads as part of my re-investment. Both of them also offer a much better CPC than EntreCard. My Adgitize CPC is below a penny a click.
I must admit that I’m still sort of a chain dropper. However, my chains are more Adgitize oriented than EntreCard oriented. I do mix the chains a bit to keep the chains running, and when I’ve gone through my Adgitize clicks and the EntreCard chains fail, I go back to my Inbox.
It is worth noting that I get more traffic from people dropping off of their inboxes than I do from EntreCard advertising, so dropping remains important in terms of getting people to drop on you and increase your popularity.
It may be that if you never visit any other EntreCard blogs, the paid advertisements may have some effect, but for active community members, paid advertisements have little effect, or can even have a negative affect as people react negatively to paid ads, or ads that appear too frequently.
I would have recommended using http://www.cmfads.com at that budget – you can choose the most popular blogs by Alexa rank and target them, you can stagger the campaign and you will see your own ad space rise in popularity. What’s more once you have a load of advertisers you can raise the price of your own ad and so on. The clickthroughs were impressive when I did it there.
Hi Eli,
EntreCard’s Promotion was just not honest enough
Like you highlighted only members who are “inactive” in EntreCard can achieve a sky-rocking ad price (only just to stop at 256 EC) until their paid ad expires after 3 – 5 days.
Looking at the first sponsor ad it was rather disappointing (for me) to see them being inactive while dropping on them (no return from them). That’s one of the reasons why such an ad campaign will lead to no where if you don’t return the drops. The Popularity points never went higher than 250 throughout the last weeks. You may gain some readers but if you drop back, you’ll get the daily “free” traffic.
In our case (Blogs that hit more than 300 visitors from EntreCard) it’s also difficult to keep the newly gained visitors because of the 300 card-dropping limit and as we drop usually on our favorite 200 or 300 blogs daily.
If someone likes to advertise in EntreCard, they should do it when they are not that popular (0-150 visitor daily from EntreCard) and trying to drop back on the new visitors to keep them and the additional traffic for the future.
The management of EntreCard should reduce the deposit to 10$ like with the paid ads in April 2009. Even when the funds would run out within 1 or 2 days, more members would give it a try. It’s similar to Adgitize, a price above 20$ is risky for many HOBBY bloggers who do blogging just for fun.
The way Adgitize promote advertising is appealing to exactly these hobby bloggers, do the daily actions (blogging and blog hopping) and you could get back your invested advertising money or at least a big part of it + additional traffic (up to 3.000 visitors/monthly)
@ Martin, as always, you have a superb analysis on Entrecard. Your comment has enhanced this post of mine. Thanks for taking the time to share your insights.
I am learning a lot as I am reading through the thread of conversation over here. I am not surprised at all! EntreCard is mismanaged and they still haven’t found a way out to resolve all their problems.
I truly admire you Atty. for testing the waters on behalf of all EC members. Now no one would want to sponsor ads at EC. $40 is too expensive!
Adgitize is still the best!
@ Aldon, you have a wonderful experience. Thanks for sharing it here. I concur on your observation about Entrecard advertising.
@ Paul, thanks for sharing your experience on cmfads. Yes, I think the total $ 75.00 that I spent in Entrecard advertising would have gone a long way if I put that on CMF Ads blogs, and it would have lasted for one month.
I think I would return CMF Ads after the holidays and resume advertising there again, if my advertiser account has not yet been canceled.
I am sorry you wasted your money but thanks for sharing your experience as you helped me save mine. I will continue to advertise on adgitize.
Thanks for sharing about this info Eli. Really useful for those who’s planning to buy Sponsor Ads on EC. As for me, it is too much
I’m kinda new to Entrecard, and I didn’t even know the existence of Sponsored Ads until I read your blog. Based on what you’ve written, it doesn’t sound good to me.
Making me, not interested to try it out. LOL
I was really consifering that option too, I am glad that I have read your blog, I think I should study it further. I also really need some kind of branding for my blog.