Today a new advertising network, WidgetBucks has been announced. This looks as a good opportunity for publishers, as their ads look very clickable as they don’t look to what we are used to think of as an advertisement.

Why to use WidgetBucks ads

The best reason is that their ads have high CTR. Now according to their site you earn $3-6 CPM which is a great amount (if that is true of course ) They pay through cheque and the lower payment is $50 which is very reasonable.

The adverts are separated into 13 categories with each category having several sub categories, their is also the option for a pseudo contextual advertisements which they have called ???MerchSense??? widgets themselves come in a range of sizes and colours which can be used to match a site or to make the widget stand out.

$25 bonus for signup

As an opening promotion they are offering $25 just for sign up, which makes the target of $50 much easier.

Last comment

I always look into testing new programs and this looks very promising. So I am going to test it and give you a full review later this month. In the meanwhile here is how their ads look like :

With a $25 promotion its worth signing up even if you later take it down as the offer is part of their initial opening and may not be around for ever to sign up to WidgetBucks takes just a second or two.

The NewsRoom is a great idea syndicated content, with short adverts, easily mashable and very easy to insert on to sites. Now it has managed to add the BBC content to its list. This is great news for those outside the USA or who wanted some more varied news, though while attempting to embed a BBC story the teething problems were there apparently I can’t view the Feed in the UK!

This is the problem with News Room great concept but they seem to have continual teething issues, many affiliates are now complaining they haven’t been paid, slow servers and irrelevant ads for the videos.

Its a shame for the BBC that they chose to work with such a company - though the Good news is that nearly all the video on News Room is also available on Youtube as part of the BBC Google deal so while you might not get paid to show the content you might at least have a chance some of your visitors might see it!

Only time will tell if the NewsRoom will be a success but while the problems and doubts over payments, how it determines video views and its slow servers we can’t recommend it.

Recently I was searching for a new CPM company to use with sites that I don’t have good results with adsense. Then I read a thread in a webmaster forum about CodeAds. Their program looks very promising so I thought to give it a try.

Here are some things that made me choose to start over with CodeAds :

• Fast payments. They pay 48 hours after you reach the minimum payout ($10)
• They pay through paypal
• 5% referer bonus

Starting with CodeAds

One bad thing about them is that they pay only for US traffic, but I guess that would be fair. Before using them on every site I have, I thought to give them a try from one site and monitor what happens.

In the meanwhile I got two referral signups which somehow later vanished from my control panel I know this looks fishy but it happens if the company ban someone you refer (or maybe not?)

CodeAds review

To be honest CodeAds is one of the worst networks I ever tried. My overal experience was really poor, and in many cases they caused problems that were visible to my sites.

For instance I was frequently get a “500 error - bad request” instead of an advertisement which exposed me to my visitors. Another thing that made me feel bad about them is that their ads are 99% from third party networks (adengage, CJ, friendfinder, etc.) and they even displayed a “Buy ads from this site” banner which was actually an ad of them from adbrite!

After a few thousand pageviews I finally got my first payment which was $10, but for some reason that I don’t understand they’ve sent me $9.5 Anyway I would suggest to stay away from CodeAds as there are countless programs that are better than that.

What you see above these lines looks nice, and definitely it does not look like an advertisement, right? Well I am afraid you are wrong because this is a new monetization system created by Voxant and TheNewsRoom network. This new kind of advertising is an extended news publishing network with many good partners like the Associated Press, Reuters, McClatchy-Tribune Information, Agence France-Press, etc. and in my opinion they provide a very fresh way to make more money with your web site.

How it works

The news room provides you with video, text and image creatives. All their content is news, which they have very well categorized (and searchable) in their site. What you have to do is grab the content you like - and it is more relevant with your site’s content - and paste the code in your site.

How do they pay?

This program is CPM so you will get paid for every impression of your site, and their ad rates are $1 - $4 depending on the content type you are using.

When do they pay

According to their FAQs they pay on monthly basis. Lowest payment is set to $50.

My first experience

I am a member for just a little time so I don’t have much to say, but I will post back here whenever I have something more to report on TheNewsRoom. Right now I like their system, which is a little different from a “traditional” CPM network, but you will find easily whatever you need. Something I don’t like is that there is not yet been enabled a reporting console, but according to their FAQs they will add it in the near future. I know that this wont sound very professional but they are a serious company so I wont mind for the moment.

I will have you updated on this one, please share your thoughts with us

Just got an email announcement form adBrite, regarding their new program called “BritePic”. The BritePic is a new advertisement format which looks very good, and it seems - at least for the moment that people don’t recognize it as an ad - that it can convert well too.

The idea is simple. You are using BritePic’s javascript code to display a picture from your site, which will then display an advertisement when someone put the mouse over it. Bellow is an example :