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In-Text Ads, The Quiet Solution

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In-Text Ads

It seems that everyone has a message to share these days, and blogs are a great way for publishers to share stories, guides, and more with the world. Content rules on these sites, and it is important to writers that their readers have the best user-experience possible while reading. As we know, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and the same goes for content online. Publishers must find a way to monetize their content with advertising.

There are different ways to gain profit from blogging: banner ads, Google AdSense, pop-out Ads, In-Text Ads, etc. However, not all ads are created equal, and many that make noise, glow, or cause other distractions pull readers away from the actual content. So what monetization tool is the least intrusive and disturbing to the text on the page?

Infolinks decided to conduct a study that investigates the reality of readers’ behavior with In-Text ads. Exactly what percentages of visitors are truly exposed to these ads? This data can help distinguish how disruptive these ads actually are to your readers.

During a 10-month period in 2010, Infolinks conducted a study specifically focused on In-Text ads. The Infolinks Research Team monitored 40k sites within their ad network to determine what percentage of visitors to the site “hovered” over the ads and were exposed to the ad bubble. Infolinks then monitored the number of “hovering” visitors who actually clicked on the In-Text hyperlinks.

The results were interesting and beneficial for those implementing In-Text ads.  10% of visitors to the Infolinks network of publishers were in fact exposed to the In-Text Ads by hovering over the links and viewing the ad bubble. This means that 90% of the readers were not exposed to the ads at all.  This is in comparison to 100% of visitors who are exposed to “noisy” banner ads.

The study also revealed that 10% of those exposed were interested enough in the ad to actually click on the bubble. So, all-in-all, In-Text Ads yield an average CTR of 1%, which is much higher than the average CTR of banner ads.

These results are proof for those opponents of In-Text Ads who claim that the In-Text option is “noisy” or “distracting”. According to our results, In-Text Ads are indeed the “least intrusive” option to monetize content. This form of advertising allows 90% of readers to bypass viewing the ads, while still revealing the ad bubbles to the 10% of visitors who are interested. Therefore In-Text advertising serves both publishers and advertisers – it doesn’t distract away from the majority of published content and the advertisers benefit by sharing their message with only interested readers.

Infolinks, Inc., established in 2007, is a leading provider of In Text advertising services.  Infolinks provides publishers worldwide with an innovative way to monetize their websites. With over 40K publishers and billions of impressions, Infolinks has the scoop on the latest trends in the online world.  For more information, visit http://www.infolinks.com.

About

I have a degree in Public Relations from the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University. I have worked in PR with various Hi Tech companies and now am the PR manager at Infolinks. Infolinks is the leading In-Text ad provider and bi-monthly produces marketing research based on its database of over 40,000 websites.

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{ 38 Responses }

  1. Cosmin Stefan says:
    Hello Tammy! You make your point very well. In-text ads are indeed less intrusive than most other forms of advertising. I doubt a blogger will become a millionaire just from them but they can be a good source of additional income, not to mention a viable alternative to AdSense. Personally I don’t think I’ll use them on my blog but I’d rather see a post with some well placed and relevant in-text ads in the content than an big ugly AdSense box just below the title of the article.
  2. Saket Jajodia says:
    I never like In-Text-Ads I find i very annoying.. And I think it will surly helps you in decreasing readers instead of increasing.. There are many more reason I hat it.. There are more disadvantage then advantage of using it..
  3. Harsh Agrawal says:
    Nice post Tammy and I have been using In-text ads from last 1 year.. Though one should be taking care of text color, size and obviously no. of occurance in a page. Anyways, for Infolinks I have couple of suggestions: Dashboard) Infolinks Dashboard/cPanel seems like ages old.. You should work on new interface and reporting module. Affiliate transparency) You have an affiliate program which is not at all transparent and one can get into it by contacting support. But there is no provision for seeing the aff. stats and referrals... Could you work on it and make it transparent... ?
  4. Jeevan Jacob John says:
    Hey Tammy, I just joined Infolinks yesterday (thought I could try it out). I think your analysis would be useful to me. I hope to make some cash out of advertisements :D Thank you for the post ! Jeevan Jacob John
  5. Rakesh Kumar says:
    Still yet i haven't applied for infolinks because i feel that i will effect my Google hits. Is it true? Suggest me Tammy
  6. Alex says:
    This is a less intrusive way of having ads on your page but I think text ads have a problem too. Many people don't know that having a text in blue it's actually an ad or something that might be related to that keyword, this way, they are never exposed to the ad although they were looking for something related to that ad. Also, I actually find it quite annoying when I am reading something and I mistakenly hover over a link an annoying bubble appears. When the other ads, like static banners are in a set place and I can ignore them and read the content I want to read peacefully .
  7. Mani Viswanathan says:
    I tried many In-text networks, found Infolinks much better than others. But after having a look at the CPC I decided to remove it from my blog.
  8. Lakhyajyoti says:
    I have been using infolinks for last one year.But last month I removed it from my blog and switched to Kontera.
  9. Nishadha says:
    The CTR is relatively ok but the payout is pretty poor with infolinks, I get more infolink clicks than Adsense clicks but I earn more through Adsense. It is a good way to monetize your content without sacrificing your ad space but for it to be popular I think it needs better advertisers.
  10. David says:
    Hello Tamar, This is an interesting article about in-content advertising and I enjoyed reading it. In regard to a point Justin made, Kontera and Adsense can be used on the same blog. As long as the ads from a third party ad network such as Kontera, can't be confused for AdSense ads, and doesn’t interfere with Google ads, there’s no problem. In addition I wanted to mention a study done by Comscore, a third-party Internet marketing research company, that found Kontera to be one of the least intrusive advertising platforms. You can read about the study here http://www.kontera.com/advertisers/research-results Thanks David Stein Kontera Community Manager davids@kontera.com Monetize your site with Kontera In-Text ads
  11. semmy says:
    Hi Tammy thank you for your analysis. What kind of tools do you used for tracking the analysis? Thank you very much
  12. Maria Pavel says:
    Hi, I've been searching a lot for a good company to offer intext ads and never found 'till yesterday. Because today, wow, I finally found this company mentioned in this article - InfoLinks, it sure looks very nice and I'm going to signup for their company. Indeed, in-text ads are extremely profitable and very easy to use, I always wanted to put in-text ads on my websites but never found the right company, but now I finally found it and I'm going to put it on all my websites, hehe. Like you said, in-text ads are the least intrusive and disturbing to the text on the page and that's what it's the most important thing, to have ads that don't annoy the visitor/reader and have high potential of being clicked. Thank you very much for sharing this great website, InfoLink, you really don't know how much I appreciate it. Keep up the good work! Best regards, Maria
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hi Maria, this is Tammy. Thanks for the encouraging words! I am so happy that you have decided to join the Infolinks family. If you have any questions, don't hesitate - support@infolinks.com.Welcome :)Tammy
  13. Jitendra Singh says:
    Tammy thanks for wonderful analysis on text ads. I have already enabled the infolinks.
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hi Jitendra, I am really glad to hear! If you have any questions, or would like to optimize your site for higher earning potential, please feel free to contact us at support@infolinks.com.Good luck :)Tammy
  14. Jan Husdal says:
    Interesting analysis, but not convincing. While Infolinks may work for some, it doesn't for me. Honestly, I despise having Infolinks on my own blog, and I can't stand it when I see it on other blogs, because it distracts my attention from their content, and the "real" links that are really worth clicking on. I used to have AdSense on my blog, with an average CTR of 0.6%, which wasn't too bad, as I was making $1 of every 100 visitor, but I scrapped the whole AdSense thing in favor of "invited" ads, which actually brings in a lot more.
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hey Jan, the numbers don't lie :) But I understand that not everyone is a fan of In-Text advertising. The good news about In-Text is that even if you don't like it (which is fair enough!) you don't have to be exposed to the ad bubble. Just don't "hover" over the double underlined ads with your mouse.Thank you for the feed back on my post, I really appreciate it. I understand not everyone loves In-Text, but there are many, many publishers that are finding big success (big earnings) with Infolinks.Have a good one :)Tammy
      • Jan Husdal says:
        I do agree that agree that as a money-making strategy, in-text ads are probably a good way to go. To me, a professional blogger whose reputation hangs on providing quality content and quality outlinks for his readers, in-text ads like Infolinks or Kontera are a big no-no.
  15. Earl says:
    Heh, they have high click rates but kinda low payouts. The problem is that none of the really good publishers use them so its to hard to make any reasonable amount of money.
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hey Earl, hmm that sounds suspicious. Please contact us at support@infolinks.com to be sure that your site is optimized and to make sure everything is okay. Secondly, its so not true - we have some big named bloggers who not only use Infolinks but are big fans.Check out John Chow: http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-with-infolinks/Zac Johnson: http://zacjohnson.com/make-money-with-in-text-advertising/This is just two.Anyway, thanks for sharing Earl. I love reading everyone's comments.Tammy
  16. Suresh Khanal says:
    I used a few in-text ads solutions for my website and blogs. And I'm still using Infolinks though left Kontera due to its very poor performance for me. But I don't know if the contents in my sites are not that relevant for the kind of advertisers in this network or the whatever, I'm getting very small amount of revenue compared to the coloring I'm allowing in my posts and articles. Might be it works best for the blogs with blogging niche or something else but for Computer Educational content, the revenue is almost negligible. I've not used it for my blog SEO MMO Tips and wonder if I should?
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hey Suresh, Tammy here. Check out these two posts:http://blog.infolinks.com/2011/02/08/10-%E2%80%9Cdonts%E2%80%9D-for-your-infolinks-account/ http://blog.infolinks.com/2011/02/01/10-%E2%80%9Cto-dos%E2%80%9D-for-your-infolinks-account/Then reach out to us at support@infolinks.com.Tammy :)
  17. DiTesco says:
    Interesting analysis. I myself have not yet been convinced that "in-text" ad links are a good choice for publishers. Nonetheless, I will give it a test drive and see how it goes. It will be very interesting to see how it performs. Thanks for sharing this useful info.
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hey DiTesco. Good news :) I encourage you to talk to our support team before you get started to be sure that your double underlined links are configured for the highest monetization - support@infolinks.com.Welcome :)Tammy
  18. Justin Germino says:
    Infolinks and Kontera both can work for some blogs and bloggers, I know several bloggers who make a few hundred per month with Infolinks. You get to choose the "link density" and as long as you don't have so many links that your articles is riddled with links competing with each other it can work. I definitely tell bloggers to use one or the other, don't AdSense and InfoLinks up the same blog as they compete with each other and don't "double" your earnings.
    • Tammy Frumkin says:
      Hey Justin, thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you about choosing one In-Text ad provider, otherwise (as you said) the ads are competing with each other and you reduce your CTR and lower your CPM. BUT ( a big one) Google AdSense is a "different animal" (so to speak.) Our ads do not compete with AdSense and we work great together! Many of our publishers find that the combo of Infolinks and AdSense is the absolute best for optimized monetization. :)