Do you track banner performance?
 

I've just recently installed phpadsnew so I can easily toss banners left and right across my (non)traffic producing sites. I've been looking at the stats it produces which reports both adviews (the number of times a banner has been displayed) and adclicks (the number of times the banner has been clicked). This seems pretty damned nifty. One could monitor these values and easily determine which banners produce clicks and which ones just take up space. One could then delete the completely suck-ass banners and add 'weight' to the banners which produce more clicks. This would have to lead to more effective advertising.

So, the question is, do any of you do this or do you just toss up banners and keep your fingers crossed like I have always done?

I use the hell out of it, though not as much as I should. When I'm deploying ads on a new page I always make sure that each ad spot has 5-6 niche targeted ads in rotation, then I leave them for a month. When I come back to check ad performance 2 or 3 weeks later I look at CTR for each ad spot, and I usually have one ad performing great, 2-3 performing OK and 1-2 that are for shit and get dropped. It's help me fine tune traffic to sponsors immensely :)

I believe your approach is a good one, however, I have found in the past that clickthrough performance != sales performance.

A lower clickthrough banner might actually convert a surfer better than a higher-clickthrough banner. So, to throw a monkey wrench into the works, you might also try to determine a gut feeling about a particular banner's performance.

A really blind banner will have a much higher clickthrough ratio, but, misleading the surfer to a sponsor tour generally doesn't earn the sale. :)

Damned coder.

Very good point. I hadn't reached that far in thought process yet.

Since I don't use blind links that's not a concern for me :D

phpadsnew - great program :D
Here's a tip you may find handy - make all your ads in html, even if it's just to hold the banner in place. Instead of pulling a 'fresh' banner every time from your database, same-surfers get the cached image if seeing it twice, cutting down on bandwidth. Least I think that's how it works :)

Oh ya, have been tracking banners for a long time. Dont see why people would'nt. Ads are the most important part of what we do. The more clicks we get to the sponsor, the more we should make.

I see SO many people that dont, they just throw up some ads and they are done.

That can probably be true, about a banner, though it might have high clicks, does'nt mean it is doing it's job. But ya gotta start somewhere..:)

And phpadsnew rocks! I've been using it before it was "new", would'nt be without it.

ronnie

I would like to be able to track my banners and phpadnews sounds like a great program.

Is this phpasdnews expensive?

And could someone with not too much computer experience be able to handle it?

phpadsnew is free. One of it's great features. I have not really used the newer version, so I am not much help. I use a much older one. But I know a bunch of people use the new one here.

ronnie

For those interested...http://phpadsnew.com/two/

i started to use phpadsnew on one of my ex linksites and i didnt like it ses wise, so i go with the old coding...still think if that was wise desicion..ses wise think yes, making it myself easier i think no |cool|

Thanks for the info, I think I will check it out.

I do over at my LL. PhpAdsNew is very good.

All html ads. Not really that found of doing it with JavaScript invocation but it seems like the only way to get it to work well with html ads.

I just run it on Marks but not free sites.
After about 6 months, aside from rotating the banners, I find it less and less useful.
ie.. comparing a text only link vs a flash add vs a flash ad with text below.

I find it useless on free sites.
Some sites list higher on New etc.. who is viewing the ad, way too many variables to try to accuractely account for.

If you have a steady stream of traffic to a specific location.. LL, Hub, etc.
Then it's fine IMO. But because it works there, does NOT mean it works on free sites or galleries.

I don't have 3 scripts installed to track, LL, free site, tgp traffic, though time consuming it may be fun to check out.