A year ago I touched on In-Text Ads and how much a particular company (Kontera) sucked, In the post I mentioned Info Links and Vibrant Media and that I was going to try those two companies out before I quite on In-Text Ads all together. Since Kontera was so Horrible there is no way that Info Links or Vibrant Media could be worst. I also spoke on how strict Vibrant Media was and how I kept getting turned down when I applied, they always gave some vague reason like type of content, traffic etc.
Eventually I said forget it and went with Info Links, I signed up to them last year and we all know how last year was as far as income is concerned but even in the peak of the recession Info Links still paid far better than Kontera did a year before. Below is a week earnings for Info Links from May.

I remember a long time ago I couldn’t make that with Adsense, the screen shot above is from May and the earnings have gone up even more since then. During that month I was contacted by Vibrant Media, the same guys that turned me down 6 different times and said they would like to run there In-Text Ads on my sites. Nothing had changed about my site, the traffic was the same, it had the same professional design so I found it funny that they would all of a sudden want to work with my sites. I really wanted to tell them to eat shit but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity of making more money with them than with Info Links, so I decided to give them a weeks worth of my time which is more than enough time to make a decision. Below is a screen shot from that week.

As you can see from the screen shot above Vibrant Media earnings don’t come anywhere close to Info Links. Just because they say there number one for In-Text Ads doesn’t mean it’s true. There site and ads look very Vibrant but there is nothing Vibrant about there earnings. I haven’t logged back in since that week. I tried them both on multiple sites in different niches and the results were always the same. On the outside Vibrant Media seems to be the better company but once your logged in you’ll see who the real deal is. You can’t even change the color of the links for Vibrant Media without contacting support and asking them to do it.

Over all Info Links is a better company and they understand who there core publishers are, they provide plugins for WordPress, Blogger Joomla and many other resources for users to simply integrate Info Links into there sites.

That week I when removed Info Links they contacted me immediately and asked me what’s the deal, and I told them I was split testing between them and Vibrant Media for a week, they simply replied see you in a week.

That’s all there is to it Info Links is better….

Chozen.

9 months into 2008 Kontera contacts me talking about joining there program unaware that I was already affiliated with them. I told them I already tried the program and the results were less than mediocre. They told me that there ad inventory had grown drastically since the previous year and that they had a special promotion going on. I decided to give them a shot to see what was up and I must admit the ads were most certainly performing better than before. I was averaging about 300 clicks daily and that’s along side my Google Adsense earnings which were not affected, From October going into December of 2008 the earnings were really good and started to think well maybe Kontera could become a long term income stream.

So When Did Kontera Start to Suck?

It started in January of 2009, as soon as the new year came around the earnings tanked, and when I say tanked I mean “TANKED!!”, I’m talking about getting an average of 200 + clicks per day and only having a $1.28 to show for it. What? That’s a waste of time to say the least, I decided to run the ads for a couple more months which was a big mistake, I should have removed them as soon as they were no longer profitable. So in May I had enough and decided to kick Kontera’s ass to the curve. I wasted 5 months of valuable ad space hoping that the program would come around and it never did. I was like a drug addict that experienced drugs for the first time and keeps on taking the drug trying to relive that first time experience.

So What Am I Using Now?

Well after browsing through a couple threads on the Digital Point forum I ran into InfoLinks, It turns out that I already had an account with them for quite some time but completely forgot about them. Most of the discussions in the forums side with InfoLinks as being a better In Text ad network. So on June 1^st I decided to give them a shot, it’s only been 3 days so I can’t give you a real estimate of how well they perform but the first 3 days are far better than Kontera’s daily average. I’m going to test them out for thirty days to see if there program is worth the time.

What If Info Links Sucks As Well?

Well earlier I mentioned that I was rejected by Vibrant Media, well they have now approved me so if InfoLinks turns out to be Kontera’s retarded little brother then I guess I’ll give them a shot but then again I’m not a fan of Vibrant Media just for the simple fact that I had to apply 4 times before I was accepted, Nothing had changed with Hip Hop Music Dot Com so why was I rejected in the first place?

Is In-text Advertising Even Worth It?

From my personal experience, hell no, But maybe your topic or niche will do better with this type of advertising. To be honest it’s one of the most intrusive forms of advertising there is and it also goes against the principles of web usability. How do I know this? Well I just remember my wife browsing the web one time and I’m not sure what site she was on but the site had in-text ads and I remember her saying “these pop up links are so annoying”. I didn’t know she was referring to in-text ads at the time but that got me thinking, if I’m getting over 20,000 daily visitors to Hip Hop Music Dot Com how many of them are saying these ads are so annoying? So with that thought after this month I most likely will be done with In-Text advertising all together. You will never know if users are clicking on the ads because of relevance or because they just think it’s a link on your site. This type of advertising could hurt your site’s credibility and the only reason why my traffic hasn’t decreased on that site is because of the reputation I’ve built with my readers. That being said I might have lost future visitors forever using this type of advertising.

In Conclusion

So not only does Kontera suck but in-text advertising sucks all together, don’t waste your time on in text advertising there are much better monetization methods available…..Stay Tuned.