Bidvertiser has been the main PPC ad program on this blog ever since my Google account started misbehaving. Initially, my Bidvertiser ads were giving only 7 or 8 cents per click and the click through rate (CTR) was very poor as well when compared to my Google AdSense experience. Bidvertiser PPCWith a couple month long experiments, though, now I have reached a point where the average CPC is as high as 21 (individual clicks up to $0.48 so far). In this post, I would like to share some tips based on what I did to optimize my Bidvertiser ads.

Improving the CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

It is true that the bidvertiser ads do not look as elegant as their AdSense counter parts. I always thought that the Google AdSense ads somehow entice the readers to click on them where as Bidvertiser stock templates are a little bit repulsive. So our first aim is to fix this problem.

Fortunately, Bidvertiser ads can be customized in terms of font face and size and not just colors as in the case of AdSense. For the best results, you need to make sure that your Bidvertiser ads blend so nicely with your content by picking the right fonts and sizes [Bidvertiser tip].

The next step is to select the right ad size. The beauty with Bidvertiser, again, is that they allow ad blocks or random sizes to make them fit the best possible way. So always choose the Free Design template option [Bidvertiser tip] and specify the ad block’s width and height in a way that it just fits your ad requirements and available space. Even if you want to choose stock sizes, designing them in the Free Design mode may give you better fitting ads. The dimension I have chosen for my square ad block is 200×180 and that for the mini-tower being 160×300.

Bidvertiser Freedesign
The popular wide skyscraper block (160×600) - at least for me – has not yielded the same results for me as my 160×300 custom block. Remember, this is one of the highest yielding ad block size for Google AdSense. Another reason not to go for a wide skyscraper for Bidvertiser [Bidvertiser tip] ads is that, sometimes when the fill-rate is low, it shows a bunch of “Your Ad Here For Free” blocks which is really ugly looking.

Improving the earnings per click (CPC)

One of the campaigns against Bidvertiser is that the earnings per click or CPC rate is very low. This is a definite issue as long as you are not properly customizing your ads. Let me explain to you what I did in this regard which boosted my average CPC from 7, in the initial stages, to 21 cents per click as of today.

Choosing the right categories: When you add a domain under your Bidvertiser publisher account choosing the right main and sub categories is a very important step [Bidvertiser tip]. For example, under the Computer & Internet main category, there are subcategories such as Home Business & Get Paid To Surf/Read, Advertising, Marketing & SEO, Webmasters & Blogging Resources etc. Unfortunately, you can only pick one of those sub-categories although your blog must be dealing with a mix of all. In my case, I chose Home Business & Get Paid To Surf/Read which is working well as far as the ads go, though, I deal with other sub topics as well in this blog. Once the main category and subcategory are selected, there is no way a publisher can change this without deleting the domain and getting it approved again. So as a publisher you have to be careful here.

Ad filtering mode: Using the Preferences option there is a possibility to manually approve ads. For the best results, you should choose the manual approval option [Bidvertiser tip]. This option comes with the additional burden of having to approve new ads manually, but it’s worth that effort.

How to manually select the best paying ads?
Once you have set up your Bidvertiser for a new domain and manual approval option selected, you Bidvertiser Manual approval processcould go to the Ad Status tab and manually approve all the ads there that are above a particular Max bid value, say $0.25. This one time effort can take as long as 5-6 minutes. Subsequently, on a regular basis (say once in two days or so) you need to log on to your Bidvertiser account and approve any new ads [Bidvertiser tip] that are available based on your criteria.

The following is the strategy that I use to approve ads:

  • All ads with the highest bid of a minimum $0.25 is approved blindly regardless of the geographic regions
  • If there are ads specifically geo-targeting countries like India, Pakistan, China and certain East European or African nations, I approve them even if the highest bid is only $0.05. If you do not do this, the fill rate is going to be low for those regions [Bidvertiser tip]
  • However, if there are higher bids (than $0.05 covering the above geographic regions) then you don’t need to necessarily choose ads with such low bids. Please note that, despite all these optimizations you might still fill-rate issues at times
  • Understand (from your Google Analytics or Alexa statistics) which all countries you get more traffic from and select the ads with best bids for those locations

It is only a matter of time, before you get used to this approval process and learn on the fly how CPC can be improved. Depending on the fill rate, you may choose not to approve ads on a daily basis but move towards a weekly cycle or so.

Other tips

  • Referral program: Bidvertiser has one of the best publisher & advertiser referral schemes among the CPC ad networks. Basically you will earn $5 when your referred publisher earns $10 and an additional $40 when he earns $50. The click through rate for their banners is pretty high as well and hence use referral banners for maximum returns [Bidvertiser tip]
  • Avoid putting more than one Bidvertiser ad block per page as there is a very high chance of repeated ads being displayed.
  • Avoid Bidvertiser for feed ads as my initial experiments did not yield much from the feed ads despite having a decent number of feed subscriptions

If you are not yet a Bidvertiser publisher, you might want to sign up now! Also consider the Bidvertiser FREE advertising options for your blog or website as mentioned in one of my older posts.

Hope these tips are useful to you to optimize your Bidvertiser returns. Please provide your comments on this post and feel free to bookmark the same so that it can be useful for others as well.

Happy money making with Bidvertiser!