Contextual Ads: Which One Works Best: AdSense, YPN or Chitika?

Until the Yahoo Publisher Network and the Chitika Mini-Malls did enter the contextual advertising market this year, Google AdSense was the only supplier of text-based ads dynamically matching the content of any content they were placed next to.

As many of you already well know, such text-based contextual-based ads are one of the primary monetization opportunities that both large and small online publishers can make use of when trying to monetize their content more effectively while getting away from the excessively interruptive approaches utilized by multiple large ad banners, pop-up and pop-under ads, and other intrusive and often not-relevant traditional online ad formats.

While to this day, it is still a small percentage of the online small publishers population that has been able to effectively implement this contextual ads, more and more bloggers and online independent publishers are willing to sacrifice some time and mind space to learn more about how to make such ads turn a significant profit for them at the end of each month.

And so, next to testing, research and experimentation focusing on positioning, layout format, colors and other small variables available, one of the key decisions to be made is who to choose among the above contextual ad suppliers as your key advertising provider.

The Digital Inspiration Contextual Ads Preview and Comparison Tool, just out of the box today, is a new free service that allows any online publisher to easily find out which, among the three most prominent contextual ads suppliers, would be providing the most effective and relevant ads for any given web page or supplied text.

Here some details about it:

This "Digital Inspiration All-in-One Preview" can indeed help you compare the relevance of Contextual Advertising services offered by Google Adsense, the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and the Chitika eMiniMalls.

Its purpose is the one of helping you evaluate which Contextual Advertising service is more suited for your web site or blog.

Key benefits

1. Google provides a Official Adsense Preview Tool for Adsense Publishers but not Chitika eMiniMalls or Yahoo Publisher Network. The Digital Inspiration All-in-One Preview offers a preview tool for YPN and Chitika publishers similar to the Google Adsense Preview Tool.

2. The Official Google Adsense Preview Tool is supported only on IE. Our tool works across all browsers include IE and Firefox.

3. The All-In-Preview displays Google, Chitika and YPN ads side by side making the comparison a lot easier.

4. The Google Adsense Preview Tool shows sample ads only for a website address. The All-In-One Preview displays ads can be obtained both from inputing keywords or a specific web site address.

5. The integrated Geolocation controls let you see, without needing to have an open AdSense account, what AdSense ads are displayed on specific web pages in countries other than yours. The countries covered by the AdSense geolocation facility are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.

Cons

The Google Ads displayed in this preview tool are sample ads, based on standard AdSense targeting and filtering. But since all Adsense publishers have the option of filtering out specific ads to fine-tune the selection of advertisements on their page, you may find that the ads in the preview tool do not exactly correspond to the ads that would actually appear on a certain page.

How to use the All-In-One Preview Tool

The Digital Inspiration Preview and Comparison Tool allows you to access the following seven previews:
1) Google AdSense Text Ads
2) Google AdSense Link Units
3) Google Adsense Image Ads
4) Chitika Mini-Malls
5) Yahoo Publisher Network Ads
6) Yahoo Publisher Network Ads vs. Google AdSense Ads
7) Google AdSense vs. Chitika Mini-Malls

To start using it now, go to this URL, and enter any keywords or a website address, choose a geographic location (for Google), customize ad colors or choose an existing color set and click the "Update Ads Display" button.

Once you click on "Update Ads Display", the lower part of the page will show a full-display of sample ads from the one supplier you have selected.

On Windows.

In Internet Explorer:
Download the IE add-on and install the .reg file. The All-In-One Preview tools is now accessible from the IE contextual right-click menu. Select any amount of text on a selected website, right-click and choose "Preview Contextual Ads". You can also just right-click while on any web page, without selecting any specific text, and you will be able to preview the type of ads that will be served for that very page.

In Firefox:
Install the GoogleAdsPreview Extension - This extension will add a Preview Google Ads menu both to the Firefox toolbar and to the right-click contextual menu.

Before discarding YPN and Chitika as effective alternatives to Google AdSense be aware that both allow the publisher to "specify" and "target" specific keywords (Chitika) or ad categories (YPN) providing therefore reliable supply of relevant ads in the products and service sectors where their inventory is strongest.

While that will change over time, keep in mind that the Chitika Mini-Malls rely on the Amazon huge inventory of books, DVDs, music, electronics and more while the YPN available ads categories limit themselves to the most popular product sectors out there.

I have recently been testing both of these solutions, on two of my sites and from my initial results it appears to me that:

a) YPN cannot match by orders of magnitude the variety and diversity of the advertisers inventory that AdSense has built-up over time.

b) YPN can be a good partner where AdSense not fully-controllable ad-output causes too many out of relevant ads across a site having a specific theme coverage. Since YPN allows to pre-specify the ad category you want to use and the section of any site you may want to apply it to, it can give a lot of peace of mind, to those struggling to modify their pages to get AdSense to behave more intelligently when selecting the ads to serve. Russel Beattie recently reported of having been able to drive some significant returns for his blog via YPN ads.

c) Chitika MiniMalls can also work wonders depending on a set of variables that includes their positioning, ad format and type of content site they are placed on.

d) Mini-malls can be placed next to AdSense ads as long as the Chitika ads are not set to be on contextual-mode. More detailed information on Chitika MiniMalls and first-hand impressions from Darren Rowse.

e) Mini-malls are reported to have one of the highest payout pay per click. They also have another unique feature that is much less enticing. At the end of each month, clicks on your account are audited and an arbitrary number of clicks and revenue is suddenly taken off your total bill, with no more detailed explanations. Terrible.

More information on this contextual ads preview and comparison tool.

Who is behind this tool

Amit Agarwal, B.S. in Computer Science, is the brain behind this truly useful Contextual Ads Preview and Comparison Tool. Kudos for making this valuable service accessible to everyone at no cost.