Infolinks 2012 Publisher Review – In-Text Advertising

For the last few weeks, I have been using Infolinks and in-text advertising to monetize my website. With what you could call an ‘upbringing’ in blogging where I learnt the best and only way to make money from blogging is through Adsense, I was interested to try out other forms of advertising: inparticularly in-text. I have always heard of great stories about in-text advertising gaining great click through percentages which ultimately means the blogger will make more money. However, the CPC of each click is so low that you would only ever earn pennies a day. 
 
The last review I done of Infolinks was back at the start of this year. To sum up Infolinks then:

• CTR was high.
• CPC was low.
• People will distrust your internal links.
• It creates space for your blog.
• For advertisers, the low CPC is a bonus.

Basically, the review was an introduction to Infolinks from an advertiser and publisher who has never used them before. Now, after having experience with Infolinks and using them again, here is the updated review of Infolinks for the end of 2012.
 
Immediately, the first obvious change to Infolinks is their user interface. Like with most online businesses, they have updated their UI to make loading times faster, the userbility of the website easier and just for a clean look. From my perspective, they have done a good job. However, the main difference I saw was the added product Infolinks have made.
 
Back at the start of 2012, the main-stream products they had were in the in-text adverts, tags inbuilt into the content and floating search advert at the bottom of the web page. Eleven months later, they have introduced another new product: inframe. Inframe works by replacing the background to your website with am advert. As well as looking great on your website, it has great potential to earn you alot of clicks and money too! It’s a great idea Infolinks have done. Their products involve using unused space on websites to monetize it. My only negative towards the new inframe is that there are some templates for both Blogger and WordPress that will not support the implementation of inframe. This could be something Infolinks can work on for the future…
 
Looking at their main product, intext adverts, they have changed the way reports deal out the information. Previously in Infolinks (at the start of 2012), you could see:

• Net pageviews of your website (which is slightly irrelevant seeing that many programs such as Google Analytics can do this).
• The amount of page views your adverts got.
• Your advert’s eCPM.
• The CTR of your adverts.
• The number of clicks on the adverts.
• Earnings.

However, it seems that Infolinks has stopped publishers from seeing the CTR, CPC and number of clicks on your advert which I feel is slightly unfair. It is a clear sign that Infolinks are embarrassed of the low CPC many publishers are getting with Infolinks. The advertising program is not one that works on cost per thousand. It is cost per click. Therefore, why can’t the publishers see what their cost per click and click through rates are?
 
I think it is alot harder to improve your earnings if you don’t know what your CTR are is (let alone your CPC of adverts). Putting that aside, from looking at Infolinks again in 2012, I feel they have improved. They are going down the right path where they are not taking up space but using already existing space to monetize websites. If Infolinks keeps going this way, maybe and just maybe, they will be nearer to Google Adsense and Adwords in the far future.