WidgetBucks have announced new widget designs. Each of the different ad unit sizes now have two options (now when setting them up you’ll be able to choose a ‘B Series’ ad unit). One ad size (medium rectangles) even has three options (see below).
Also now you can change the rotation time for the product rotations in the widgets (it’s set at 3 seconds default – but can be anything from 1-10 seconds).
Here’s the normal widget:
Here’s the B Series Ad Unit
And lastly – the C Series Ad Unit
This was announced on their blog and via email. However in both places they recommended publishers check them out on the blog where they are in action. Only problem is that those of us not in the US can’t see the ads on the blog – because we get served CPM ads instead as part of the exclusion of non North American traffic.
On that note – I will say that the Alt CPM ads that non US and Canadian traffic sees have no relevance at all to any site I’ve seen them on. While this won’t necessarily hurt earnings as they are not click based – it doesn’t help your readers to see you as a relevant site when on your camera blog they see IQ tests and ‘outdrink the fratboy’ ringtone ads.
My WidgetBucks Recommendation:
My thoughts on WidgetBucks haven’t really changed in the last month. If your site has mainly US traffic (or you have the ability to do your own geo-targeting) then it’s great – particularly on product related blogs. I know some publishers who are making hundreds a day using it.
However if you have largely non US traffic and care about the relevancy of the ads being served to readers – I’d go with another option. The most similar ads to it at present are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and some of the widgets available in the Amazon Affiliate Program.
Looks like they’ve also seen Google’s attempt at confronting the competition and have started up their own new set for the shopping car…. business aye…
another “widgetbucks” additional that had us non-us publisher left out. I just felt like a “stale beancurd” among the group(widgetbucks publisher).
For some reason, the new widgets do not appeal to me. They look pretty bulk and ugly, but that’s just my opinion. It might be because of its 3D look.
Yes,
I also recently joined widgetbucks.com and today I did get the email that you have mentioned in this article. It is good for us that these types of ads appearing in our site, which I hope will help us increase our revenue.
i agree, they are ugly! bad colours and poor design.
I just started a blog and was looking for good ads widgets but size is too big, in my opinion. On other sites where the WidgetBucks have been reviewed, people complain about the high product prices that are listed in the widget.
Does anybody has success with this widget?
The new ad options look alright, pity they’re showing Nikon gear though.. ;-)
I’ve got an affiliate account on Amazon, but haven’t had the time yet to get it working on my blog properly.. Think I might make that tomorrow’s mission!
WidgetBucks is extremely powerful for product-based blogs, which is completely understandable. Each product is very related and I can see a high conversion rate for each visit. I like how WB is releasing more and more creatives.
Its always a good thing to come up with new formats for adds, like the earlier post on Google’s new adds. But I think they look pretty formidable, even slightly uninviting. They should better get their act together and treat all traffic equally or they will miss out in future.
Just like you, I was quite disappointed when they converted non US/Canada traffic to the CPM model.
The earnings have dropped quite significantly and the relevancy of the CPM ads are questionable.
The thing that I still don’t like about Widgetbucks is that they ask you for the URL of the page that the ad will appear on. I run all my ads through an ad server, so the same code can show up on any page at any given time. When I first tried them out for a week or so, I was showing almost no impressions on the ads while AdSense had thousands. Why must you place a specific URL for each ad widget? Is this still the case, or am I reading into it wrong?
I still have mixed feelings about WidgetBucks (got whole two clicks from them).
One thing was that suddenly the widget would not show up on my site at all; I though it was in connection with the CPM ads been enabled (I’m based in Switzerland).
I tried to contact their support but my log info for mpire didn’t work and they could not send me the password or anything, so just dropped an email to their media relations, never heard back.
Later it suddenly started working again; but I don’t see CPM ads when I check my site, I would have expected!
Anyway, only had CPM ads shown 3 days of December (11th to 13th).
Time will tell if it is all worth it or not.
It looks pretty neat to me. I am also interested in hearing what kind of success people have been having with widgetbucks.
Some people are complaining about the colors–can the colors be customized, as they can be with AdSense?
I still prefer their first design.
The second ad looks slicker I think, but I don’t know if I like it better than Chitika…
Aww man, I just signed up for my new site on WidgetBucks before I read this post. I’m targeting the UK so I totally wasted 30 seconds of my employers time! Whoops.
Ah well, I’ll try Chitika as mentioned by Joe above.
Cheers
Ian
I don’t use it anyway, but thanks for the info.
I never use it, but now i am thinking abt it
I put up a WidgetBucks ad finally on my blog today. The new ones look pretty nice. It’s sad that they don’t count non-US clicks…
These widgets looks ugly :x Not clear for me
I saw this announcement today too. The newer widget looks a lot better.
I like widgetbucks because they catch your eye, but ultimately I found that they load far too slowly. If I had a site that was more about just getting random one visit and done type traffic then I would consider it, but I think they would just annoy regular readers.
The B series ad unit looks attractive.
they changed the color nothing different from the previous – http://www.vhxn.com
Widgetbucks suspended my account and I still can’t find why ? The Traffic that I sent them was mainly outside US but I still made more that 50$ since I started using their widgets..
I just recently signed up for WidgetBucks and am very excited to try it out. I haven’t heard back from them yet but I really hope I get accepted.
Again, this form of ads pulls nothing of interest on my site. Nothing matches anything in my content.
Thanks for the information – I’ll check out Widgetbucks!
It’s only been my third day using Widgetbucks, yesterday i still had my ads running at my site ( http://www.bincangprofesi.com/forum/index.php ) and there were around 300+ cpm. Today there’s no advertisement at all show up at my site, i thought i was banned but then im able to log in.