Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson

Every day for the next week or two I will be reviewing some of the top affiliate/ad networks online that I currently use and have been making money with. Today’s review is on the CPM network ValueClick Media. All ad network reviews will be featured in the new "Network Reviews" section. Also keep in mind these are not paid reviews or testimonials, my reviews on these networks are from my personal experience only.

Overview:
ValueClick Media, formerly known as FastClick, is one of my favorite and most successful ad networks. Since joining the network back in April 2003, I have always made nice money. Unlike most other CPA networks, ValueClick Media runs all their offers on a CPM basis, which you means are paid per impressions/ad views and not clicks or leads. To start running their advertisements, you simply add a small HTML code to your web site and ValueClick Media will provide a full rotation of all ads in their system. In addition to several banner sizes, you can also add interstitials, popunders, invue, half page ads and the most recently added in-stream video ads campaigns to your site.

Ease of Use:
ValueClick Media has an excellent admin area with makes it very easy to read campaign reports and also offer pull tabs to generate your html codes. Once you grab your desired ad campaign code and set them on your site, you are finished. ValueClick Media will handle all campaign ads and reporting. The only problem I have had with the site is the loading time for the main admin area to come up, after logging in. For the longest time now they have had this issue and sometimes it takes a minute or two before the main admin page actually loads. This is very annoying, but once you are in it’s faster.

Profitability:
For several years now ValueClick Media has always been one of my top performers, no matter what niche I have been focusing on. Many CPA networks will tell you that you will make more money running their CPA banners in place of ValueClick Media’s banners. In some cases this may be true if you have very high quality traffic, but after testing with a few networks and some of my sites, this is not always the case. I’m told some campaigns run through ValueClick media are run on a CPA basis on the backend, but you are seeing the campaign as a CPM. Basically the CPM network (ValueClick Media) is paid on a CPA, but they back out the campaign to affiliates on an CPM rate averaged from all the CPA earnings of leads generated. You can test between CPA and CPM campaigns, but you may also find that running ads through a CPM network is much less stressful than a CPA network. When running through a CPM network you won’t have to constantly change offers as new ones come in and older ones expired. Once you setup the ad placement html, all new and old campaigns will automatically shift in or out.

ValueClick Media continues to be one of my best performers month after month!

Quality of Ads:
Once you have started running banner campaigns or other ad formats on your site, you will likely see that most of the offers are the same offers found on many of the CPA networks. You will also find that there are a few higher quality campaigns that are not featured anywhere else. Lately I have been seeing a lot of ad placement for Microsoft’s Live.com campaign, which is shown below. I have not seen this campaign available on any CPA networks, but I am sure they are paying ValueClick Media a nice CPM since they are a large company and buying in high volume.

Microsoft has been running "Live Search" campaigns in almost all ad formats.

Stats Tracking:
It’s really important for me to be able to look at my earnings and traffic figures without getting frustrated or having to try and figure out how much a certain web site or ad campaign is performing. ValueClick Media is great in this area and you can break down stats by campaign, web site, advertiser, banner size and date. Right when you log in you are shown you hourly stats for the day, as well as a bar chart on your daily performance with the program. Simply refer to their ‘History’ tab to pull up any past records. I can go back all the way to April 2003 which is really great! I hate when networks don’t offer full stats access back to your starting date.

An excellent breakdown of hourly and daily performance.

Why Do I Like This Network:
Since joining ValueClick Media (back when they were FastClick) over 4 years ago, I still only have good things to say about the company. After earning high six figures with the company, payments have never been an issue and they are now testing/offering payment through direct deposit. I have not experienced any problems with their ad campaigns or network downtime. I am also always in contact with my account manager and their support has always been great.

Final Review:
After final review, I rate ValueClick Media with 5 out of 5 "Zac Seals of Approval". There aren’t many companies that I can say I have consistently made money with since joining, especially over a span of 4 years. ValueClick continues to be one of the largest advertiser marketing firms online and this program should consistently make money for all publishers for a long time. While other networks have high limitations on who they let in, over the past year ValueClick Media has been a lot more accepting of new sites into their network. Signup today and see what type of extra revenue your web site can start pulling in.