AuctionAds New 2.0 Design & Improvements
A few days ago I wrote the post, "The Fall of Auction Ads?"… which received a unanimous response from unhappy AuctionAds affiliates. The post was a result of AuctionAds’ lackluster performance as of lately and focused on their declining earnings numbers, non-tracking of clicks, random downtime and what the future would hold for this once great affiliate program. Just in time for a new update, AuctionAds has come out with their new 2.0 design. The 2.0 design site boasts new features and improvements to the service, which are "web 2.0" creatives, optimized ad images, better ad network performance and a new cleaner look to the site.
What does the new AuctionAds site offer?
New Web 2.0 Ad Creatives
It looks like the main update and newest feature added to the site, is the ability to grab new AuctionAds ad copy. With a new "sleek ad design with multiple color schemes" you can choose and select what design will blend in best with your web site design. While I personally think the new designs looks nice, I don’t think it will be of any improvement to myself or promotion on my sites. I would prefer to run ad copy without borders and blend the AuctionAds creative in with content. You are much better to grab clicks with content, than an advertisement… so why post something that looks more like an advertisement? I would like to see AuctionAds ad more features to this new ad creative, such as make the borders white (right now you can only select Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Grey), or offering more ad creative sizes (only horizontals and verticals available, with 1, 2 or 3 ads are available on the new ad sets). Should AuctionAds continue to improve on their new ad copy, this may prove useful and beneficial to their affiliates.
Optimized Ad Images
The new Web 2.0 Ad Creatives also come with new Optimized Ad Images. This feature is pretty cool because it will clean up the images you display in your AuctionAds. With this new feature you should be able to attract more clickers as images will be less distorted and stretched. The site notes it will be a few days before the network of images are cached and cleaned up.
Better Ad Network Performance
AuctionAds also boasts that they have now "doubled the size of our hardware infrastructure and optimized it to ensure near 100% uptime of ad serving". More than anything else, this was the most important update. There is no excuse for downtime or non-tracking/reporting when you are dealing with other peoples money and their advertising space. The click reporting is still off, but they promise "all clicks are being recorded at the eBay level" and this will be fixed soon.
After my "The Fall of Auction Ads?" post, I actually received a few emails from other companies that were very interested in their ad spot. Two of these companies were Shopzilla and AdJungle (run by my long time friend Brad Waller). Since writing the post I have taken down a good majority of AuctionAds banners from my sites to test a few other ad campaigns in it’s place. More importantly than receiving emails from Shopzilla and AdJungle, I also received a direct email from AuctionAds’ President, Patrick Gavin, which said:
| "Zac, just wanted to personally reach out to you and apologize for the recent issues with AuctionAds. We just purchased the business a few weeks ago and are working hard to resolve all the issues. We have obviously had some tracking issues that were the result of upgrading our servers and I assure you we are working very hard on a fix and think we should have the system back to full strength before the weekend. In addition to better up time and accurate reporting we will be introducing new ad units and number of other new features to help our publishers make more money. We are sorry about the recent issues and are working hard to make AuctionAds a great money maker for our publishers. We can’t do this without your feedback and help so please reach out any time to me directly with any suggestions on how we can improve our service to you, thx!" |
I really appreciate that Patrick personally got in touch with me, and to see that these new improvements to the network were made and put into place within only a couple days after receiving the email. As a result of the changes to the network, I will have to place the AuctionAds banners back into the rotation and let you know if we can see big numbers like we did back a couple months. What do you think of the new updates to AuctionAds and will you continue (or try them again) to run their offers?
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Good to hear. I decided not to give AuctionAds a try after I was hearing about all of the problems. Time to look at them again, I guess.
iam glad there going to fix the Pictures of the ads
because they look like Shi** right now
I am building an Arcade website right now and I am using
AA as my main source income for that site.
check it out http://www.MyOGGames.com is not complete but I want to show you how iam using Auction Ads
Edgar
I stopped earning money on this awhile ago and removed the ads, maybe its time for another chance?
I would hold off on giving them a try just yet. All the new features are just fluff, and result in no extra income for me. They may fix the click tracking, but it has not resulted in any extra revenue.
I know AA bragged about not taking any percentage in order to grow the network.. I would imagine they have flipped the switch and are not taking about 50% of the revenue.
Basically, my revenue has dropped by 50% from one month to the next with no drop in traffic or clicks.
Personally I would like to see affiliate information. I have 47 affiliates and I have no clue as to what is happening with them…
CF,
Agreed. I have 10, I have no clue how much money they are making or generating for me.
The system needs a total overhaul to be considered one of the top tier programs.
The biggest worry I would have right now if I were them? Someone developing the same type of program, but one that actually works properly.
I stopped auction ads 2 months ago, but after the new look, i decided to try again and even gave a review on it, seems good for now, but picture sizing can be seem as another problem for the new designs, mine seems to budge out a lot.
Great feedback Zac. Smart analysis.
Yeah, Patrick from TLA is a pretty active guy…
I sold some ads to Shopzilla before for couple text links. (I think that's how they can become #1 for toshiba laptops and bunch of other keywords… anyways, that's my 2 cents…
after checking my totals im missing 5$… very mixed feelings about these guys
Zac,
Interesting that you would call the new ads "improved". They are non-standard size and unlike the old ones, one can not effectively blend them because they lack adequate control over color, borders, etc. They don't seem very Web 2.0 to me, more like a Web 0.9 implementation … take what we give you and like it.
I will agree that Patrick Gavin is indeed a great buy and very responsive to personal emails … but putting a new feed sack dress on an old sow doesn't change the fact it's still a pig.
They reach out to you and delete my comment on their blog (which said absolutely nothing out of line).
And I thought Shoemoney sold out because they weren't into customer service. LOL.
Super…
my totals im missing 15$
That's good to hear, especially the email from Gavin. Though I haven't done too much with them, AuctionAds seems to deliver very poor performance. Guess it's worth some more attention.
I like new look of the ads, the only thing i would like to see added – more colors maybe…
Auction Ads still not works so nice for me (I mean, earnings), but I'm not giving up yet, I understand that first I must build up reader base and good content for my blog and only then I can wait for some income.
I've decided to stick with the old style of ads, but I had previously removed AuctionAds from my sites because of the constant downtime. Thankfully they appear to have pulled their act together and I'm using them again now.