The CPC is higher for WidgetBucks, which is great, until they check how many sales they’ve done as a result of the clicks and adjust them accordingly – so expect your $10 of clicks to change to $2 in a few days.

The ad units certainly look cool, and I think this, combined with the high-ish CPC of around $0.50 and the $25 welcome bonus they’re offering, has resulted in a bit more of a buzz about WidgetBucks than it’s recent competitors. The trouble with these ad units is that they take bloody ages to load, and by the time they have loaded, the user’s more than likely found what they wanted on the page and hasn’t had a chance to be distracted by something new and pretty to click.

And this $25 welcome bonus – how many publishers will make their $50 threshold for payment, and not get bored waiting for that 45 day payment period?

I keep trying all these new things out, just for the sake of trying them really, but every time I end up going back to Adsense. I’ll probably keep trying these new things out though just so I can post about them on the blog. Great fun.

Seriously people, just stick to Adsense, and maybe Text-Link-Ads if you’re a PageRank and Alexa obsessive.

ShoppingAds is a cost-per-click program, which is pretty cool, as every click will get you cash as opposed to a 30 day cookie that might not be used. The CPC seems to be around $0.20 too, which isn’t bad at all. The only problem is that (a) there’s bugger all products on there still, and (b) the ad units look identical to AuctionAds – so no novelty clicking there I’m afraid.

I loved the idea of a CPC products program, people are more likely to click the ads with an accompanying image, but no-one’s interested because the products are limited and not very targeted, the prices aren’t particularly low as they were with AuctionAds due to low bids on current ebay auctions, and as I said, they look like AuctionAds ad units. Nothing new, nothing exciting for the user.

Now before I write off ShoppingAds completely, to be fair they’re still in their beta stages, but still, they’re gonna have to seriously think about ways to improve the concept if they’re gonna go anywhere with it. There just isn’t the buzz there was with AuctionAds. Been there, done that, lost the click-through-rate.

“Hey what’s that? A picture and a price for something? I’ve not seen that before.”

Click.

Then the magic of eBay’s user base of millions kicks in, and the 30 day cookie earns you a couple of quid.

Then, when the novelty of something different appearing on your site wears off, the CTR dives, no more money, Shoemoney cashes in in a stroke of genius, and AuctionAds goes down the pan good and proper.

More and more shopping ad alternatives keep appearing now, which I’ll write about in a sec in separate posts so that Mr Googlebot will index more of my content – and of course for ease of navigation for you, the user.

But anyway, to sum up this post…

AuctionAds – bored now.

Initially – great. AuctionAds was performing really well on my sites, making nearly as much as Adsense was, but with the bonus of my Adsense income not being effected at all. But recently things have gone a bit up the creek with AuctionAds. They had some server issues and a lot of downtime that resulted in a lot of poor stats – a poor click through rate due poor targeting of their ads. Things have continued to steadily decrease now, and today I finally decided it was time to pull AuctionAds from my sites and replace them with CJ’s Ebay program, which may not be as pretty and easy on the eye as AuctionAds, but performs much better than AuctionAds at current.

There could be light at the end of the tunnel though with AuctionAds being sold to MediaWhiz, but to be honest I can’t be bothered to wait it out several more weeks, or even months to see if things improve and waste my ads space. I’ll just keep one eye on Digital Point to see if any improvements are noted.

Here’s the blurb from Google regarding it:

You may already be using AdSense referrals to direct your users to Google products like Google Pack or Google AdWords. Now, you can expand the earning potential of your website even further by directing users to products and services from our base of AdWords advertisers.

In just a few minutes you can hand-pick and display ads that will appeal directly to your users’ tastes and interests. After choosing relevant ads or keywords, you will be able to customize referrals units that complement the look and feel of your site. Then you can start directing visitors to the products or services you’ve selected.

With referrals, you’ll be paid when your visitors click through to an advertiser’s site and complete an action defined by your advertisers, such as a sale or sign up. Because these actions are often more involved than a simple click or impression, advertisers pay more for these referrals, which can translate into higher earnings for your site. Further, you’ll see the expected earnings and advertiser performance ahead of time, so you can make the best decisions about what to refer. You can also choose to target the keywords that will ensure you get the highest-paying referrals for your ad space.

This feature is currently available on a limited basis as part of our beta test.

After being accepted into the program, I’m not really convinced I see the point of it. The products aren’t particularly appealing – not compared to affiliate networks – and you’ve got no flexibility on how you promote these products. The ads just look like regular Adsense, so aren’t likely to get a high CTR, and the image alternatives are quite limited.

I know Google are slowly taking over the world, but affiliate networks need not be worried here!

It’s a pretty interesting concept. AuctionAds is basically one big eBay affiliate, and allows you to place targeted eBay auction ads on your site based on keywords you select. When a user clicks on one of these ads, and makes a winning bid/action, you make money.

So far I’ve had around 100 clicks on my AuctionAds but no revenue as of yet – although it’s worth noting that many auctions last up to 10 days, so I may not see any results for a week or so.

The click through rate is certainly better than I was getting with Adsense, so we’ll just have to see how it goes. It’s worth a try though, particularly if you run a niche site and aren’t having that much success with Adsense – it’s also worth noting that you can use AuctionAds alongside Adsense as AuctionAds isn’t a contextual ad service, so it’s pretty easy to give it a go and for the trials to not influence your Adsense earnings too much.