About the mobile site business…

I tried it, and while the mobile site did work (at least on Android I know it did), monetizing it was a huge issue.

I tried Bidvertiser’s mobile ads, and what I can tell you right now is that they suck. Not only do they load in a really weird way, they apparently have text ads only, and not the type made for mobile usage. I don’t even think the Bidvertiser team tested them out, mobile ads should not behave like regular banner ads for full websites.

After a few days of a couple thousand impressions and zero revenue, I decided to try one of the smaller banner ads from Adbrite. For that I first had to ask their customer support to lift the limits off my account.

You see, every time you delete an Adbrite ad zone it stays in the publisher’s panel, so every deleted ad zone still counts towards your 12-zone limit, which should be explained when you create an ad zone, but it’s not.

The customer support guy was kind enough to add an extra 10 zones for me to use and explained to me why they don’t expect every publisher to just create and delete ad zones. But the problem is that every time you create an ad zone you have to wait for about a day to see if they accept or reject your website, even if they as a network allowed you to join the program, so there’s no reason to have a rejected zone on the publisher’s panel anymore.

Yet, it still counts toward the limit. I tried creating a 180×150 banner that I thought could be used on the mobile theme, but Adbrite’s weird practice of making you place their code on your website just to tell you a day later that they disabled that zone because your website doesn’t meet “their standards” is infuriating, it’s like somebody offering you money to have a magnetic banner on your car and drive around, just to tell you a day later your car doesn’t work for them and you won’t get paid, but you still showed their banner around.

Almost 24 hours after I created the ad zone and placed their code on both the mobile theme and the full theme’s sidebar, I got this email:

Hello Publisher,

We’ve completed the review of your zone that you’ve submitted. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve it for our marketplace at this time due to the following reasons:

– Excessive Profanity: (Including URL or Site Description)

To view our publisher zone policy, please visit use our searchable FAQs or click here: Publisher Acceptable Use Policy.

If you wish to petition our decision or you have changed your site’s content to meet our standards, please forward this email to support@adbrite.com with a request to have your zone re-reviewed.

Thanks,
The adBrite Team

Do they think I run a fucking church or something? Statistically speaking, this website is visited mostly by males between 18 and 45 years of age, and they still think I have too much profanity on this joint? I never registered the site as “family friendly,” and this is MY blog too, so WTF is this about?

They made me remove a post once, and even disabled my ads a couple of times without any warning, and they didn’t even let me know until almost a day later, just the “Your Ad Here” link remained. If you ask me, nothing should load once they disable the ads.

If you click on the left-over link, it takes you to a page where you can pay to have your ad on that zone, even though it’s dead, so what’s up with that?

Anyway, I’ve been having a hard time finding an advertising network that accepts my site the way it is, and I really don’t understand why they expect us publishers to have a “family oriented” site when the internet doesn’t have the same restrictions TV and radio do, if anything they should just let the advertisers decide if they want their fucking ads on my site or not.

These advertising networks forget they’re just the middle man, so if any of the advertisers has a problem with my site they can come and tell me, and I will agree to changing the format for money, not for moral bullshit, it’s not like I post hardcore pornography or something.

So, now I’m back to square one with only 4 zones, the same 4 zones I’ve been moving around for a couple of years.

Does anybody know of any other advertising network that may accept my site the way it is right now? I’m not planing on filling the site with ads top to bottom, but I need them to work.

Besides, Adbrite’s video ads cheat, their ads have ads of their own and they just keep rolling and rolling, and even when you disable the audio on the publisher’s panel they still play with audio, and many times the mute option is just for show, especially on car sales spots, like the Hyundai ads (don’t think I didn’t notice the mute button does nothing D:<).

TL;DR: Both Bidvertiser and Adbrite suck.