Marketing Pilgrim

You might have noticed a few changes to Marketing Pilgrim today. Last night, I signed-up for a sneak peak of the new ADSDAQ self serve advertising platform (from ContextWeb) and decided to test it out on the site.

What is ADSDAQ?  It’s basically an exchange that lets advertisers and publishers come together in an open market inventory platform. The new self service ADSDAQ Exchange Selling Desk lets bloggers and publishers:

• Name their CPM price. When your inventory clears the ADSDAQ exchange, you will be paid the CPM price you set. No revenue share. No blind revenue share. No guessing.
• Serve ad tags from other exchanges and ad networks. When ADSDAQ cannot clear inventory at your set CPM “AskPrice” it will serve tags from your backup networks and exchanges such as Google Adsense, Advertising.com and RightMedia.
• No Risk. Either ADSDAQ beats the price of your current network or exchange partners or it serves the backup networks you specify?work with everyone.

What appealed to me is that I get 100% of whatever CPM rate I decide to set. ADSDAQ then looks to fill the ad slot and if it can’t, will show my regular ads. If you set your CPM higher than your normal ad rate–something ADSDAQ encourages–you can’t lose money by showing their ads!

What else do I like?

• Nice management dashboard which lets me get a quick snapshot of what’s selling and what’s not.
• ADSDAQ will help me estimate the best CPM rate to set and how much inventory I will likely sell.
• I can set up multiple ad units on the site.
• I get paid net 30.
• I get ads served from more than 350 brand advertisers.
• I can block any ads I don’t like.

What don’t I like?

• It only supports the following ad sizes: 728×90; 300×250; 160×600; 120×600. I’d like to see 125×125 and 468×60 added to the mix.
• The FAQ is a little lightweight and the forums weren’t much help.
• I can’t target my ads. I can block advertisers, but I didn’t get to see ahead of time which ads would run on my site.

Overall, I’m excited about ADSDAQ. It reminds me a lot of Federate Media Publishing, except ANY size publisher is welcome to the exchange. Earning 100% of CPM–and never having to do the work to find the advertisers–is another big bonus.

You can request a closed beta invite at the site. Alternatively, just wait until October 17th, when the service opens up the beta to all.

PS. This does mean we have a new ad unit (768×90) available to any advertiser interested in buying directly.

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