Introduction to BuySellAds
BuySellAds is a marketplace where publishers and advertisers come to meet. Publishers list their available inventory and CPM for each ad zone, then receive placement requests from interested advertisers. After approving creative, the advertisements begin running immediately. While there is a bit more work and wait time involved in getting ads up and running on your site, as opposed to other display ad networks such as Google AdSense or Media.net, overall BuySellAds is a great alternative ad network, offering a great level of control over ad placements and creative approval.
- What We Like: Great user interface, ability to set CPMs and approve all creative, quick payments.
- What We Don’t Like: Learning curve to get up and running.
BuySellAds Company Stats
- Homepage: BuySellAds
- Program Founded In: 2008
- Employee Count: 21 employees, as of April 22, 2014, according to Crunchbase
- Ownership: Private
- Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Crunchbase, BBB
BuySellAds Support & Contact Information
- Address: 186 South St Fl 6, Boston MA 02111
- Phone Number: 617-830-2638
- Support Email: [email protected]
Publisher Requirements
- Publisher Terms: http://buysellads.com/about/terms
- Traffic Minimum: None.
- Publisher Language Requirement: None.
- Prohibited Publisher Content: Fraudulent goods or services; infringement of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property rights; defamation or libel; adult or sexually-oriented or obscene content; gambling; artificial impressions or clicks; viruses, Trojan horses, worms, or other computer programming that may cause damage.
Advertisers & Offers
- Advertising Types: Display, Sponsored Tweets, Email.
- Offer Types: CPM.
- Verticals: All.
- Network Size: “Thousands of publishers”.
- Sampling of Publishers: Hongkiat, Search Engine Journal, Android Central.
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Tech Implementation
BuySellAds Tech Implementation Rating: 3 out of 5.
- Creating an Ad Unit: Creating an ad unit with BuySellAds is fairly straightforward. Assuming you have already set up your property (site), click on “Add Inventory” from the Inventory dropdown in the top nav. From here, you can select the medium (desktop website, mobile website, mobile app, RSS feed, desktop app, email, or Twitter), payment model, cost, location, quantity, and a variety of other settings. Once all of the settings have been selected, click “Next”, and the ad code will be displayed on the subsequent page. Copy and paste this into your site’s HTML code or your ad server, and then you ad zone will be listed in the marketplace. The next step is to wait for an advertiser to purchase inventory in the ad zone, at which point you can approve the advertiser’s creative. Once your approval is given, the ad begins running immediately.
- Display Ad Unit Sizes Available: 300×250, 728×90, 300×600, 160×600, 125×125, 180×150, 120×90, 130×100, 468×60. Custom sizes also available.
- Compatible with Google AdSense: Yes.
- Mobile Ad Units Available: No.
- WordPress Plugin Available: Yes.
Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel
BuySellAds Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel Rating: 5 out of 5.
- Control Panel: The BuySellAds control panel features an intuitive user interface, and is therefore very easy to navigate and use. The dashboard upon first logging in lists all of the publisher’s placements, as well as CPM and estimated inventory available for each. From here, there are links to Performance, Earnings, Inventory, Property Settings, Discount Codes, and Tools. The Performance and Earnings links both lead to different reports. The Inventory link allows a publisher to create new ad placements or modify existing inventory settings. The Property Settings section allows the publisher to edit a site’s profile. The Discount Codes page enables publishers to create discount codes that offer a certain percentage discount off certain ad zones in certain situations. Finally, the Tools tab shows ad sales widget and marketplace short URL codes.
- Reporting: From either the Performance or the Earnings tabs atop the main dashboard, publishers can access their BuySellAds reports. The Performance page displays metrics by each advertiser, which can be filtered by date range and ad zone. The Earnings page displays total earnings by site or ad zone, and can be filtered by date range. Overall, the reporting is easy to use and powerful enough to be useful. Reported metrics include ad impressions, clicks, average CTR, eCPM, and estimated earnings.
- Control Panel URL: http://buysellads.com/sell
Payment
BuySellAds Payment Rating: 5 out of 5.
- Payout: 75%.
- Payment Methods Available: Check, PayPal, Wire.
- Payment Terms: Within 2-3 days on demand. Up to two cash-outs per month.
- Minimum Payout Threshold: $20 for PayPal, $50 for check, $500 for wire.
Account Help
BuySellAds Account Help Rating: 4 out of 5.
- Knowledge Base URL: http://support.buysellads.com/help_center
- Personal Account Manager: No.
- Easy to Contact Support: Yes.
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FAQ's
What are the BuySellAds publisher requi​rements?
There are no traffic minimum or required language for publishers to apply to the BuySellAds network. You content cannot include any of the prohibited content and must accept the terms and conditions.
What are the BuySellAds payment methods?
BuySellAds allows you to request payment manually up to twice a month provided you meet the minimum payment threshold. Upon request, you payment will be processed within 2 to 3 days.
What is the BuySellAds Minimum payment threshold?
The minimum payment threshold varies per payment type. For paypal the minimum balance is $20, for check it is $50 and for wire transfer the minimum is $500.
Why BuySellAds Reject A Website
As website owners that have registered their sites on BuySellAds but got rejected, here’s some reason why your ads get rejected.
- BuySellAds focus on the tech, freelancer, web design niche. Sometimes they approved sites outside these niches, but sometimes they don’t.
- Your website must have fresh content
- your website must not contains any porn or any illegal stuff
- if you have many non targeted ads on your site, your site might be rejected
- if your site rejected, you still can re-apply in the future
Editor's BuySellAds Review
BuySellAds offers a valuable marketplace where advertisers and publishers can come together. For publishers, BuySellAds is a very good alternative or supplement to more popular ad networks such as Google AdSense or Media.net. While getting up and running with live ads can take a day or more, once the ads are up, they monetize well and are very easy to manage.
While BuySellAds seems to specialize in traditional display advertising, they offer so much more. In addition to traditional desktop display advertising, publishers can also sell mobile website display ads, mobile app display ads, RSS feed text ads, desktop app ads, email newsletter sponsorship, and sponsored Tweets through the BSA marketplace, all while maintaining price control and creative approval.
We mainly reviewed the traditional desktop display advertising option. To get started with BuySellAds, you'll first need to get your property (website) approved. After being approved, you can set up inventory that is available to sell to potential advertisers.
In our tests, we set up a 728x90 leaderboard inventory, with a CPM of $1.00. We set a low CPM rate to make sure we got some advertisers to bite. And bite they did. Within a day, we had several advertisers vying to display their leaderboard on our site. (We currently have a waiting list of 5 advertisers, as we were able to sell out.)
Seeing that we sold out so quickly at $1.00, I have since been able to double the CPM to $2.00; although, the advertisers who purchased at $1.00 are still locked in at that price for their current campaign runs. Once you get advertisers in the door, you will have 24 hours to approve their creative. Once creative is approved, the ad units will begin running immediately, provided the HTML code is installed on your site properly.
Note that the CPM rates that a publisher sets for each inventory item are gross amounts. The publisher will only receive the net amount (75%) after BSA takes their 25% cut, which unfortunately is not explicitly stated on any of the set-up pages, but is mentioned in the email that BSA sends once an ad unit is sold.
After getting ads up and running on your site, you'll want to log in regularly to check on reporting and to approve any new creatives that may be proposed. The BSA reporting is very solid, offering data on a number of relevant metrics, including impressions remaining, price, clicks, impressions served, and CTR for each individual advertiser.
The earnings report displays total ad impressions, clicks, CTR, eCPM, and estimated earnings for each date within any specified time range. From the control panel, it is very easy to adjust current site inventory (e.g., to revise CPM rates or placement location) and add new inventory, in addition to pulling up reporting metrics or editing account settings.
But in addition to these control panel features which are more or less standard across all ad networks, BSA offers a mini suite of ad selling tools. One such tool is the ability to send a customized insertion order, or proposal, to certain advertisers. Creating proposals may be a slick feature for some publishers who are trying to sell direct, but need help managing inventory and are not worried about allowing BSA to take a cut on their ad sales. (Here is an example ad proposal that we could send to this mock advertiser: http://buysellads.com/buy/proposal/t/5ba4dc994d9db41e3c3eab434150921d.)
From the proposal page, the advertiser can immediately purchase the ad by uploading creative and submitting payment, taking a lot of the administrative work out of the publisher's hands and putting his mind at ease.
BSA also offers publishers the ability to create discount codes, which work in conjunction with the proposals to further entice advertisers to buy inventory. Getting a 25% "discount" on a certain ad zone, for example, may sweeten the deal for certain advertisers, enough to convince them to make a purchase.
So BSA is more than your typical ad network: they offer a range of tools to help sell ads, can manage inventory and trafficking, handle payment, and present your inventory on their marketplace for advertisers to purchase. While there is a steeper learning curve and a more legwork involved in getting set up with BSA as opposed to a more traditional display ad network such as Google AdSense or Media.net, the level of control that the publisher has and the ability to sell on his terms is a big plus.
Overall, BSA offers a solid product and is definitely worth checking out. Especially for anyone ready to move from Google AdSense to the goal of selling directly, BSA may be a good stepping stone toward that goal.
References
- None.