Project Wonderful

I recently noticed that Reddit had a Project Wonderful ad zone in their /r/comics section, and the current bid was only $4.40. So I decided to seize the opportunity to try out Project Wonderful on a heavily-trafficked web property and promote my younger brother’s comic site a little bit. So I upped the bid by a couple of dollars, became the high bidder, and waited.

After enjoying my victory for a few minutes, and racking up a few impressions, I was outbid by a seller of geeky plush animals. I retaliated by upping my bid a few dollars, and my ad immediately returned to it’s rightful place in front of thousands of Redditors’ monitors. About a half hour later, my squishy nemesis had once again outbid me. Not only had they outbid me, but they had raised it about $10. So I slowly raised my offer until it was just over theirs.

They must have given up for the time being, as my ad remained up for the next day and a half, when my fundage ran low and the ad was finally replaced once again by my foe’s plush Cthulu banner. I ended up spending about $10 for over 50,000 impressions. Not bad.

I’m now trying out Project Wonderful from the Publisher side. I have some ad space on my fantasy book and movie site, where I’m trying to see how quickly a smaller site can start getting bids. A couple of free banners (because bidding starts at $0) are up right now, so I could see others’ bidding them up a few cents in order to get wicked cheap advertising over a few weeks.

How “awesome” Project Wonderful is for a small site, we shall see, but the service certainly lives up to its claims for advertisers.

Precise details of the system and its features could not be discerned at presstime (and calls to Apple had not been returned), but it is believed to have been built on top of Quattro, the mobile advertising developer Apple acquired in January for nearly $300 million, and it is expected to be the first real battle of a Silicon Valley Holy War between Apple and arch frenemy Google that is shifting its front line to Madison Avenue.

I know, the idea seemed a little outlandish to me at first, too. After pondering the thought of an Apple ad network for awhile, it started to make sense.

Apple has two devices that are similar, but radically different in their intended usage, and they both are good candidates for an ad network.

The iPad is intended to be a media consumption device. It’s form factor is supposed to make it a device to read magazines, news and books on. With Apple pushing for publications to make their content available on the iPad and iPhone, doesn’t it make sense for them to provide a premium ad network to make the move more profitable for both parties. With a New York Times iPad application, a Wired app, and more on the way, doesn’t it seem like a comprehensive in-app advertising solution would be an attractive deal for publishers?

The iPhone is primarily used on-the-go. Its users pull it out to find nearby restaurants, check movie show times, buy train tickets, or make other informational or monetary transactions one does while out and about. Geolocation could really be a game-changer for some forms of advertising. Suppose you’re looking for a restaurant in the Yelp application. If you’ve enabled the app to have permission to geolocate you, it could forward your location to the Apple ad network and display ads for restaurants nearby.

Apple has a chance to build an ad network that does things differently. If they impose strict guidelines on the advertisers allowed in, so as to be useful to the user while not becoming too intrusive, they could have a hit. How often do you find ads to be useful? If Apple can break that paradigm, they’ll have done something truly revolutionary.

Once you’re approved into the network, you set your weekly rates and wait for the advertisers to come. The revenue split is 60/40, a bit higher than BuySellAds, and several ad formats are supported. You can even have a rotation rather than exclusive slots.

There are currently only two pages worth of publishers in the network directory, so now’s probably the optimal time to get in, since you’re more likely to be noticed by advertisers, since there aren’t too many sites in yet.

Read more at Blogging Tips and ProBlogger.

Apparently the revenue split so you get a minimum of 60% on ads the network sells, and 100% on ads that you sell. You control the pricing of the ads even. Payment is handled through PayPal and is transferred at the end of every month.

The network doesn’t have any apparent traffic minimum to join, though there is a “premium” option for those with over 250,000 U.S. monthly page views, where they handle other ad formats, instead of just 125x125s.

This looks like a good new ad network for smaller blogs, as well as the large ones. Be sure to take a look at their FAQ.

EntreCard

• You can “drop” it on another EC user’s widget. This means both you and the recipient get an EC credit, and your card is displayed in their EC Inbox. It’s like throwing a business card across a table to someone.
• You can advertise on a user’s widget. By clicking the “Advertise” link in the site’s profile, and paying the auto-adjusted price in EntreCredits, your ad will be submitted to the site owner for approval. If it is approved, your ad will be shown on their site for 24 hours.

As soon as I registered, I was flooded with advertising requests, as users saw the new, cheap, entry in the EC directory. Within two hours of being in the directory, my widget was booked for the next 15 days or so. The request rate has since settled down, but I still have a comfortable influx of ads.

So far, I have 203 credits (and growing fast). I’ve already bought a couple cheap ads, and I’m saving up for the 300+ credit price of an ad on ProBlogger.

The whole system works well, and is fairly easy to use, though there have been some server issues recently. (Only the EntreCard.com website has been affected though. The widgets still display fine.)

There are three widget sizes that should fit in most blog sidebars. There is a 127×138 one, a 200×127, and a 250×127. Here’s a screenshot of the “Get Code” page.

EntreCard is an interesting idea, and it nets you some free publicity. It would cost you over $500/month to buy an ad on ProBlogger, yet you can get an EntreCard ad there for a reasonable rate of 323 EC credit. So, I’d say it’s worth trying out.