What do I do while I wait for AdSense to monitor my traffic?

This is the third time AdSense put an ad serving limit on my sites and this one really hurt.

The ads showed for a few minutes on March 15. On March 26 ads showed for a couple of hours. When the ads stopped showing again it was really disheartening.

I started looking around again to see what alternatives there are to Google AdSense. I signed up for a few of them to try.

PropellerAds MultiTag

The first one that approved me was PropellerAds. I read some things that said how much more people made with PropellerAds over AdSense.

It could not have been easier to set up. There is a plugin that figures it all out for you.

These are the types of ads they can put on your site.

MultiTag
A multipurpose tag that contains all ad formats at once for easier integration
Balanced settings and optimized rates for a maximum profit

In-Page Push (Banner
No user subscription, just native banner on your website
Monetizes all types of traffic including iOS

Push Notifications
Profitable format with high CTR, perfectly compatible with all other ads
Get paid for each new subscription (CPS) or impression delivered (CPM).

Onclick (Popunder)
Popular, top-performing full-tab ads.
Monetize every visitor on desktop & mobile.

Interstitial
Non full-screen, suitable for desktop & mobile traffic.
Get higher revenue compared to the classic banners.

Direct link (Direct ads)
Flexible ad format with smart ads auto-optimization.
Send traffic from your own banners, texts or custom advertising solutions.

I just used the MultiTag. Easier integration, maximum profit… sounds great! The site says it might take a while to work, but it worked immediately. Almost right away my site got really confusing. If I clicked anything, a completely random page not on my site showed up. If I closed that tab, my site was still there, the page I thought I would go to. I am guessing that is what they mean by “full-tab ad.”

I decided to give it the rest of the month to see what happened. In about an hour I thought to look at my WordPress stats. An hour is not much of a test, and I really couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like more people were not going on to a second page of the site.

I looked at my site again and saw an ad that looked like the pop-up Live Chat message you find on Lowes. Except this one said I could talk to real live girls. I logged back in and deleted the plugin.

I probably could have customized it. There are a lot of options.

Amazon Associates Native Shopping Ads

Instead I decided to play around with Amazon Associates Native Shopping Ads. I have had a lot of success with Amazon Associates, but it wasn’t something you could turn on for a whole site. You have to guess what someone looking at that page of your site might be interested in. And the ads need some monitoring. They turn into a big orange flashing rectangle when the product you are linking to changes. Which happens a lot.

Recommendation Ads seem like they might work. They are supposed to automatically display relevant product recommendations from Amazon based on your page content and visiting users.”

I installed the Ad Inserter plugin and put an Amazon Recommendation Native Shopping Ad a few paragraphs down on every page. I checked the site and Amazon is showing something different on every page. Some of them seem very relevant, others less so.

I added different tracking IDs to see what was working. It’s early yet, but it gets a lot of clicks. More clicks than AdSense gets. But of course with Amazon I don’t get paid per click, only when someone buys something. They have, but not enough to make up for the lost AdSense income.

Approval came through from Media.net, but Google is showing ads again. As long as they are interested in showing ads, I’m sticking with AdSense.

This is an example of an Amazon Recommendation Native Shopping Ad. It is supposed to show ads for things that have something to do with what is on this page and what you are likely to shop for. How’s it doing?