AuctionAds.com is a non-contextual, 3rd party, eBay affiliate program that earns YOU (a publisher) money for linking to eBay auctions. When someone clicks on your AuctionAds link/banner, they are taken to the respective eBay page, and are also given a cookie. Anything they purchase, including the original item they were interested in, within 30 days, earns you eBay affiliate commission. You earn 50%-75% of the revenue that eBay generated off of that sale. “Revenue” is the listing fee, final value fee, and all other fees associated with selling something on eBay. The reason that AuctionAds is better than being a direct eBay affiliate is because AuctionAds’ large user base means they receive the highest payout per successful eBay transaction, which earns you the most money possible.
Now, I got wind of a new product that MediaWhiz / AuctionAds / Text-link-ads is about to release called ShoppingAds.com. ShoppingAds is their new CPC (cost-per-click), versus the AuctionAds CPA (cost-per-acquisition), product. The website, internally, is exactly the same as Auctionads.com, with a different color scheme. The ad-formats are the same, the Get Code section remains the same, but the ads are different. ShoppingAds.com has teamed up with “a number of online merchants”, and, so far, I can tell Amazon is one of them.
A CPC revenue model will work wonders on some sites, and fail horribly on others. For instance, if an AuctionAds publisher is receiving 700 clicks per day, but it only translates into $20 via the CPA model, that same user, receiving 700 clicks using the ShoppingAds.com CPC model, with a payout of $0.05 per click, would make $35. There is no information up yet as to how much each click is worth on ShoppingAds. It now appears that ShoppingAds is claiming a $0.25 CPC on average. I cannot back this up personally, but I received an email from Patrick Gavin (of TLA & ShoppingAds) that this was the case. This new estimate of $0.25 CPC brings the test case above to a total of $175.00, without taking into consideration the difference and variation in product selection (so it is not likely you will receive the same 700 clicks using ShoppingAds that you were receiving with AuctionAds, because the products may not be the same). It will work out for some this way though, and they will make more, on average, with ShoppingAds; as long as their keyword selection yields sufficient, similar, products on ShoppingAds. If your users click on your AuctionAds links, but do not follow through with sales, the ShoppingAds CPC model may have a higher payout for you.
I have noticed one problem so far, and it is inherent to the affiliate sources. With AuctionAds, eBay is a crowd sourced database of products. You have a lot of people putting a lot of random stuff up for auction. Your chances of finding fake dog poop on eBay are very high. However, online merchants tend not to carry as many specialty items as they would regular items. ShoppingAds has a much smaller database of non-standard products. For instance, with AuctionAds, the keyword “sewing” is going to show you never ending random auctions for sewing products, and machines, and tools. With ShoppingAds, the keyword “sewing” brings up 5 items (3 sewing machines, and 2 sergers). Sony PSP, iPod, xbox360, and all other currently popular items show great results in both products. So, ShoppingAds may not be the best for specialty websites that deal with topics that wont show relevant products. It would be nice if a keyword such as “sewing” was not taken literally, and a contextually similar set of items were returned (sewing would then yield results of sewing machines, fabrics, sewing books, thread, etc).
With all of that said, I am glad that MediaWhiz is releasing a CPC product that is similar to AuctionAds. I can see it performing well on one of my sites that generates clicks, but no follow-through on the auctions. According to Patrick Gavin of Text-Link-Ads and AuctionAds, their new ShoppingAds.com product will be out of private beta within the next week or two.