It’s no secret that I’ve been testing display ad networks for months and ever since switching over to The Blogger Network, I’ve been been singing their praises. A lot of people have been asking me a lot of questions about the network and so I figure why not get one of the co-founders directly on the line and ask him why the rock.
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Summary
In this podcast I chat with Kyle Ivins, co-founder and chief marketing officer (CMO) about the story behind how The Blogger Network started, the nitty gritty about what makes a good display ad network and why more bloggers should jump on to TBN.
I hope you enjoy!
In this particular episode, you will learn
- About Kyle
- How The Blogger Network (TBN) started
- What should you look for in an ad network
- What does the reporting look like?
- Are their ad policies up to date?
- What is their focus (i.e. ad performance or total revenue)
- What level of control do you have with ads
- What level of customer service do they have?
- What makes TBN worth switching to
- Dashboard/Analytics
- Customer Service
- More than just CPM
- Through eCPM
- Total Revenue
- Will optimize for eCPM (Account managers will look in depth at your blog’s performance and tweak continuously)
- What should you look for in an ad network
- What does the reporting look like?
- Are their ad policies up to date?
- What is their focus (i.e. ad performance or total revenue)
- What level of control do you have with ads
- What level of customer service do they have?
- Customer Service at TBN
- Every week, the whole company will review all the new bloggers that come on board
- TBN’s Polaris Principle: Always do what’s best for the blog
- Signing Up for TBN
- Minimum requirement: 80,000+ page views per month (process for smaller bloggers is in the works)
- Sign up through the website
- Fill out onboarding agreement (select ads, provide information)
- Tags get added to the blog and will start delivering the ads
- Account manager will proactively follow up
- New beta projects
- Video player
- Flight Network – mobile template for blogs enabled for ads
- Control See – When someone tries to copy content from your site to the clipboard, you have to watch a video first
- How can bloggers make more money
- Disintermediation – Get straight to the brand (or as close as possible) instead of going through 10-30 middle men
- Technology and reporting – Know your data and have access to proper reporting
- Thoughts on Google AdSense
- Great place to start
- Lowest barrier to entry
- Problem is that there are lots of middle men
- Lots of lower tier buyers
- Ad payout is based on clicks
- PASSION -> $$$
- TBN’s breakthrough moment
- 2013 – First testing assumptions and reporting for early bloggers and realized that they were able to get them 4x more income than the previous month.
Links mentioned in this episode
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thanks
You’re most welcome!
Will!
Thanks so much for this! They had just contacted us and I was looking for some reviews. I was curious about how good they were for Canadian bloggers, so I was pumped to see you were in Toronto!
Hopefully food/recipe blogs do as well as your field.
You’re most welcome Raj! They’re definitely expanding and if they do as well as they do in travel, they’ll rock it in food!