MediaWhiz Blog: Archive

Did you realize that you can make money when visitors click on your “Ads by AuctionAds” link in your ad unit? AuctionAds offers a unique referral program where you will earn a percentage of all your referred publishers, meaning you can make a nice additional tidy sum of referral revenue on top of the money you make from the actual ads themselves.

Ever click on the “Ads by ___” link on some of the other ad programs? If you did, you would discover a landing page that would get new signups or advertisers for those programs but would leave the publisher high and dry when it comes actually getting any credit or revenue from those those signups. And not only are you not earning any money from those referrals, it is also a non-money-making leak where visitors can leave your site without you making a penny off of them. This is one area where AuctionAds strives to be different.

With AuctionAds, we don’t want you to worry about the loss of revenue caused by the branding we use to identify the ad units as ads on your site. So we have implemented a referral program that is imbedded right into your ad units. So anytime anyone clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” and signs up for the program, you will earn 2% of those new publisher’s earnings. Pretty sweet deal. This means every single click made from our ad units, even the clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” gives you the potential to earn money.

Do you have other ways you wish to promote AuctionAds outside of the ad unit itself? You can also generate referral links that do not have to appear in conjunction with your ad unit, so you can just include a link in your blog entry talking about AuctionAds, or include it in a sidebar of a blog or website. Just login to your account and you will find the code right on the front page.

And with AuctionAds being such a new program, chances are good that if a visitor likes your new revenue stream on your site, they just might click that link and sign up themselves. And since nearly all of those signups would have clicked on the links to see how they worked, you will still earn money from that signup if they also end up placing an eBay bid as well!

Wondering just how many people you have already referred to AuctionAds? The front page of your AuctionAds account shows the number of referrals you currently have, so you can see how many people have signed up using your link. And soon, you will also be able to login to your account and see your referral reporting separated out from your regular earnings, so you will be able to see just how much money you are making from your AuctionAds ads versus strictly the referral revenue. If you tend to send a lot of referrals, this will be especially handy for you.

Ready to start earning referral revenue from AuctionAds? Either use AuctionAds ad units, if you aren’t already, or simply login to your account to generate the referral javascript so you can create regular links for AuctionAds and start earning right away.

We are excited to announce that two MediaWhiz executives have been chosen as finalists for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007® Awards.

Jason Cohen, President of MediaWhiz Holdings, LLC has been chosen as a finalist in the Metro New York area, and Patrick Gavin, President and co-founder of Text-Link-Ads.com has been selected as a finalist for the Central Midwest region.

“We are thrilled to have Jason Cohen and Patrick Gavin chosen as finalists for this prestigious award,” stated Jonathan Shapiro, CEO, MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc. “This honor confirms, that with senior executives like Jason and Patrick, MediaWhiz is blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit and level of innovation that has placed it at the forefront of online marketing.”

We had some down time this morning and we apologize for that. The outage lasted approximately 45 minutes. We identified the problem and have fixed it. One of our core power distribution units failed, knocking out the better portion of our hardware. This is the first time we experienced this and are adding redundancy to ensure this does not happen again. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to a great month of June!

If you are using multiple ad units on a page, be sure you are using these additional ad units to increase your bottom line as much as possible. And doing this is surprisingly easy.

First, we should look at your first ad unit. This should be the one your visitors are most likely to click. And you should ensure you have the ads that are most targeted to the visitors of that page in that ad unit.

For example, if you have a fishing site and hjave a page about a particular fishing pole, you obviously want to make sure that the keywords for that particular fishing pole are the ones you are using in that ad unit.

Now, what about your second, third, fourth and beyond ad units? It obviously does not make too much sense to just repeat the same keywords in each additional ad unit. Since the visitor didn’t click the first time they saw it, chances are good they won’t click the second, third or fourth time they see it either. The only time you should consider using the same keywords in additional ad units on the same page is if you have a lengthy article that readers must scroll down several times to complete, you might want to use the same keywords that are exactly related to that article in ad units both above and below the article, especially if the article is something like a product review or something specifically related to a product on eBay. Otherwise, once is enough.

Instead, consider using keywords for something complementary to the keywords in the first AuctionAds ad unit. So if you have that page about the specific fishing pole, why not include keywords for specific accessories for it, fishing lures, coolers or even boats. You might even consider using the brand name of the fishing pole as the keyword, in order to show additional products made by the same company.

Not sure how well these additional ad units are working for you? Set up individual channels to track what is monetizing better for you. This will allow you to keep track of ads with the highest CTRs and give you the felxibility to test other keywords in the ad units that aren’t performing as well.

New Alignment Maximizes One Of The Most Experienced Teams In Online Marketing Solutions

MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of performance-based online marketing services, today announced it has significantly expanded its senior management team. The broader executive team will continue to oversee the integration of the company’s suite of marketing services, which include affiliate marketing, lead generation, email marketing, list management, display advertising, text link advertising, and search marketing, creating seamless, full-service online advertising solutions for MediaWhiz’s clients as well as focusing on developing additional career opportunities for staff across the company.

In the past two years, MediaWhiz has grown more than eight-fold with acquisitions and organic initiatives. Following an investment in 2005 from private equity firm Lake Capital, MediaWhiz merged in 2006 with Global Resource Systems (now WhiteDelivery) to form one of the largest providers of integrated, online performance marketing services. More recently, MediaWhiz acquired Text-Link-Ads.com, specializing in text link advertisements, and Monetizeit.net, a leader in lead generation for the financial, consumer, and healthcare markets.

In April, MediaWhiz announced it had hired Jonathan Shapiro, a former executive at Lillian Vernon Corp., DoubleClick,, United Media and McKinsey & Co., as chief executive officer. Chief financial officer Tom Lanzetta, former chief operating officer of Agency.com, joined the company in January. In addition, a number of the founders and executives of MediaWhiz companies have taken on new roles:

• Jason Cohen, founder of MediaWhiz, Inc., has been appointed chief sales officer and president of MediaWhiz’s New York City office.
• John Dopazo, formerly chief technical officer of WhiteDelivery, has been appointed president of WhiteDelivery, an email service provider that offers email list management, compliance services, content delivery, and transactional message delivery including auto-responders, order confirmations, account updates, and shipping confirmations.
• Yannick Tessier, founder of Global Resource Systems, has accepted the position of chief strategy officer, while Michael Germani, formerly chief operating officer of GRS, will become MediaWhiz’s email delivery officer.
• Dow Smith, formerly chief operating officer, becomes president of Monetizeit.net, while Monetizeit.net co-founder Steve Wadley will focus on sales as executive vice president of business development. Joe Wesson has joined Monetizeit.net as the group’s chief technology officer. Most recently, Wesson was president of Benchmark Consulting, a firm he founded in 2002 and grew to more than $6 million in revenues and 40 employees.
• Patrick Gavin, founder of Text–Link-Ads.com, remains president of the group but has relocated to New York City from Cincinnati and will oversee the expansion of MediaWhiz Search.

“MediaWhiz’s explosive growth had created an increased need for more senior leadership,” said Jonathan Shapiro, chief executive officer of MediaWhiz. “We have an extraordinary group of executives recognized across the industry as online marketing thought leaders. The realignment of our management team maximizes their talents and experience, allowing us to continue to provide MediaWhiz clients with one of the broadest platforms of online marketing solutions available while also enhancing career opportunities for MediaWhiz employees.”

Did you know that AuctionAds ad units can automatically rotate a group of keywords for you, so you don’t need to go through an ad serving system to rotate the keywords for your ad unit on a single page? All you need to do is chose your list of keywords and insert it into your keyword tag line within your AuctionAds javascript.

For example:

auctionads_ad_kw = “NHL hockey; playoffs; Stanley Cup; Anaheim Ducks; Ottawa Senators”;

This will tell AuctionAds to rotate the ads evenly, meaning on one page view will show auctions for “NHL hockey” while the next page view might show ads for “Anaheim Ducks”.

If you have any pages with a lot of repeat visitors, this will help keep the ads fresh on your site and not seem as though you are showing the same ads during every visit.

You can also appeal with your targeting when you rotate keywords. And while someone might not be interested in “Ottawa Senators” auctions because they are a Ducks fan, on a subsequent page view they might see Ducks jerseys in the ad unit and click.

Having trouble thinking what keywords to rotate? Go to eBay do some searches, and see if they recommend additional search options for you. For example, when you search for Anaheim Ducks, eBay also makes the following search recommendations:

mighty ducks, ducks jersey, teemu selanne, ducks tickets

So if you have a page about the Anaheim Ducks, these are perfect suggestions for additional keywords to rotate.

Ready to start rotating? You can easily go back and change any existing ad units to rotate keywords, just be sure to insert the ; between each keyword or keyword phrase you use.

We dare you - take the AuctionAds Ten Day Challenge.

We have ten days before the end of the month, so we are asking new (or soon-to-be new) AuctionAds publishers to take the AuctionAds Ten Day Challenge. This means you make a commitment to add AuctionAds to your site for ten days to see how it compares to your other sources of online revenue, such as AdSense or YPN.

And best of all, you don’t even have to remove any of your current advertising to take our challenge, add AuctionAds to compliment what you are currently using. However, we won’t argue if you want to swap out AdSense or YPN for AuctionAds! We have made our challenge is so super easy, all you need to do is simply take the time to add an AuctionAds ad unit on every page of your site, and see how it performs for the next ten days.

Worried about loss of AdSense or YPN revenue? Traditionally the later days in the month earn publishers less money, as well as the fact there is a US holiday (Memorial Day) during this testing period, which causes most publishers to see a dramatic AdSense drop. So you have nothing to lose, and plenty of AuctionAds earnings to gain… and don’t forget you will continue to earn off those clicks thirty days after the challenge is complete!

Still not convinced? Here are some reasons why we think you should test out AuctionAds and take our Ten Day Challenge.

1. Publishers have reported to us that AuctionAds is making them double what they were earning with AdSense….think of how much money you could be missing out on that you can be earning in addition to AdSense

2. The immense inventory variety at AuctionAds means you don’t have to worry about a lack of ads showing for your site’s topic area. A quick eBay search will reveal what ad inventory is available for your chosen keywords, something neither Google nor Yahoo supports.

3. No PSAs! If there are no ads available (maybe you have an old page targeted with “football tickets” but forgot to change it once football season ended and tickets were no longer being actively sold on eBay) we will show ads related to technology (think iPods and Xbox), so you don’t lose any revenue potential.

4. You will continue to earn on those eBay clicks for the next 30 days, something you do not get with contextual advertising programs.

5. AuctionAds are geotargeted, meaning you can earn money off your visitors when they click ads from outside the US… YPN still does not permit their ads being shown to non-US visitors.

6. Because AuctionAds uses standard ad unit sizes, you can easily replace AdSense or YPN ad units without having to change your layout, not to mention they will fit in all the standard places such as sidebars or underneath blog or forum entries.

7. You can earn an affiliate commission off new AuctionAds publishers when they click the “Ads by AuctionAds” link on any of your ad units. Again, neither AdSense nor YPN do this.

8. Every ad we show has a picture, increasing your click through rate since your visitors will have a visual cue of what is being sold. Remember how well the images next to ad units trick worked?

Haven’t signed up yet? Click here to sign up now, and your application will be approved almost immediately, meaning you can start adding AuctionAds to your site today and start our Ten Day Challenge.

And don’t forget when you view your stats, you will see impressions, clicks and your CTR for the first couple of days, but with $0 earnings. This is because there is a two day delay showing earnings. So don’t be alarmed when you see $0 earnings during the first couple of days, this is completely normal. So you will see earnings for today’s clicks update in your account in two days time.

Once you see how well AuctionAds performs, drop us a line and let us know how well the AuctionAds Ten Day Challenge worked for you. And as an added bonus, if you take the Ten Day Challenge, we will credit your account $5 (new signups only)!

Signup here!

Readers, Jennifer Slegg has a great post on anchor text strategy that you should check out.  From Jennifer’s post:

So definitely ensure you have variety in your anchor text, even going
so far as having some links linked with âclick hereâ, your
company/website name or simply your URL. Then make a list of all the
possible anchor text combinations and when you get a new link, choose a
different keyword combo off the list. Then once you get more than a
handful, you can go back and get additional links for your most
important phrases, but again being careful to unevenly distribute the
anchor text of those links. Yes, you can definitely give more links to
your most important keyword phrases, just resist the temptatation to do
them all on your top phrase.

Check out the full post…

Wordpress 2.2 was released less then 24 hours ago and someone has already released a wordpress widget for AuctionAds!

You can check it out and download it here

Today we’ve turned on 2 oft-requested and powerful features for AuctionAds publishers. Now you have the ability to target specific sellers for ads. We think this will be a great feature for eBay sellers who also have their own sites.

To do a search on a seller’s items including a keyword, use:


auctionads_ad_kw = "userid:www.uogold.com dell";


To display random listings from ONLY a certain seller without any keywords, use:


auctionads_ad_kw = "seller:www.uogold.com";


If auctions are not available, or are in the process of updating, auctions from other sellers may appear.