I recently signed up for AuctionAds to test if it will earn more money than Google AdSense for one of my sites. So far my results have not been good due to the fact the AuctionAds keyword rotation system seems to be broken.

AuctionAds is not a contextual advertising network. You have to specify the keywords into the system to get relevant ads displayed on your web site. Google AdSense on the other hand tries to automatically detect your web site’s theme and display relevant ads at their own discretion. AuctionAds allows you to set the keywords, minimum/maximum bid price, negative keywords and a couple of matching options.

According to AuctionAds’ keyword document:

One powerful feature you can use is result refinement using a “,”. Say for example you have a web site with baseball cards. You automatically insert the players name from the page into the ads, but not every player may have auctions with their name listed. You could however specify: “derek jeter rookie card, derek jeter, baseball”. The engine will try to find Derek Jeter rookie cards, and if all else fails will show simply “baseball” ads.

If you simply want to return all of several different keywords, use “;” a semicolon. Specify: “hdtv;xbox 360;video games” to return ads for hdtv OR xbox 360 OR video games.

Please keep in mind that there IS a delay between updating keywords on your code and seeing changes on your site. In the mean time the most popular items on eBay will display.

The Comma Parameter

Let’s say I want to display Barbie dolls and Transformers toys on my web site. I am not a girl so I don’t like Barbie dolls and I want Transformers toys to be displayed as my first priority. I would enter the code “transformers, barbie” into AuctionAds.

What this does is it tells AuctionAds to display as many Transformers toy ads until it cannot find any more before showing any Barbie doll ads. The problem with this approach is if there are loads of Transformers ads on eBay, you may never get a chance to display Barbie doll ads on your site.

I have tested the comma syntax in AuctionAds and the returned ads are correct and they work on my web site too.

The Colon Parameter

This is where I have problems with AuctionAds. I am not the only person in this world complaining about it. Since May 2007, some people have posted in this AuctionAds blog post about this problem.

The colon parameter is supposed to be a “OR” operator code for your keywords. For example if I wanted to display iPods and Creative MP3 players on my site randomly, I would use the code “ipod; creative mp3 player”.

However, this code does not seem to work. I received a lot of garbage results instead of the iPod and Creative MP3 player results I was expecting. I understand that there is a delay in the ads but after leaving my ads for over a day, I am still getting nonsense ads on my site. This is so frustrating.

Tagged As: AuctionAds, auctionads-colon, auctionads-comma, auctionads-keyword-rotation

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