adgridwork Reviewed
Free Advertising?
The terms FREE and ADVERTISE are hardly ever seen in the same sentence. At least in my experience as a novice webmaster I have not seen a free advertising service. Well, I believe the reason for this is quite straightforward – what business model will support a free ad service. In other words how will the ad network make money? This is where Adgridwork enters the scene with their free ad exchange solution.
adgridwork was started by Nick and Kyle at the end of 2006. It was started as a free project and still continues to be completely free of charge. According to their site ….
We do not make any money much less a living off of adgridwork. We handle the site in our free time (though lately with the launch it does feel more like a job
. We simply had an idea and wanted to see it through – see if it would catch on. We have never had any plans to make a living or any money at all from running adgridwork. We just want to make something that people will use. (Plus if it catches on, it will look really good on a resume
Adgridwork ads looks similar to Google AdSense ads – they are text link ads pointing to your website which is placed on other sites in your niche. The ads are standard text ads without any graphics or flash capabilities. The process is quick and simple – sign up for an account, fill in information about your site, generate ad code and place it on your site and Adgridwork does the rest of the work for you. You do not need to promote or pay for any part of this service – at least for now. As long as you get a few clicks on the ads your site will be advertised across their network.
Why use adgridwork?
In their own words …
Why use adgridwork to advertise your website?
- It’s 100% free. Thats right folks: Free Advertising. No payments. Ever.
- Increase your traffic. We have thousands of sites on our network all ready and waiting to freely advertise your website or product.
- We have attractive advertisement blocks AND text links. Most people are blind to the traditional AdSense ads. Our free ads are fresh, simple and appealing to the eye.
- Promote to a targeted audience. You can define exactly what types of sites you want your free advertisement to appear on.
- Registration and setup is a snap. Our service is completely user-friendly.
- Free metrics and tracking tools for webmasters. We provide you with detailed information on the users viewing your advertisements and websites.
Adgridwork vs. BlogRush
Some of you may already be familiar with BlogRush which provides a similar service to some extent. But there are 3 major differences.
- BlogRush is exclusively for blogs and Adgridwork will work on blogs, sites, forums and any other internet medium.
- BlogRush takes your blog’s RSS feed and publishes it across their network. But adgridwork behaves and looks like a typical ad.
- You can place the BlogRush widget anywhere on your blog even outside the viewing are and as long as it loads on the page it counts as a page view. Adgridwork takes into consideration the number of clicks on the Adgridwork ads and this metric is used for displaying your ads on other sites.
If want to know more check out BlogRush review by Doshdosh – BlogRush Review: Using Widgets to Get Traffic to Your Blog
Joining adgridwork
Sign-up process is a breeze. Simply fill out your email address (you need this to log on) and password to create an account.
Once inside fill out a form showing how you want your website ads to be displayed across the network. There is a live preview feature called aDSPY (its not what it sounds like) which lets you see and make changes to your ad accordingly.
You also need to enter your website information. Select the appropriate category from their long list. A unique thing about Adgridwork is you have the option of selecting Adult-only network which will broadcast your ads only inside that network. Next type in your site related keywords – don’t enter keywords specific to a single blog post or just 1 page in your site. Think about your site and ensure if you say the keywords out loud does it instantly bring your site to your mind. If it doesn’t then go back and redo the keywords. The last entry in this section is to select your language. Currently they support English and Spanish and adgridwork says “This is a new feature to adgridwork, so we are starting with a small selection of languages. More will be added as demand merits.”
The next step in the process is to select an appropriate ad size and format. Remember to select a size that will blend into your existing site design and will still display the ad appropriately. Adgridwork says “… the more clicks the ads on your site receive, the more frequently your site will appear on other sites in the network.” The various ad layouts are shown below.
The next and last step is to rule out any competition. If you know other sites in your niche and would like to block their ads here is your chance. Adgridwork lays it out simply as “Because adgridwork attempts to place similar site ads with one another (targeted advertising), you may be displaying ads from sites that are competitors of yours. To exclude these sites from being displayed on your site, enter their Domain Names below.”
Finally you can submit your site and start advertising your site instantly. Keep in mind the account remains inactive and your ads are not displayed till you enter the code on your site and start displaying ads.
Reporting
Immediately after logging into your account you can see summary statistics similar to the one shown below. These number reflects the average site stats approximately after 12 hours after adgridwork code was incorporated into TeqEdge
If you want more detailed data click on View Campaign Metrics link under Detailed Metrics and you will see a screen similar to below.
You can read more about the metrics used by adgridwork on their help pages.
Site Requests – This indicates the number of times that your website has requested an ad block from our servers. It also corresponds to the number of page views your site has received.
Impressions - This field indicates the number of times that your website advertisement has appeared on other user’s sites.
Conversions - This indicates the number of times that your advertisement has been clicked on another user’s site. The more conversions, the better targeted the ads are.
CTR - Click Through Rate – The CTR simply indicates the ratio of Conversions to Impressions.
Clicks - The Click field indicates how many times someone has clicked an ad on your site.
Conclusion
Overall this is a great service and I would recommend it to anyone with a website. I find Adgridwork ads unobtrusive and extremely easy to use. Once the ad is created you can be up and running in minutes if not seconds. There is no lengthy review process and best of all its completely free. The reporting features are simple and quickly provides what you want to know. It is a must have for any webmaster.
Review Adgridwork and get a back link
Adgridwork and BloggingTips are also featuring a Free LinkBacks for adgridwork Reviews on adgridwork blog and BloggingTips blog. So if you have an opinion about adgridwork feel free to write a post and earn a couple of juicy back links.
If you like to join adgridwork network feel free to join using my affiliate link or go to adgridwork and sign up.
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