AdMatch - Doesn’t Quite Do What It Says On The Tin! April 16th, 2008 7:14 pm

Banner space on affiliate sites can be filled in a number of ways - adwords, a fixed banner, content unit, widgets, your own rotating banner script. If you’re doing your own banner thing though it’s often easy to forget about updating them, or merchants pull creative or it gets changed and therefore lacks relevancy.

What would be useful is a system that scans your page and targets your audience with a relevant ad!

Cue… AdMatch from Tradedoubler.

This new feature offers three types of ads Text, Product and Banner and according to the blurb on TD:

AdMatch scans the content of your webpage and then serves the most relevant ads from advertisers you’ve applied to. This better targets your audience, keeps your ads updated and fresh and drives performance.

Getting and creating the ads is pretty painless! All ads come in a variety of sizes, they can be customised, and there’s options to exclude keywords. When you consider this was the network who developed the most complicated content unit system in history, the ease of use of AdMatch is a major step forward.

So is it any good and should you go and grab the code?

The Text ad, in my opinion, is a bit of a luxury. Given the choice between using Google AdSense or using the AdMatch text option, I think a lot of affiliates would go with the AdSense option simply to take the commission on every click.

The Product ad could be useful, especially the options which show images, but for those options without images it’s again perhaps a case of maybe AdSense PPC being a better option?

The Banner ad option did appeal though, especially as AdMatch will “ensure that you are always targeting your audience with the most relevant, up-to-date ads”! Oh, but it doesn’t! Can you spot the problem with this banner:

Well, firstly it’s a Christmas banner and if you guessed that as the answer then well done! However, the real answer is that Littlewoods Direct are no longer a Tradedoubler merchant! They closed the program on 13th January 2008! So the ad is not relevant, it’s not up to date, and it shouldn’t be there.

It’s time to add an “if merchant is closed don’t show their banner” bit of code!

On the plus side, and it’s right to offer a balanced review, most of the banners displayed did show relevancy - and if the code can be fine tuned then the AdMatch for Banners would be a very useful tool - however, TD do need to make sure AdMatch is not showing closed merchant ads. For me this is something which should have been a given in development and also picked up in testing.

On a larger scale, the worry is that if affiliates don’t embrace new promotional tools, like AdMatch, will networks eventually turnaround and say “no one uses these things, let’s not develop them”? However, if the tools aren’t up to scratch or contain schoolboy errors, affiliates just won’t use the tools. They’ll simply remove the code and stick something else in it’s place.

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