AdsFlip Review
A few weeks ago, I was contacted to try AdsFlip, a new CPM based advertising exchange. The concept is that you earn credits by showing ad impressions on your website, which you can later redeem for your own ad impressions on other websites.
It seemed like a nice way to get a little bit of extra value from fast traffic, like some Entrecard and most StumbleUpon and Digg traffic, so I installed a 125×125 ad box to give it an honest try.
My complete results and review after the jump!
The program is really quite basic. You earn credits every time an ad is shown on your website. You can also earn 1000 credits for referring other members. Then, you take these credits and place ads, just like any other ad network, but you pay per impression. This is a no cash system so far, meaning you can’t buy credits, but this could change in the future as the service is still in beta.
It’s really easy to set up ads, and you can use text or images. You can also target different niches too, which is a good feature.
In general, AdsFlip works fine. But, the results I personally had were quite awful, but I don’t place the blame squarely on AdsFlip. CPM just sucks.
First of all, this site favors sites with super high volume traffic, like file sites, or video sites… any sort of site with high page views per visitor. That means that most of your impressions won’t get even a glance.
I tested quite a few different ads in different niches, take a look at my results below.
So, out of almost 12,000 impressions, I received 16 clicks. Pretty awful I’d say. Those ads are in a variety of different niches, with text and image ads, some I wrote myself, some I took from top Google ads results to see if the “best” Google ads would convert here. They did not; nothing did.
I got most of my credits from referring other users to try the service. I was contacted by them, and was asked to “write a review” and try this service, and in exchange, I would receive double the signup bonus, so 2000 credits per user.
Well, 2 replies and 7 referrals later, I have still not heard back from them, and I haven’t gotten any bonus credits. This doesn’t really give me a good impression of their customer service, and honestly, if they are going to make this promise and not deliver, why would they ask for a review? They know I won’t be happy about it 
Now, I hate to give AdsFlip a totally bad wrap, when it could certainly be recourse to those big traffic sites, but even those guys would probably be better off just selling their CPM ad space for cash.
Fact of the matter is, that I highly doubt any blogger or normal website owner alike will find much use for this service. The amount of effort you have to go through to get such marginal results is just not worth it.
Pros:
- System works well, even in beta.
- Nice UI, simple to understand.
- Can put affiliate links in ads.
- It’s free.
Cons:
- CPM is terrible, and the CTR is terrible.
- Totally favours junk mass traffic sites.
- Bad customer service, probably.
The Yimto Verdict: Breaking Even.
(Only because it’s free)
Check out AdsFlip if you want to try it out for yourself.
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Thats funny how we pretty much wrote the same article on the same day using almost the same style. Now I kick myself for being too lazy to post the chart. We both came to similar conclusions. Even the top image looks identical, but I lifted the control panel one and you grabbed the beta image.
Bottom line: Use your entrecard traffic to earn a few credits, then try a few oddball categories to see if you can get your ad somewhere other than the high traffic directories that nobody reads. blow through the 1000 cr like you would a free adwords account and then yank the ads if nobody clicks.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
P.S. Turnip’s Review is also a good read
I don’t know if you guys tried clicking on the adsflip ads … I did (unwittingly, I thought they were typical private ads). A lot of times (8 out of 10) it led to an error page and that’s how I knew they were adsflip ads.
So this rating- I would downgrade.
“Pros: - System works well, even in beta.”
No, I hadn’t clicked on ads. I just now did a little testing, and I didn’t have the same problem. Although, I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if what you say is true.
There really aren’t that many ads in the network yet either, so I guess we’ll see how that escalates.
I’ve tried it myself and its been looking good for me. I had 6 clicks out of 400 impressions. I suppose the ad I placed for advertisement is very attractive
I had them on the list to check out. But now I don’t have to. I trust your opinion. Thanks man.
How is that, when you find a review like this, some guy called Kevin comes in without a link and says the program is great. There is some random Kevin out there that likes every ad system and I plan on finding the guy because he needs to write a book on how every ad system in the world works.
Hahaha, hilarious!
LOL I find that funny as well and I am a Kevin.
I was looking at maybe trying this out as well, but I am always very skeptical of the traffic generated from these types of programs.
Personally I prefer to try and target my ads to relevant sites. I would simply wonder with this if the traffic was nothing more then worthless hits from others trying pump up their own numbers.
Glad to see someone has tried this and given a fair review. I think I will steer away from it for now.
Thanks for making me notice this new marketing tool. And for your results being awful. Cheer up. I had worst luck using CPM Adwords Ads
I like your info, have you gotten your bonus yet? I think I will stay away. I appreciate your work.
Still not yet. I’m not counting on it, nor do I really care anymore at this point. I will let you guys know if they do contact me though.
Meh, I’ve been testing it out as well. Not good results, but I figure I have nothing else to do with the space ATM (I’ll probably end up trying to sell it later). I received a few clicks, but nothing spectacular. Most of the time the only thing showing on my blog is the default ads…. so whatever that means, can’t be good.
Yeah, I think this is mostly because it’s a very new service so there aren’t enough advertisers spending credits yet.
Nice for them though right, gives them free advertising whenever other ads are not available >< lol
At the moment my stats for this one is also horrendous, not one for a low traffic site.