First Week Impressions on Project Wonderful

I started using Project Wonderful on several of my websites a week back, but with subtle differences in the way the ads were set up. Before getting to that, read my earlier post on Project Wonderful here. The aim was to get a better understanding of how their system works and the quality of bids placed on ad spots. I experimented with different ad sizes (125×125, 160×600, and 117×30) and different minimum bid amounts. On Online Presence (this blog), I decided to keep the minimum bid amount for 125×125 ads extremely low ($0.02), while on one of the sites, I set it higher ($0.05). For 160×600, I set it to $0.05. By the way, the pricing is per day. For another site, I kept no minimum bid amount. What this means is that, the first bidder gets a ad spot for free ($0.00) and then the pricing rises.

The pricing is obviously very low, but the aim was to see how high these can get during the ‘infinite auctions’ and if the minimum bid amount has a role to play.

How am I fairing so far?

Well, one week later I am richer by $2.12! Pathetic to say the least! But did the minimum bid amounts have anything to do with it? Let us examine this a little further now.

For sites where I set the minimum bid amount as $0.05, the number of bidders were low, but the quality of bids were better and the money made was also higher (obviously!). I ran blocks of 4 125×125 ads together as a skyscraper or as a horizontal ad strip, and these did make money consistently at above $0.05 per day with the highest getting to about $0.07.

For blocks where the bid amount was set to $0.02 or lower, there has been a flood of bidders on all days but quality of bids typically starts at $0.01 and does not go beyond the $0.02 set. For the 160×600 skyscraper ads, the money earned has been averaging at $0.07 per day (above the $0.05 minimum set).

For the unusual 117×30 ad spots, there was only 1 taker. I guess this is more to do with the fact, that not many advertisers will have graphics for such small ad spots. I’m going to retire this ad spot shortly!

So what does this mean? Do we let Project Wonderful control the bid process or does it make sense to set a minimum bid? At least after running this one week experiment, I would highly recommend that you do set a minimum bid amount based on the traffic that you get on your site. That is the best way to ensure you get a fair return on your ad space.

Now that I have a better understanding of how their system works, you can expect the minimum bid amounts to increase on some of the sites that I operate.

Have a wonderful project! :-)