Google AdSense is the biggest (and the most popular) ad network with millions of
advertisers and publishers. Thanks to Google’s huge AdWords ad inventory.
However, it doesn’t really mean that AdSense is always the best way
to monetize your website. There are a dozen other ad networks that are
willing to pay a higher CPM for your traffic.
Propeller Ads is
one of them.
CPM (Cost Per Mille) stands for Cost Per 1,000
Impressions. CPM networks pays for every 1,000 impressions you generate.
If a CPM ad network is paying you $1 CPM then it means that they’re
paying you $1 for every 1,000 page views you generate.
Over the past one decade I’ve recommended
AdSense
and only AdSense — on my blog posts, blog comments, email enquiries,
and everywhere else. And it was simply because… AdSense has got an ad
inventory that’s unmatched by any other ad network. So, I imagined that
no other ad network can beat the CPM offered by AdSense.
But the problem is… we can’t predict the AdSense income. As you can
see… I’m not longer monetizing the blog with any of those ad networks
and the reason is none of them gives guaranteed income (except private
ads network like
BuySellAds.com).
I used to average around $0.50 per click on AdSense for several years
and then it suddenly dropped to $0.05-$0.15 per click for few months
and then it started giving over $1 per click. However, it didn’t last
for long and I pulled off all sorts of ad networks on the blog and
started selling selective private ads only.
Why Propeller Ads

Propeller Ads is an ad network based in U.K. that promises 100% of
your international traffic and the highest CPM possible. Traffic from
the following countries generates the maximum CPM: U.S. & Canada,
U.K., and Australia.
Unlike Google AdSense, Propeller Ads is a CPM ad network which
basically means that it pays for every 1,000 ad impressions you
generate. So it doesn’t matter whether the users are clicking your ads
or not — you get paid! And that’s why large publishers prefer CPM
networks over CPC ad networks (like AdSense, Bing Ads, etc.).
If your traffic and its quality is stable then CPM ads can generate
guaranteed income every day and every month. Have you ever noticed the
way some of the high-traffic websites display content as 10-50 slides?
Yes, it’s to increase the number of pages views per visit — and
eventually the CPM.
Propeller Ads: Types Of Ad Products
Propeller Ads
offers you a variety of ad products and that’s one space where
Propeller Ads outsmart other ad networks — including Google AdSense. So
it doesn’t matter what type of your blog or website you own — there will
always be an ad product for you.
But that doesn’t mean that you can send them fake traffic (autosurf,
traffic exchanges, etc.) and make a lot of money. It won’t work that
way. Obviously.
Here are the different types of ad products offered by Propeller Ads:
1. OnClick PopUnder Ads
OnClick PopUnder Ads
is perhaps the most effective ad product by Propeller Ads as it offers
the maximum CPM rate (up to $10). It’s because you get paid for each ad
impression (it works on mobile devices too!).
According to Propeller Ads, entertainment websites (music, movies,
photo, downloads, games, viral content, etc.) gets the best CPM for
pop-under ads.
Here is what can you expect from a:
Gaming Website
Viral Blog
2. Mobile Ads
Propeller Ads offers two types of mobile ads: Mobile Dialog Ads and
Mobile Interstitial Ads (apart from the regular mobile banner ads).
Here is what can you expect from a:
Music Website
Mobile Dialog Ads
Dialog Ads
is a kind of an alert that show users as a dialogue box. So it’s almost
certain to attract user’s attention and that should result in higher
click-through-rate and thereby CPM.
Here is what can you expect from a:
Music Website
Mobile Interstitial Ads
Mobile Interstitial Ads is a full screen mobile ad. It’s one of the top performing ad product by Propeller Ads because of its higher user engagement.
Here is what can you expect from a:
Entertainment Blog
3. Classic Banner Ads
Banner ads are still popular as it’s the easiest way to reach out to a
massive audience at minimal costs. The best performing banner ads by
Propeller Ads are ad units of sizes: 300×250 and 728×90. Other available
ad units are: 468×60, 120×600, 160×600, 800×600, 800×440, and 320×50.
You can check out their best practices for banner ads placement
here. According to Propeller Ads, entertainment blogs and download sites tends to perform better than other niche.
Here is what can you expect from a:
Movie Website
Mobile Apps Review Website
Gaming Blog
4. Layer Ads
Layer Ad
is a banner ad on steroid as it loads banner ads over the website
content. You can choose any of the available banner ad units but a
bigger ad unit such as 800×600 or 800×440 is recommended.
5. Slider Ads
Slider Ad
is again another kind of banner ad that fades in at the bottom of a web
page. Unless the user decides to close, it’s always visible even if
he/she is scrolling up or down.
6. Direct Ads
Direct Ads (or
Direct Links) is a unique ad product in which publishers are given a
URL to promote. You can promote it by creating your own banner ads, text
link ads, buttons, or even redirects.
For instance, you can monetize your 404 pages with a direct ad —
without hurting user experience. According to Propeller Ads, it works
best on a downloads website (ebooks, music, apps, wallpapers, movies,
etc.)
Here is what can you expect from a:
File Sharing Website
Video Sharing Website
7. Video Ads
If you want to monetize your video content then can try Video Ads.
Propeller Ads offers three video ad spots: Pre-Roll, Mid-Roll,
Post-Roll, and Pre-Game.
Note: All the
earning screenshots are collected as part of the research (with majority
of them shared by Propeller Ads itself on request). I do not run
Propeller Ads on my blog as I prefer selling private ads only. I’ve
included as much screenshots as I can — from different industires — so
that you can use it as a benchmark to find out whether your earnings are
on par with other publishers.
Propeller Ads: Pros & Cons
First things first. Propeller Ads is not exactly an AdSense
alternative. Google AdSense is a pay-per-click ad network and Propeller
Ads is a CPM ad network. It basically means, AdSense pays for each
click-throughs from your website and Propeller Ads pays for every 1,000
ad impressions.
Google AdSense works best when your website is in a competitive niche
with majority of traffic from organic search (that is, from search
engines). If you have a high traffic website that’s in a non-competitive
industry then the AdSense earnings could be terrible (especially when
its organic traffic is less).
Again, AdSense is a good choice for file sharing websites, forums,
downloads websites where the traffic quality is low but the page
views/visits ratio is very high. Luckily Propeller Ads (and similar
banner networks) works very well on such websites.
Pros
- It’s super easy to get started
as all accounts are activated instantly. You can login to your
publisher account and add all the domain names that you wish to monetize
and you will be notified via email when it’s approved.
- Propeller Ads share 80% of their ad revenue with publishers. But
it’s not a good idea to compare two advertisers based only on their
revenue sharing percentage as we don’t know the real size of their total
ad inventory. An advertiser with a massive ad inventory can easily beat
the CPM of a small ad network with just 50% revenue sharing.
- The reporting of Propeller Ads is pretty simple. It shows your
earnings in a tabular way or on a chart. And the best thing? It’s
real-time!
- Propeller Ads supports the following payment methods: Wire Transfer,
Payoneer, Webmoney, and Prepaid Cards. The minimum payment amount will
be $500 for Wire Transfers and $100 for all other payment methods and is
based on a NET 30 terms. That is, if your total earnings at the end of
January is $300 then you will be paid in the first week of March.
- Propeller Ads accepts all websites irrespective of their traffic as long as it doesn’t violate their terms and conditions.
- It generates the maximum CPM for entertainment websites (including downloads, music, movies, viral blogs, etc.).
- As a publisher you can refer other publishers to Propeller Ads and can earn 5% of his/her future ad revenue — for lifetime.
- You can even monetize your 404 pages with a full-screen ad. No more wasted traffic!
- You can run Propeller Ads along with ads from other advertising or affiliate networks — like AdSense, Infolinks, CJ, etc.
- If you are a new publisher and is looking for some personal
assistance then you get direct one-to-one support via email or Skype.
Also, if you have a high traffic website then you get a dedicated
account manager who will assist you to optimize the traffic.
Cons
- Poor user experience. Your visitors may find full-screen ads, pop-under ads, push ads, etc. as annoying.
- Do not support PayPal payments. It’s really a big turn off because even almost all top AdSense alternatives support PayPal.
- Once again, the minimum payout is also on the higher side. And I suppose it’s because they do not support PayPal payments.
- The best performing ad units are not traditional banner ads or
mobile ads — it’s pop-under ads and full-page ads. But users (including
me) hate it. However, if you have a high traffic file sharing website or
a downloads website or a maybe even a forum then pop-under ads could be
the right choice.
- It’s true that Propeller Ads is accepting all sorts of publisher
websites (unless of course it doesn’t comply with their terms and
conditions) but it appears like if you want to generate handsome income
then you need either a high-traffic website or a website with
high-quality traffic.
- If your traffic quality is low (it means you get few traffic from
U.S., U.K., and Europe) then Propeller Ads may not be a right choice
unless you want to try pop-under ads, full-page ads, etc.
- Again, Propeller Ads considers conversions as well when calculating
CPM. A CPM network is supposed to pay a fixed income for every 1,000
pages views irrespective of conversions. But Propeller Ads offers more payment models to advertisers like — CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPA (Cost Per Action). So your final earnings depends upon the type of ad inventory too.
- Your CPM could be extremely low if the traffic quality is poor. Of
course, AdSense also do not pay much for low quality traffic but
at Propeller Ads it’s much more worse. Here’s a screenshot of a popular
Spanish tech blog that receives no meaningful traffic from English
speaking countries. Its CPM with Google AdSense was around $0.20 but as
you can see Propeller Ads’ banner ads are not even generating a CPM of
$0.05.
Conclusion
Propeller Ads is not another network where you could fake traffic and
money. Like AdSense or any other reliable publisher network — you need
real traffic to make real income.
Google AdSense do not accept all publisher websites (especially new
ones) as they have strict guidelines. In fact, publisher websites are
required to comply with Google’s
AdSense Guidelines as well as the
Webmaster Guidelines.
It basically means if you’re doing black hat SEO or is selling text
links on your website then they can disable your AdSense account.
So should you consider Propeller Ads over Google AdSense? Well, it
depends. If your website (or blog) is new then there’s every chance that
Google will deny your AdSense application and you can consider
Propeller Ads.
Again, if you have a small or large website that’s already running
AdSense ads but is not making enough — even though majority of your
traffic is from English speaking nations — then it makes sense to give
Propeller Ads a try.
Or, it’s a good idea to supplement your existing AdSense income with
pop-under ads by Propeller Ads (as it offers the maximum CPM). Just make
sure that your users won’t be annoyed about it.
Happy Monetizing! :)
Disclosure: This review was sponsored (?)
by Propeller Ads. However, it hasn’t influenced my views in any way as
they paid for my time and not for a biased positive review.