Yesterday FindWhat.com announced the expansion of its partner distribution program, AdRevenue Xpress, opening its network in an effort to court smaller publishers and grow revenue. Launched last September, publisher participation in AdRevenue Xpress was initially limited to FindWhat advertisers. That’s no longer a requirement, though there is a 10% bonus incentive for those who choose [...]
Yesterday FindWhat.com announced the expansion of its partner distribution program, AdRevenue Xpress, opening its network in an effort to court smaller publishers and grow revenue.
Launched last September, publisher participation in AdRevenue Xpress was initially limited to FindWhat advertisers. That’s no longer a requirement, though there is a 10% bonus incentive for those who choose to reinvest their earnings in a FindWhat ad account.
We have no idea how widely this move will build their network, or how this new traffic will compare to the old traffic we’ve seen from FindWhat’s premium partners.
It sounds like a move towards the Google AdSense network model, where any site, irrespective of their size or content, can join. The only difference is that Google’s brought in a good proportion of those partners into their contextual program whereas FindWhat’s contextual network has previously been limited to 2 partners (USAToday and BizJournal).
By offering new partners the basic advertiser listings and the FindWhat search utility as well, they may ensure these new sites join the “search” side. Whether the new partners are parlayed into FindWhat’s search or contextual products, the move still poses a question of whether or not the new inventories will dilute the previous quality of FindWhat’s traffic.
One interesting insight to how FindWhat is monitoring the quality of these new partners: AdRevenue Xpress will not require the members to “find advertisers, negotiate ad contracts or have any minimum visitor metrics”. The only requirement is that they be current FindWhat advertisers.
Randy Schwartz is Director of Strategic Development at Reprise Media.
