Web Cash

Widget Bucks is a relatively new ad network. At first glance, they appear to be a great alternative to Ad Sense - attractive ads, competitive eCPM rates, and CPM payment for non-US visitors.

After trying them out though, I found one aspect of their network - the CPM ads for foreign visitors - to be entirely disappointing.

What’s Good About Widget Bucks?

At first glance, Widget Bucks seems great. The normal ads they serve - targeted product placement widgets - look terrific. In my opinion they are light-years beyond the typical, ugly, AdSense text ad.

While these ads are only displayed to US and Canadian visitors, word is that the eCPM for the ads can be quite high. If your site can successfully integrate the Widget Bucks ads - and most of your visitors are from North America - the ad network can be great.

The Problem For Foreign Visitors

I recently realized that this site has a large base of foreign visitors. Roughly 1/3 of the visits come from North America - the rest are spread throughout the world, mainly Europe and Asia. When I saw that Widget Bucks was advertising a fixed CPM rate for foreign visits, I thought it would be great.

They geo-target the ads for specific countries. I thought this meant there would be targeted ads - for example, French ads for French visitors. I also thought there would be a decent CPM - at the very least $1-2.

If that was the case, I’d gladly swap out the sub-par AdSense banner in my header for a banner Widget.

If It’s Too Good To Be True…

After testing out one of the Widget Bucks widgets and researching the topic a bit more, it turns out that for sites with a non-US visitors, Widget Bucks is a horrible service.

I was searching for some estimates on the CPM of these ads, when I came across this description of the type of ads shown to non-US visitors.

It turns out that Widget Bucks hasn’t got a real advertiser base for these visitors - so they’re serving up crappy ads like, “You’re the 999,999th visitor to this site!” You know, the hideous ads that should have become extinct long ago.

One strike for Widget Bucks.

The author of that article also reported that he’d earned a whopping $0.01 for the impressions that he’d shown the Widget. This prompted me to check my own earnings, and with 500 impressions yesterday, I’ve earned a whopping $0.01 as well. Bleh.

Check Back In a Few Months

I still like the idea of Widget Bucks, and I may check back in a few months. Supposedly they’re working on building up a bigger base of advertisers, and it’s conceivable that this will improve both the type of ads and the payment for those ads.

At the moment, though, steer away from this service if you have a base of non-US visitors. The regular Widgets look awesome, but you’ll be wasting your time displaying the CPM ads for mere pennies.

Tags: Advertising, blog, earnings, widget bucks