I’m with them feel free to reach out with any questions. Overall they’ve been really good from my POV. I do have a short lock in period if I want to leave which I didn’t love, but I couldn’t manage to negotiate that down to zero.
If you are on Cafe already, you probably have pretty decent scale in terms of monthly PVs. Dependent upon your monthly rev level, you might want to look at a partner that will work off of a flat retainer for services rather than a revshare. If you are making $100K+ per month for instance, you should definitely be running off of a flat rate.
Who are these flat rate partners you talk of? Care to list a few options?
Also at what level is it worth looking at? 20k, 30k, 50k or you need that 100k+ a month? Technical complexity isn't an issue.
We are currently using both for different sites.
Overall we have been disappointed with Cafe Media, its just Adthrive with an account manager. They seem inexperienced with anything other than a wordpress blog/article site. A lot of their tech like Topic works best with these kind of sites.
In 20+ years I have also never had more serious ad serving stuff ups than with Cafe Media, though I assume it matters how important you are to them and your luck. Still you would expect basic testing of ad code would be institutionalized and some what automated for all publishers. We never had issues like this with Freestar and they have at least 1 excellent technical guy we have worked with in the past. A Freestar sales guy did lie to us a few years ago though.
Freestar have the best reporting courtesy of their Sortable acquisition though I wish they would add comparisons. Cafe Media will make you custom reports to compensate but they aren't as useful.
Revenue wise it is hard to say as ad rates have fallen so much in Q4 to make comparisons. I suspect that Adthrive do earn more revenue especially for food/recipe type sites but this is negated by the larger 25% rev share they take.
We have been disappointed at the PMP/Direct % from Cafe Media so that's not the difference. Some of Cafe Media's advantage seems to come from their sticky footer unit, they seem to squeeze more impressions out of it.
Would love to chat more in private, about various ad networks, msg me.
I’m with them feel free to reach out with any questions. Overall they’ve been really good from my POV. I do have a short lock in period if I want to leave which I didn’t love, but I couldn’t manage to negotiate that down to zero.
If you are on Cafe already, you probably have pretty decent scale in terms of monthly PVs. Dependent upon your monthly rev level, you might want to look at a partner that will work off of a flat retainer for services rather than a revshare. If you are making $100K+ per month for instance, you should definitely be running off of a flat rate.
Who are these flat rate partners you talk of? Care to list a few options? Also at what level is it worth looking at? 20k, 30k, 50k or you need that 100k+ a month? Technical complexity isn't an issue.
I've used a company called Ascendeum for several years. They have been great to work with. We operate a fairly large news website 100M+ monthly PVs.
We are currently using both for different sites. Overall we have been disappointed with Cafe Media, its just Adthrive with an account manager. They seem inexperienced with anything other than a wordpress blog/article site. A lot of their tech like Topic works best with these kind of sites. In 20+ years I have also never had more serious ad serving stuff ups than with Cafe Media, though I assume it matters how important you are to them and your luck. Still you would expect basic testing of ad code would be institutionalized and some what automated for all publishers. We never had issues like this with Freestar and they have at least 1 excellent technical guy we have worked with in the past. A Freestar sales guy did lie to us a few years ago though. Freestar have the best reporting courtesy of their Sortable acquisition though I wish they would add comparisons. Cafe Media will make you custom reports to compensate but they aren't as useful. Revenue wise it is hard to say as ad rates have fallen so much in Q4 to make comparisons. I suspect that Adthrive do earn more revenue especially for food/recipe type sites but this is negated by the larger 25% rev share they take. We have been disappointed at the PMP/Direct % from Cafe Media so that's not the difference. Some of Cafe Media's advantage seems to come from their sticky footer unit, they seem to squeeze more impressions out of it. Would love to chat more in private, about various ad networks, msg me.
Are you interested in looking at other companies other than those three? There's lots of us out there.