In recent weeks, both Sedo and Parked have updated key parts of their advertising feeds, to ensure higher quality traffic and cut down on the junk or bot traffic.
The preliminary results show that such a move was much needed. In the case of Parked, the Yahoo feeds are being dropped with Bing’s advertising network taking over; the end result is considerably higher PPC for quality keywords.
Sedo on the other hand took drastic measures both with the technology behind the displaying of ads; it seems that ajax is utilized in order to accurately provide relative ads, filter out bot traffic and achieve better CTR or conversion rates.
Since the changes occurred at Sedo on November 1st, I’ve witnessed the following:
- Most domains lost roughly 20% to 30% of their counted traffic. This is due to bot traffic not being included anymore.
- Clickthrough rates more than doubled across the board; this is to be expected, as the new technology delivers faster and more related ads and there are more clicks relative to the number of impressions.
- The most impressive part: revenue jumped between 200% to 400% without any keyword changes or reallocation of categories! This by far the best result that everyone hoped for.
In a nutshell: parking domains is far from over, as technology evolves and the economy improves there will be further increases in the advertising budgets and resulting ad revenue. As I wrote yesterday, development is not suited for everyone and domain parking is a strong sector of domain monetization.
I did NOT notice any such changes with my Sedo account. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t look good at all. I am still saying that somewhere, somehow somebody is being crooked when it comes to paying domain owners for their parked domains. It is either that the negotiation between advertisers and parkers was woeful, or someone is pocketing the money. If you went into a negotiation where someone suggested that they will pay you .001c for 1000 eyeballs, no matter what qualifications they put on it, if you are on the up and up, you will slam the phone, or DOOR in their face. No, Acro this thing is not resolved. If I don’t see an improvement, I will be pulling all mine, even if I have to leave them unresolved!
Uzoma – sorry to hear that you don’t share the same results. It’s still early on, however I am confident that this trend that I’m experiencing will continue. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of performance for a simple reason: domains differ, keyword payments differ. My portfolio spans about 1,000 domains and thus I am able to gauge trends quickly, as opposed to, say, with 10 or even 100 domains.
I have seen the traffic drop off on Sedo. Now its fine they were some domains that I was surprised they were getting 100 to 150 uniques a month.
Parked I have seen much better RPC with the change and its looks much better from the relevancy.
So I would say your analysis is right on as far as accuracy since the change.
RH – The new numbers might scare some 😀 It’s to be expected, as the overall trend seems to be that traffic equals money. The problem seems to be that such numbers don’t matter when conversion is low or PPC is pennies on the dollar. Hopefully we will see a great remainder of 2010 and a much better 2011.
I don’t know about anyone else, but Sedo Parking is a joke. A bad one at that.
Acro, you are right that domains differ, and are stratified, due to keywords and what not; that much is true. However, I am speaking in minimums here; my belief is that at the minimum, if a domain delivers eyeballs, the owner should get something decent for it. After all, if domain owners make a decent living, it spreads across the entire industry. As it stands now, domain owners are poorer than church rats! You can try to sell even sex.com to them and they can’t bid on it. Francois can showcase 1,000,000 domain names in 1000 market sites to his 7,000 members, he will find out that what he has is 7,000 poor church rats! They are not making any money.
(Acro: My domain is not in tens or twenties, I have thousands in my portfolio)
Dean – I have yet to find a better performing solution for my portfolio. Parked.com is on occasion better but with big fluctuations, unlike Sedo that for me has been consistent. The current improvements produced for me the results I’ve described.
Uzoma – If you’re referring to who keeps the cake while domainers eat only a slice of it, I agree; after all, parking costs nothing to the domain parker, all while producing revenue.
The only other solutions I can think of: affiliate sales, domainer co-ops that manage to get bigger ad feeds for themselves, or forming an e-Business or brick and mortar business for specific domains.