Vibrant Media was second In-Text Advertising solution that I ever used. They are referenced on our make money web page. I began using Vibrant on May 10, 2010. Applicable keywords and phrases were automatically underlined and highlighted once their code was put into the footer of my website.
Income results for one week (seven days)
After seven days, the Vibrant ads on my movie site received 40 clicks and $13.36. This total made Vibrant the best money maker out of Kontera, Vibrant, and Infolinks on my movie website. As you can see from my Kontera In-Text review and my Infolinks In-Text review, I received nearly a third of the clicks but almost three times the revenue with Vibrant.
Ad Targeting
Compared to Kontera and Infolinks, the ad targeting for Vibrant very good, the best out of the three. On my movie website, the ads displayed matched more of the content than Kontera and Infolinks did. Vibrant, before they began renegotiating with Bing, had a fantastic SERPs pop box that would show up on my movie website when a film title, actor, actress, TV show, and celebrity names was underlined through Vibrant.
Vibrant has tags specific to movie and celebrity websites entitled Entertainment. From The Expendables to Kim Kardashian to Freddy Kruger, the movie website owner could rest assured that if an actors’ name and movie was not bold or italicized, they would be Vibrant underlined. This occurred because if these names and titles appeared within the Bing search engine – which they all did – they appeared in that Bing pop up box. With the Bing renegotiating going on, the SERPs box has stopped appearing and has not appeared for some time, maybe a month and a half to two months now. The Bing search pop up still happens and people are more likely to click those because Bing is a more marquee name than a generic search engine pop up. That withstanding, Vibrant is hurting right now and so are movie website users without that Bing SERPs box.
Payout
The payout threshold for Vibrant is $100 and they offer three different ways to receive your money: ACH/Direct Deposit (US only & W-9 Form), Wire (W-8 Form only), and .
Strengths
Vibrant’s strength used to be their Bing SERPs pop up box for film title, actor, actress, TV show, and celebrity names and premium advertisers. Until the Bing renegotiation are favorably concluded, its just the premium advertisers and the Bing name on the little search engine pop up that shows up for certain key words.
Vibrant seems to have more premium advertisers than Kontera and Infolinks. That means more high-end ads (e.g Sony’s HD 3D TV Commercials) will show up when using them and which will possibly garner more clicks. You noticed in the Income Results section how I received less clicks with Vibrant yet almost made three times the revenue didn’t you?
Upon email request, you can have the color of the underlining changed to match your sites underlining or any color you wish.
Upon email request, you can have a related post option initiated that will underline content in your posts and display Vibrant pop up but with related posts from your site in them. None of the other In-Text advertisers offer this option or service. If you are not already using the Related Posts WP Plugin (discussed in this post: Starting a Movie Website: WordPress Plugins) or LinkWithin (and you should, discussed in this post: LinkWithin, Related Posts Plugin Combination. Choose One, not Both.), this will help and lower your website’s bounce rate.
Pop ad boxes adjust to show TV Commercials and movie trailers in a better aspect ratio. The day I started using Vibrant, when I would hover over the keyword movie, a trailer pop up would occur for the new Kevin Costner home release of The New Daughter. I thought sweet, even after seeing it a billion times, because my movie audience was seeing the ad as well, hearing about a film they may not have known about, and were possibly clicking the ad to find out more.
Vibrant has DVD/Blu-ray home release advertisements, as just mentioned above.
Tag specificity for entertainment websites.
Weaknesses
Currently, there is no Bing SERPs pop up box.
No options to modify the appearance of the underlinings in the publisher dashboard area.
The payout threshold is higher than Kontera and Infolinks. There is twice the wait until you get paid.
There is no dashboard info on Net Impressions, Page CTR, and Page eCPM. This is valuable informative to site owner and should be included so they can gauge the value of the clicks they receive and how much they are receiving per click.
Their referral program does not offer banners or buttons to advertise it.
In Conclusion
Vibrant beat Kontera and Infolinks in revenue and in the number of premium advertisers. Vibrant used to be The Kingpin of In-Text advertisers but has been hamstrung (if you have read Spartacus, a certain match comes to mind) with part of their service being off-line. If I were one of their competitors I would strike and strike hard. I do not know how though…oh…I don’t know, maybe by cutting a quick deal and offering a new pop up SERPs box from a notable search engine and offering publishers an S-load of new premium advertisers. Just spit-balling here folks. Or maybe by offering Bing an even better deal than Vibrant Media is. Nah, that wouldn’t work. Who wants save money in this economy?
Vibrant still beats Kontera and Infolinks by offering specificity in their tags. That specificity is almost negated now that most film title, actor, actress, TV show, and celebrity names no longer underline and when they do, they do not display the Bing SERPs pop up. If I had written this review two or three months ago, this review would have been 99% praise with very few grips but this review was not written during that time period. It was written in the present.