Netklix Review – PPC Advertising Network & Google Adwords Alternative

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a market that is largely dominated by Google and its Adwords & Adsense programs. Any company, large or small, that is advertising online is likely sending boatloads of money Google’s way. With an extremely targeted keyword advertising system, an unmatched user interface, and a solid reputation as an industry leader, Google easily takes the lion share of the profits. But is there room for a smaller player to provide value to both PPC advertisers and publishers? Enter Netklix…

What is Netklix all about?

Netklix is a PPC advertising network that offers “low-cost online advertising opportunities to PPC advertisers and high-performing adverts to publishers”. Netklix originally started off as an affiliate network in 1999 but recently relaunched itself as a PPC network and Google Adwords/Adsense alternative. The main selling point of Netklix is that rather than forcing advertiser to generate and maintain huge lists of keywords, Netklix has a simple yet powerful “click and point” channel-based system where advertisers can easily target their ads to appropriate content.

Advertisers

Setting up an advertising account with Netklix takes just 5 minutes. You simply create your advert (headline, description text, destination URL), set your maximum CPC bid and you’re ready to go. The Netklix team then groups your site based on subject matter into one of over 400 content channels. There are no keywords to bid on or quality scores to worry about. The system is extremely simple and easy to use, but it does come with a few considerations. I’ll get into that later on in the review.

Below is a screenshot of the Netklix advertiser sign up page.

Publishers

Much like Google Adsense, Netklix allows you to place contextual ads on your website to make money online. The biggest difference however is that Netklix does not automatically use keywords to determine the relevancy of a page. Instead, publishers select one of over 400 categories to display ads from and are then hand-approved to check relevancy to those channels. In this way they’re able to target a specific niche and increase their earnings.

Below is a screenshot of the Netklix publisher sign up page.

My Thoughts on Netklix – Pros and Cons

The reason why Google Adwords/Adsense has become so popular as an advertising platform is because it effectively utilizes the power of keywords. Using it’s massive stores of computing power and endless supply of smart PhD’s, Google has found a way to efficiently connect searchers with suppliers. Keywords convey a ton of information about what a searcher is looking for, so paid search PPC is extraordinarily targeted and effective. It does however require an enormous amount of keyword research – which may be intimidating to the beginning PPC advertiser.

Netklix offers a good solution to that issue. Rather than basing its system off of keywords, Netklix uses a grouping approach. There are over 400 different categories that advertisers are grouped into and publishers can then display adverts that best match their sites. It’s simple, fast, and easy but it does come with a few problems as well. Since keywords aren’t taken into consideration, relevancy can change. For example, a World Cup advertisement might be placed in the general soccer category, but all of the sites in the soccer group might not always be the best fit to display the World Cup ad. However, the multi-level content channels mean that overall relevancy is still there.

Another consideration is that the competitive advantage available to big advertisers with time to invest in keyword research is minimized in Netklix’s category system. Unlike Google’s keyword approach where advertisers can discover new potential keywords and optimize their sites to achieve higher visibility than competitors, Netklix advertisers all have equal chances to perform. However, Netklix does take into account the popularity of each ad, as well as the advertiser’s bid when choosing which ad to display.

Final Verdict

Overall, Netklix is a good alternative to Google especially for PPC advertisers who are just getting started or looking for additional streams of targeted traffic. For publishers, Netklix is worth checking out and experimenting with especially because payouts can potentially be higher than those of Adsense. Everything needs to be tested to maximize ad revenue.

Try out Netklix and see what you think. It’ll only take 5 minutes and if you sign up before December 17, you can get $100 in free advertising. What are your thoughts on Netklix?

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