Content distribution networks or content distribution platforms refer to traffic exchange products which entail a publisher hosting a content widget with links to the contents created by another publisher from another website. Creation of great and appealing content is just an aspect of digital marketing, and to make it effective, presence of audience is very crucial. In short, you need traffic. When you manage to generate sufficient traffic, your content drives a steady increase in conversions and a positive return on your marketing efforts.
For a successful website monetization, you’ll need lots of traffic to your website, plus content discovery platforms with attractive links to other sites. However, finding that audience takes some effort. Thanks to the emergence of several content distribution platforms over the past few years, which mainly aim at animating the challenge of finding audience for your content which plays a major role in generating revenue. The following are some of the most trending content distribution platforms that you might want to consider for site monetization.
Outbrain
As of September, 2014, Outbrain had reached more than 560 million users, which comprises of 80% of the world’s most popular brands, known for providing related links to many articles at the foot of every story. It serves more than 50 billion recommendations every single month. It offers content distribution on a Cost-Per-Click model, ranging between $0.25 and $0.35. It includes distribution networks on most popular media profiles such as ESPN and CNN.
Outbrain is one of the most popular Content Distribution Systems. Below are Outbrain alternatives.
Taboola
It’s similar to Outbrain and its greatest competitor, offering content distribution platform on a CPC model, costing $0.25-$0.30. It initially started out as a video recommendation service. The recent improvements of Taboola allow clients to have more control on post presentation. It is also popular among the top leading brands and websites such BBC, The NYTimes, Forbes, among others. In order to use their service, quite a number of requirements are to be met; otherwise it pays a little higher as compared to Outbrain.
Content.ad
Content.ad is a great Outbrain and Taboola alternative which gives you a great opportunity of monetizing your website. You can sign up instantly and start showing ads on your website. It basically offers two account types. One account is meant for those publishers with less than 100,000 page views per month of traffic, and the other one for publishers with more than 100,000 page views per month of traffic.
nRelate
nRelate is a cheaper way of marketing your content as compared to Outbrain, offering a CPC charge model, at $0.25-$0.30. The widget is rather similar to Outbrain, but nRelate offers more customizations for text presentation and thumbnail. However, nRelate does not have a large publisher network as its leading competitors and this somehow makes traffic creation a bit of a challenge. It also does not support targeting readers using their geographical location such as State or City, but you can target using country or region.
Gravity
Gravity is a content distribution platform which aims at personalizing the internet for readers. This is accomplished through the Interest Graph Technology, which arranges content according to commonly related interests. It has been serving recommendations as from 2009 and has content delivery of up to 25 million to more than 200 million users It also analyzes content to ensure that it is only shown to readers with a particular interest as the personalized recommendations. Apart from just creating content links to third party websites, it also has a browser extension which recommends contents to the reader as they browse.
Disqus
Disqus offers CPC content distribution at $0.25 -$0.30, similar to nRelate. Its features are rather similar to nRelate. For instance, you can target readers using their geographical location, and also offers more customizable options for text presentation and thumbnail. However, one thing is worth noting: there are no analytics offered, hence it’s kind of difficult to monitor widgets that are doing well at the current time.
Revcontent
Revcontent boasts of more than 100 billion recommendations every month and is among the most trusted content distribution platforms among the top brands such as Forbes, CBS Local, NBC News, Fantasypros and E!. It has best quality native ads and pays a good fortune to work with.
MGID
MGID is among the most popular content syndication programs used for delivering native ads on most of high traffic sites, although one can also get approval even with low traffic sites. MGID enables you to get a fill-rate of up to 100% on ads on your website with an average RPM of $1-$3 without the upper limit. Simply provide all your details on sign up, sit back and relax for an approval message.
Infolinks
Infolinks is particularly one of the best alternatives to Outbrain and Taboola. It enables you to transform its ad formats into content syndication formats. It lets you start showing ads even without an approval. Once you sign up, simply log into your account and make an integration of the ad code to your site in order to show ads.
Native Ads
When you want to monetize your site with sponsored stories, then you might want to consider signing up for Native Ads. Just head to their website, sign up as a publisher and wait for an approval before adding widgets on your site. There are several widgets offered by Native Ads, including those in sidebars, within images, in blog stream, between the articles or at the end of your articles. Using powerful analytics, you can do widget monitoring to note the ones that are doing well so you can customize them to earn more.
Ayboll
Ayboll is also a good content distribution platform which specializes in monetizing websites with native ads. The good part of it is that you simply sign up and start displaying ads on your site immediately, even before an approval is made. It makes it easier to customize a widget and have it implemented on your website. If you receive lots of traffic from countries with high eCPM averages, then you can make a lot of money. A good example is US, with an average eCPM of $6 on traffic.
Revenue.com
Revenue.com is a good native advertising platform which can also be used for websites with sponsored recommendations matching a site’s content. It supports modifying the layout of recommendations so as to match the contents of a website. Revenue.com enables publishers to review their real time widgets performance through the dashboard at their site. The pay-out of Revenue.com is really good.
Nster
Nster is a good platform for monetizing websites and also driving massive traffics to websites. It is a trailblazing content delivering platform for attracting targeted audiences. It makes targeted audience delivery to content-oriented sites at reasonably cheap prices. It lets you view real time statistics which are important for monitoring how different widgets are performing. You simply sign up, add the recommendation widget and start making revenue from the publisher section.
Earnify
Earnify is the first CPA native advertising platform which seeks to provide publishers with elevated returns. It offers a very high share of revenue for every successful sale generated by the widget, as compared to CMP or CPC. It also offers a 100% fill rate, no wonder many publishers and site owners are moving in at a high rate. Additionally, Earnify takes a cut that is three times less as compared to other networks. Earnify focuses on creating a close association with its advertisers. It does this by offering custom contracts and terms with almost every publisher on board by offering the best pay rates for publishers and site owners.
Sharethrough
Sharethrough, once a video ad platform, expanded its services about three years ago to become a multiple type distribution platform for branded contents. The company’s move to including branded content really paid off, as publishers can earn extra revenue from their generated content. There are over 300 websites using Sharethrough. Publishers can monetize their feeds with branded content. After signing up and receiving an approval message, you can start displaying ads on your site and earn revenue.
With these content monetization platforms, every publisher has more reason to attract more traffic to their websites, not only for conversions but also for earning that extra revenue and add up to the total income from their online entrepreneurship efforts.
Do you have any other content distribution platforms that you use? Share your methods below.
