How do verticals work in Adgator?
We’ve been throwing the term “verticals” around at the Adgator offices and on our site for the last while now. Verticals are great, especially for Adgator, but loads of people have been going “psssst – what exactly is it?” So I figure that a quick post will clear verticals up for everybody.
One of the really cool things about Adgator is our ability to tell what it is that you’re blogging about. We do this using our top secret algorithms and a little bit of baking powder. Anyway, once we’ve figured out what exactly it is that you’re passionately blogging about, we try and assign it to a category. We call these categories verticals.
We have four main verticals on the Adgator network – Lifestyle, Technology, Entertainment and Business. So your blog will fall in to one of these four verticals. We spend a lot of time figuring out which blogs will fit best in to which categories to make sure that you get the right kind of advertising on your blog.
Each vertical also has a number of sub verticals, which let us narrow down your content a little further for advertisers who would like to target very specific types of blog. Here you can see the sub-verticals we’ve used in the Lifestyle vertical.
When an advertiser comes to Adgator to book a campaign, chances are that they have a very specific audience in mind for their campaign (we hope that they do!). So they select a vertical (or verticals) that they would like to target. Let’s create an example.
If an advertiser selects all the blogs in the Technology vertical, this means that bloggers in this vertical will see paid ads. If your blog is in the Entertainment vertical and there are currently no paid ads in that vertical (or only a portion of the inventory has been booked) chances are you’ll see one of our famous Adgator placeholder ads. This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with your blog or your code or that we think you smell funny. It just means that we don’t have an ad for you right now.
The good news is that the team here at the Gator Pen is hard at work finding advertisers to suit your blog (and your pocket) so before too long you’ll see ads all the time. And make money all the time.
I hope that this post has shed a little more light on the way that Adgator works and disspelled those nasty rumours saying that we don’t like you. If you have any more questions, drop them in the comments below and we’ll be sure to answer to the best of our ability.
Johan Swarts said,
Wrote on January 16, 2009 @ 16:56
Thanks for the explanation Lester.
One thing I’m still wondering about, though: is it possible to be categorized in more than one vertical at a time? I for one regularly switch between posts about entertainment and technology on my blog – wouldn’t it be a little unfair to not send me, say, entertainment ads when I actually do blog a lot of entertainment?
The truth behind verticals when it comes to advertising | iMod said,
Wrote on January 17, 2009 @ 02:32
[...] Ok, I’m going to pick on Adgator for this one as they’ve just blogged about their verticals. [...]
Adgator, when will it turn on? | Entropy said,
Wrote on January 17, 2009 @ 09:29
[...] will grow from strength to strength (which I’m sure it will). UPDATE Adgator have made a blog post explaining how they categorize blogs. If an advertiser selects all the blogs in the Technology [...]
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on January 19, 2009 @ 11:36
@ Johan
The Multiple Vertical question is one that’s been gnawing at us for a while now. Since Adgator is still new and we’re taking things one step at a time, we’re not going down that route right away. The good news is that we will get there, but we need to get the single vertical model perfected rather than risk fumbling everything because we took on too much. Afrigator, which is intrinsically linked to Adgator, indexes your blog on a post level, and hopefully Adgator will get there sooner rather than later.
azuka said,
Wrote on January 20, 2009 @ 21:28
i need where to sign up freehomejobs sites
Nafisa said,
Wrote on January 22, 2009 @ 10:05
How about a food category?
andre walters said,
Wrote on January 24, 2009 @ 14:42
Dear Lester,
I am concerned about the following sentence in your “verticals” post: “…so before too long you’ll see ads all the time. And make money all the time.” .
I offer a blog that is rich in spiritual resources and, as a matter of principle, it is absolutely free of charge. Therefore it is of great importance to me that no advertisements accompany my blog-associations. Neither do I want to make money as a condition to people having access to my work for spirituality. Also, I use material from other people and organizations that are made available to me through a relationship of trust that, among other things, no commercial interests will gain from it.
If this is going to cause a problem, please tell me now and I will delete my blog from your system immediately.
I will be sorry to do so, because I like Afrigator’s style and facilities. I would be grateful for a reply to this.
andre walters
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on January 26, 2009 @ 10:37
Hi Andre,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on our blog, we really appreciate it.
I think there’s a slight misunderstanding here with regard to the relationship between Afrigator and Adgator. While the two are interlinked, they also exist independently.
Afrigator is a content aggregation network, the servie which indexes and promotes your blog to our readers throughout Africa. Adgator is the advertising network which was born out of Afrigator’s success. Membership of Afrigator does not mean that you are automatically subscribed to the Adgator service. This is a separate process altogether.
In short, you will not see ads displayed on your blog unless you have specifically signed up to the Adgator service and elected to serve paid advertising.
I hope that this clears up the confusion.
Kind regards,
Lester
Jackie said,
Wrote on January 30, 2009 @ 08:23
i Lester, where to we put what vertical we feel our blogs should fall under? Cannot see anything on the blogger pages at Adgator.
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on February 3, 2009 @ 16:14
Hi Jackie,
Your blog vertical was assigned when you joined Adgator (yours is in Health and Wellness). If you would like this changed, please drop us a line and let us know.
If you would like to see the stats for your blog, log in to your dashboard select “Daily Stats.” Here you will be able to see the stats for a day, month or lifetime of your Adgator account.
Kind regards,
Lester
Jackie said,
Wrote on February 3, 2009 @ 16:48
Good, yes one is Health and Beauty (but Health and Wellness fine as well) and the other Food and Nutrition (or whatever similar category there is to it).
I do check the stats a couple of times a week. Strangely yesterday I checked and everything looked haywire but today the stats perfect and as they should be.
Thanks Lester
Johan Swarts said,
Wrote on February 5, 2009 @ 13:53
How’s the addition of new campaigns coming along? I have to admin, I’m quite dissapointed at the amount of ads being sent to my blog nowadays.