Written By Kate Zimmermann | January 18, 2007 | Share This |

Yesterday MIVA launched their new Monetization Center for publishers, a “one-stop-shop for inline, search and context ads in same place.” MIVA MC is a do-it-yourself wizard that lets publishers monetize multiple sites at once. From the MIVA press release,

“With MIVA MC, partners can choose to display Ads in any of the following formats:

Content […]

“With MIVA MC, partners can choose to display Ads in any of the following formats:

Content Ads: keyword or contextually targeted Pay-Per-Click Ads displayed in fully customized implementations beside site content.

MIVA InLine Ads: Pay-Per-Click Ads that appear when users mouse over hyperlinked keywords within actual site content.

Search Ads: Pay-Per-Click Ads displayed in response to specific typed-in search queries.”

In a live demo meeting yesterday, MIVA noted that Directory Ads will soon become a fourth format option.

MIVA is pushing InLine ads as their main point of differentiation. Inline ads resemble links within the text, but reveal a popup text ad when rolled over. Here’s a screenshot of an InLine ad from MIVA’s site demo:

Though the Monetization Center is meant to “promote transparency” between the publisher and the ad network, it’s also enabling the production of spam sites, in particular, splogs. Not only is MIVA’s MC network targeted to “small and medium sized” publishers, but they also have no minimum impression requirement, and no maximum on the number of sites that can be simultaneously managed. Furthermore, MIVA’s ad formats are misleading - InLine ads can be easily mistaken for regular site links, the search box doesn’t serve non-paid results (but doesn’t denote that ads are paid), and future directory ads resemble site content. Because everything can be color coordinated to match the publisher’s site, it’s difficult for users to note the difference between relevant and non-relevant (or paid) ads until after the click.

Considering that just last week MIVA signed a new partnership with Google, I’m surprised that they’d come out with such a splogger-friendly service. Interestingly, during their demo presentation, MIVA made a point to differentiate MIVA Media and Miva Direct - apparently MIVA MC is a product of MIVA Media, and the Google partnership is a deal through MIVA Direct.

Regardless, there’s no doubt that publishers will be able to make money from MIVA MC. MIVA adjusts revenue shares for better-performing ads, so that publishers can reap as high as 70 - 75% of an ad’s revenue. Like I said before, because MIVA’s ad formats are easily mistaken for relevant site content, they’re sure to generate a high volume of click throughs - Good for publishers, bad for users, worse for advertisers.

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