The Pros and Cons of Using DoubleClick for Your Blog

Bloggers don’t blog only for money but monetizing a blogis a nice byproduct of their efforts.  However managing advertisements on a blog can be a headache and also time consuming. I recently explored using DoubleClick, an ad serving platform provided by Google. Here are a few takeaways from this exercise.

DoubleClick is a lot more complex

When compared to   AdSense, it’s a lot more complex to manage. The reason is pretty simple.  AdSense is standalone platform  which requires blog owners to copy code and paste it on their site. The rest is managed by Google which serves contextual ads. In the case of DoubleClick you can have a mix of text, image and other formats in which the advertisements can be displayed. That’s not all. You can carry private or personalized ads and manage them using a single platform. Setting up DoubleClick is therefore more complex. In comparison, Buysellads platform is far easier to manage. But in this case, you have to opt for ads from their basket.

With DoubleClick your ad slots are always occupied

This is perhaps one reason why you must go for DoubleClick. Often you will find that ad slots remain empty when you go for services from providers like Buysellads . This obviously leads to a loss of revenue. In case of DoubleClick, the empty slot is automatically filled by AdSense. The slots will always be populated. This can perhaps add to your kitty. Moreover, the sign ‘Advertise here’ looks ugly. You can avoid this empty space by going for DoubleClick.

DoubleClick is free

DFP for small business is free up to 90 million impressions per month. Usually a blog does not exceed this limit.

Using other ad serving services

If you use providers like Buysellads, you are not allowed to use any other service.  With DoubleClick you are free to go with anyone. Soliciting private ads is perhaps the biggest advantage of using DoubleClick. You can manage all your advertisers from a single interface. This can save a lot of time for bloggers.

Reporting tools

DoubleClick has excellent reporting tools built into the platform. You can track number of clicks or impressions for individual advertisements and create automatic reports which can be sent to your client. This feature is very useful when managing different advertisers. Keeping track of payments and duration of ads can be quite a task. Having a single platform to manage everything can be a boon.

Integration with other Google tools

Most owners use Google tools to manage their blogs. I use webmaster tools and Google Analytics extensively. If you use DoubleClick you can work seamlessly between different applications. Google Analytics can give you information about your traffic and page views which can be used to explore additional possibilities to monetize your blog.

Conclusion

DoubleClick may be more complex to manage than either AdSense or Buysellads but far superior in performance.