Top 3 Reasons NOT to Advertise on BoingBoing

I’m always looking for new ways to grow readership here at  zMogo.com, and assumed that because we are in the same ‘tech’ niche as BoingBoing.net,  an ad placement on their site would perform fairly well.

I was wrong.

BoingBoing ads are sold through the Federated Media ad network, a web service with the mission “to support independent website authors and audiences, by connecting them to marketers in an ongoing and robust conversation that feeds everyone involved.”

They go on to make the following claim about BoingBoing:

Boing Boing attracts more than 3 million unique visitors to its site each month, and has over 600,000 RSS subscribers. And it now offers Boing Boing Video, which was recently highlighted by CNN, and Boing Boing Gadgets. By Comscore’s measure, Boing Boing is among the five most-visited blogs on the web. Technorati’s list of most influential blogs — based on how many other sites link to that blog — puts Boing Boing in the top 5. According to Google, more than 600,000 other sites link to Boing Boing. Forbes voted Boing Boing “best of the web” among tech blogs… blah blah blah.

Sounds pretty good, right? Here are the results:

Ad Type: Text ad
Run Dates: January 26th through February 1st
Impressions: 1,571,483
Clicks: 52
Total Cost: $227.50

That’s a great CPM (seriously), and I’m sure the ‘branding’ from a text ad will last us for years, but 52 clicks at $4.38 per click? Awesome.

So without further ado, here are the top 3 reasons not to advertise on BoingBoing.net:

1. It’s a waste of money.
2. It’s a waste of time.
3. There are hundreds of advertising sources that deliver a better ROI, starting with the obvious Google AdWords, and ending with bathroom graffiti.

It was a lesson well learned, and I just hope this story can help other web publishers/marketers avoid making the same mistake. More tips here.