With the recent creation of my first games website www.artanoid.com (hopefully the first of many as I have two other games currently in development), I have been looking into various advertising strategies and in particular at the various link and banner exchange programs being offered specifically for games websites.

I have signed up for a few of the different banner exchanges out there and have found that although they are mostly based on similar technologies and business models, they actually vary quite a lot in terms of the quality of service they provide. In this article I intend to compare and review three of the best known games banner exchanges on the net.

HOW DO BANNER EXCHANGES WORK?

Banner exchanges normally work on the basis that page impressions and clicks on the adverts which you display on your site are exchanged for page impressions of your own advert on other affiliated sites. Most banner exchanges have an exchange ratio, for instance a ratio of 10:9 would mean that for every 10 page impressions their ad receives on your site, your ad will be shown 9 times on other sites. Some exchanges also offer the potential to pay directly for extra impressions for your ad, which can be useful if you are promoting a new site which is not yet generating enough traffic through search engines and inward linkage from other sites.

CRITERIA FOR COMPARISON

To make a fair comparison it is important to take all relevant factors into account, and also to decide which factors are most important. The most important factors to me are:

1. Quality, variety and relevance of ads – How are their ads and affiliate sites moderated for inappropriate content? This is important as most games sites are aimed at children and adults alike. Variety is important as it is not so appealing to display 6 of the exact same banner ad next to each other! Relevance is obviously important as you will not earn clicks through irrelevant unrelated ads.
2. Reliability of service – Do their ads load every time? etc.
3. Exchange ratio
4. Number of clicks received in relation to number of page impressions received – This is a good measure of how relevant the sites your ad is being placed on are, and how well your ad is being placed within those sites.

Other important factors include:

1. Quality of account administration controls – How easy is it to create a new banner / campaign? What kind of statistics are offered?
2. Customer service & support
3. Different banner sizes supported
4. Potential to 'top up' your account with extra impressions for cash

REVIEW

The three banner exchange programs I signed up with are Game Banner Exchange, GamerFlow and Advertbox. Here is how they compared:

GAME BANNER EXCHANGE

Website: www.gamebannerexchange.com
Quality of ads: 9/10
Variety of ads: 6/10
Reliability of service: 10/10
Exchange ratio: 10:9
Admin controls & stats: 9/10
Customer service & support: 9/10
Banner sizes: 100x100 only
Pay for extra impressions: No

Overall mark: 7/10

ADVERTBOX

Website: games.advertbox.com
Quality of ads: 9/10
Variety of ads: 8/10
Reliability of service: 10/10
Exchange ratio: 1:1
Admin controls & stats: 9/10
Customer service & support: 9/10
Banner sizes: 468x60, 125x125, 234x60, 88x31
Pay for extra impressions: 100,000 = $5

Overall rating: 10/10

GAMERFLOW

Website: www.gamerflow.com
Quality of ads: 5/10
Variety of ads: 4/10
Reliability of service: 5/10
Exchange ratio: 10:9
Admin controls & stats: 3/10
Customer service & support: 2/10
Banner sizes: 100x100 only
Pay for extra impressions: No

Overall rating: 3/10