Giving up on Kontera
Apr 1, 2008 
Kontera is a in-content text link advertising program. I hope you guys know what I am talking about because it was on Balkhis until last week. This basically take the keywords in your content and make it a hyper link which will open in a tooltip that will show an ad and if the user likes the ad, they will click, and you get money. Or they will accidently click, and you will make money. But the money in this case is not enough for me to keep going.
Why am I giving up? Read on…
Site Load
Kontera was causing my site to load slow. I don’t know if you have seen even when the site loads, In the status bar it will still show loading dc.kontera… Which was very annoying because the site would never load. Often times especially on the university computer, where the internet connection is pretty fast and the kontera server times out and ads won’t show.
Keywords
Often times it was becoming hard for me because Kontera was taking over the other texts in the blog such as the text which is below each post that says Social bookmarks right before social bookmark icons. That will be underlined and alot of other text and hyperlinks would be underlined, which I didn’t appreciate. I also saw that on my blog Copyright in the footer was underlined with the keyword which just makes the site looks ridiculous because you are even selling your copyright text.
Look
Despite the fact that Kontera has now announced hybrid ads, It still looked pretty shitty because the links ads never embed in the text. It always sticked out due to the double underline. Also, if you have alot of keywords, everywhere you will see this and when a user brings move the mouse, It will show ads which just destroys the look of the site. As well as I mentioned above, some of the template text was getting hyperlinked.
Low Payout
No offense, even if you get tons of clicks, the payout was pretty crappy. I understand that Kontera is in the beta phase, but I expected more than a few cents. Even though the clicks I was getting were not bad, the conversion sucked which really makes me think do I want to ruin the quality of my site for a few dollars.
After analyzing and giving them a second chance, I have decided to finally give up on Kontera on Balkhis atleast. I have removed the ads from the blog, and it loads like a charm. I am not saying that they are completely bad because alot of people might make good money from them, but I just explained what I think about Kontera now in regards with Balkhis.
Have to agree with you when talking about their new hybrid ads, they just look ugly and take more time to load as the size of the box also becomes bigger.
I never liked kontera myself. Makes my sites look crappy and CPC is way too low.
I never likedd Kontera either. I don’t know why, but I never did. lol
I’ve been reading more and more thoughts like this regarding Kontera, particularly with regards to slow load times and low payouts. It’s something they’re going to need to address as their reputation is definitely suffering.
Yes that is something they need to address and need to take quick actions because it is really hard to come back in the industry especially when sites like Vibrant Ads and others are there to give competition.
I think thats a good move.
Kontera takes lot of load time and i dont like their irritating popups too.
BTW - your site still takes a lot of time to load.
probably because of the graphics on the site. Images and such. Will try to reduce the load.
I have a question - it sounds like a pay per click program and not a link selling program - right?
Yes, It is a pay-per-click program. Basically it is the keywords in your content are converted to in-content-ads and when you bring your mouse over it, you will see a tooltip which contains ads.
Hi Syed,
My name is Vered and I’m from Kontera.
I regret hearing that this has been your experience with our ContentLinks and I wanted to address some of the issues that were raised here –
1.ContentLink ads are not supposed to slow down page loading time. We recommend embedding our tags immediately before the close body tag, so our links are the last to load on your page. When Kontera tags are implemented properly, there should be no effect on your site’s performance.
2.You can employ our Zone and Filter tags to prevent ContentLinks from appearing on particular areas of your pages. Kontera’s KnowledgeBase (http://kb.kontera.com/) includes explanations on how to include them and maximize publisher control in this regard.
3.ContentLinks are distinguished by a double underline to avoid misleading users into clicking them by thinking they are regular links. This is look is intentional and aimed to prevent confusion and with users in mind.
ContentLinks are customizable and can be optimized to maximize each site’s revenue potential. We value our partnership, and would appreciate the opportunity to have you back on board as a Kontera partner. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any question or concern and I’ll do my very best to address them.
Kind Regards,
Vered
Publisher Services Manager
First of Vered, I would like to thank you for jumping in and clarifying the things for us. One issue with the siteload is I did follow all the guidelines. The codes were inserted right above the close tag of body. In the status bar you will see once the site is loading.. It shows loading dc.kontera.com and it says that for quiet sometime before it actually shows the link.
Another issue is that it makes the text link ugly with double underline .. .have to come up with something better than that. I would still like to have an option to make it one single link so it doesn’t look to obvious of an ad.
Yes. very rightly said Syed! i my self had been to this problem then only i have also dropped kontera i hope they are listening and will do to improve their load time.
Hehe, Right before you posted there was a comment pending by vered .. I guess your wishes came true
Ya syed me too wishes the same…….
I totally agree with you balkhis, i have removed it since last month, coz some of my readers really emailed to me mentioning that the site load up is very slow.As for other issue.. can’t say much as you already mentioned here..
It takes a long time for the website to activate the javascript for Kontera because it looks for keywords and link associations for each. I realized a 25% load time decrease after i deactivated Kontera.
I haven’t tried kontera though, anyway by reading this post and your comments, i think i wll not use kontera, i’m pretty worried with the site loading because my blog is hosted on a really pretty cheap webhost
I have given Kontera over 100,000 unique page views and the earnings have been under $25 which is really sad and thats why I have begun to exclude them on my blog and have taken the route of private advertising instead. It works out better for me.
Totally agree. Even I threw out Kontera after my first payout. They give you dirt and keep all the profits