While there are benefits to this, for sure, on the whole I dislike the new Region system as both an ad host and an advertiser.
As an advertiser, it's simple...it takes more time and more money to do the same amount of advertising that I did before. The one good part of this is that I can now afford to place ads on massively trafficked sites by selecting only a less trafficked region with a lower bid, but it's a poor upside to having to pay maybe 50% more to reach the full audience on a medium-traffic site, which is where most of my advertising took place.
As an ad host, the ads on my site are generating slightly less than they used to do. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that I have a row of rectangle ads that are rarely full in the EU and worldwide regions and are sometimes not even full in the Canada region, leaving the "default" ad in most of the spots, which looks terrible. My U.S. slots are still full, be it with lower bids, so reducing the number of slots isn't a good solution either. On top of that, I can only see the actual comic page in one region, so now to monitor what ads are on the site, I've either got to spend the time checking all the ad boxes in four regions, or spend more time by confirming new advertisers. It's a small thing, but it makes it that much more annoying. That's not to mention that the people advertising on my site have to pay more to reach my whole audience, making me feel guilty as hell.
And as if that weren't enough, I'm not getting any Highbid Notification emails anymore. The only way I know an ad was active is when I get the Outbid Notice. I know this is just a glitch, but it's that one thing that just makes you sit back and laugh.
I think a good solution, at least for ad hosts, is to be able to set their ads to display in all regions. For advertisers, I'm not sure I see a good alternative...not from my advertising habits, anyway.
I sang Project Wonderful's praises before this, it helped me more than quadruple my readership over the last year, but now it's turning into an expensive, less-profitable time waster. I've sent PW my grievances, to which they replied that they were sure I'd like it over time, and that everything would even out. It's been almost a month and it's pretty much the same, and I still don't like it. I'm toying with the idea of just offering to put up ads on my own and take payment through PayPal. It's such a shame, PW was always great for me, and now it's not really working anymore.
