I'm assuming you're already familiar with the SmartZones in Commission Junction. In short, it's a way to build a banner rotation script for merchants on Commission Junction.

So do they work?

In terms of earning revenue, not very well.


After having used SmartZones for some years now, experimenting with text links, banners, for several of my sites, and for several of my merchants, they just don't make any money, or they make very little money.

If you mix links for several merchants, all you're doing is watering down the potential EPC, to the point where it's almost impossible to earn anything.

The reason why is that by running multiple merchants on a single SmartZone script, you're dividing up your total audience to the point where a fraction of your visitors will see the best performing link.

For example, if you have 5 different merchants running in your SmartZone script, then 1/5th of your visitors will see one merchant, another 1/5th will see a different merchant, etc...

Moreover, not all of your visitors will share the same interests. If you're publishing a digital camera blog, a portion will want to buy a digital camera, another portion only wants to know what's new and cool, another portion wants to learn how to use their camera, and another portion wants to know where to get the best deals. If you rotate links from five different merchants, then 75% of your visitors will see links that don't interest them.

Instead, just permanently fix links from all of your merchants down the side of the page, and don't rotate them. That way, all of your visitors will see a merchant link that will interest them.

Running banners on a rotation script is typically what you'd do for CPM campaigns, where you're paid for displaying an ad. It makes sense to use a rotation script so that you're exhausting advertiser impressions quickly as possible.

But when monetization is based on a revenue share (earning a commission), rotating banners means reducing the number of times your visitors see your best performing banner.

You're actually just better off not using SmartZones, or any rotation script to randomly display ads paid on a revenue share. Find your best performing link, and keep it on the site, in the same place, all the time, to maximize sales potential.

If you really want to use SmartZones, then create a separate SmartZone for each merchant, where one SmartZone serves only one merchant. If you have five merchants for your digital camera blog, then create five SmartZones, one for each. Then paste all five SmartZone codes on the same page. That way, all of your different types of visitors will see a merchant link that interests them.

If you insist on having multiple merchants rotating in one rotation script, then utilize CPM campaigns. I guarantee they'll pay better in the long run, than if you were to rotate revenue share ads.

The only rotation script I would recommend for revenue share ads, is one that lets you target specific ads to specific pages. Don't just randomly show revenue share ads on any page.  ✓