I'm currently experimenting with Kontera ads on StevePavlina.com. These are context-sensitive ads that highlight keywords in the text and turn them into mini-ads that appear if you hover the mouse cursor over them.
I'm going to give this a 30-day trial to see what effect it has on the overall site revenue and usability. I've seen these types of ads on other sites, but I haven't seen blogs using them too much yet. Google's Adsense agreement used to prevent the use of other context-sensitive ads like Kontera, but earlier this year Google relaxed that requirement, so now it's OK to have both.
Long-term I still plan to move away from the ad model and towards a direct sales model, but since this took only a few minutes to implement (just copy and paste some Javascript into the page headers), I figure it was worth a test. If it brings in only a third as much as Adsense (net of any cannibalization), that would still be an extra $35K/year. So this could be another of those
$10,000 hours.
Of course I'm happy to share results to the degree that's permitted.
Erin tried displaying Kontera ads on VegFamily.com a while back, but the revenue it brought in was rock bottom, and she eventually dropped them. The ad clicks were only generating a penny or two.
Has anyone here had experience with Kontera ads on their sites (good or bad)? How did it compare to Adsense?