AdBrite's full page ads overlays your website with an advertiser's until you click on a button at the header to skip the ad. A while back I disabled AdBrite's Full-Page Ads because shortly after enabling it, I saw a significant traffic drop. Although it could have just been the natural order of things, I didn't want to take any chances. Traffic came back shortly after I disabled it, but again, it could have just been be the normal ups-and-downs of the the traffic cycle. I've read that since it's just javascript, it shouldn't affect search engine referrals which makes sense. Still, I kept it disabled because the rates were dropping to around $1 CPM. It's still good when you compare it with rates for conventional banner ads, but I didn't think it was worth it for such an intrusive ad unit.

I decided to give it another go just to test out whether or not it was limiting my search referrals and got a nice surprise. So far, it hasn't affected my traffic. I did changed a couple parameters. First, I manually applied a frequency cap to only show the full page ad to half of my monthly visitors. Second, I placed the ad code at the bottom of the page so it only loads after the rest of the page has loaded so that my users will at least get to see the page before it gets taken over. The rates have been pretty good so far too - more towards the upper end of the $1-$6CPM range. I think it'll probably stabilize in the middle. Still, even at that rate, it's still a lot better than banners. It's now became one of my top money makers.

Since rates for these ads went up, I thought I should give their banner and rectangle ads another go too. I put them up for a day, saw those really annoying flashing ads, and glad to see that the rates were still crap so I could justify turning them off again.