The basic premise is that you sign up, add your site(s) - you can have more than one, and tracking is separate - define your keywords and then place your ad codes. The step about defining keywords is why this program is significantly worse than Google AdSense. Where AdSense dynamically determines the appropriate keywords based on the contents of your pages (resulting in automatic per-page targeting), Clicksor's scheme has you put in every possible relevant keyword you can think of and hope for the best. (They emailed us a couple of times suggesting that we don't have enough keywords defined - they recommend at least 100 per site.)
Because the keywords are pre-defined and site-wide, not page-specific, and because Clicksor has nowhere near as many advertisers as Google, the ads you will be seeing will not generally be very well targeted (unless you have a site about Hosting, Viagra or Gambling). Lack of advertisers also means that bid prices are generally kept fairly low - we are seeing a measely 3 cents per click on average, though this may vary with keywords.
Clicksor's code can be placed in two formats - traditional banners, or inline links. The banners come in pretty much all formats that Google AdSense offers, making this program a decent candidate for AdSense defaults (though we suggest using a CPM program for the more common formats). Each banner will show one or a few text ads depending on the size of the format.
Inline linking however deserves special mention, as it is a fairly new format of advertising. Basically this is designed for content-heavy sites, and works by dynamically singling out words within your site's text and turning them into little ad links. When the visitor hovers over this link, a little DIV layer pops up with the ad tied to that keyword. The visitor can then go to the advertiser's site. With this linking method you define which parts of your page you wish to be dynamically searched for keywords, so that no ads will appear in your navigation links or your copyright line.
The upside to this method is that it is fairly new, so you may get a better click ratio than with standard banners, and that it takes no extra space on your pages. On the other hand, the ads are only loaded when the user hovers on the link, so there is a noticable "lag" before the ad actually pops up. This also only works on IE, so depending on your audience 5 to 15 percent of your visitors will not see these ads. Finally, these ads may be considered plain old annoying by your visitors, so we suggest using them on only a small part of your content, or else being extra picky with your keywords.
The statistics screens offer you semi-real-time view of your impressions, clicks and income, broken down per site, and by day. Note that for inline links, an "impression" seems to occur when the user hovers on the link, so don't be surprised to see a really low impression count paired with a really high click-through ratio if you use this format.
Clicksor pays on the 25th of the next month, and given Yesup's exellent payment track record, we have no doubt they will make their payments in a timely manner. (We already got one check from them - on time.)
This network is not notable for much other than the innovative inline linking format, but can also be used as a default for a better program such as AdSense.
The Good: Inline links are an interesting way to place ads without sacrificing screen space.
The Bad: There is no AdSense-style targeting resulting in mostly irrelevant ads.
