Mamma Media Solutions' graphics advertisement program (they also have a search program which is a separate matter outside the scope of this review) is what has become of the FocusIn network after Mamma has bought them in 2002.
This is a good network to join if you are looking for a place to send some default traffic (from the likes of Fastclick or Casale Media). While their rates are on the low side, they do a pretty good job of filling 100% of the skyscraper and leaderboard inventory we send them (regular banners are currently getting around 20% defaults).
As we said, the rates are pretty low: we get between 12 and 20 cents effective CPM for the traditional units (leaderboard, banner and skyscraper), with the leaderboard generally fetching the best rates.
It's important to note that by default, Mamma will serve up occasional pops from the regular banner code. We have found that we can generally get better rates for our pop inventory elswhere, so we contacted the network's customer support to have our banner code stripped of them. If already belong to a high-paying popup network, we recommend you do the same. There is no way to disable the popups by yourself through the Mamma website, so you have to write to their support department to do this. (If you get your banner code made popup-free, you can still run their pops with dedicated popup code, so we recommend doing this even if you intend to run Mamma's pops.)
The network places all its publishers in one of three "tiers", depending on the quality of the site, and traffic levels. Each of the tiers will receive a different percentage of earnings. If you are unhappy with the rates you are seeing from Mamma, you can contact customer support about getting your site placed in a higher-earning tier. They will review your site, and if it is eligible upgrade you.
Mamma is pretty strict about where they will let you run their code. They ask you to get approval for every subdomain you run their ads on - if you were approved for mysite.com, you still need to submit www.mysite.com and www2.mysite.com. Unfortunately their interface only allows you to request and get approval for up to 5 host names. The site says that if you have more hostnames you should open another account with them, but we recomment contacting support in this situation, and they may just open your account to be able to run ads from any domain without prior approval.
The statistics interface is very clean and easy to understand, with semi-realtime figures. Unfortunately, there is no way that we found to opt out of specific campaigns. You can configure up to one default per ad format by supplying a standard image source/href combination, or a URL for IFrame contents or a .js file. This is a very intuitive way of doing things, and will allow you to chain any kind of default you wish - this kind of flexibility would really be very nice to see from Fastclick.
Payments are sent out on the 10th of the month, for the month ending about 40 days prior (so payments for January will be sent out on March 10). So far this network has been very reliable in sending the payments. Their monthly minimum of $50, but you can set it to a higher value if you don't want to mess with small checks.
Overall this network is pretty good, thanks in part to your ability to interact with the support staff and customize your account to your needs. It's a great choice for a second/third tier network for banners and skyscrapers, though their generally low rates make us unable to recommend them for the first tier on most sites.
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