March 28, 2007

Google’s ‘New’ PPA Advertising System?

First off, PPA (Pay per action)  is not new and was not invented by Google.  Secondly, PPA is not advertising.  It IS in fact ‘Affiliate marketing’.  Just because someone makes up a new three letter domain for an existing product does not make them the inventor or even an innovator for that matter.  Affiliate marketing programs have been around for over 10 years.  Linkshare was one of the first in 1996 and Commission Junction is now the industry leader.  Early beta testers have said there are generally low paying offers currently in there and one told me that after only briefly looking at some of the offers went and used the old stand by, CJ.

While Michael Arrignton hits the nail on the head with pretty much all of his posts, his immediate praise of the new system and claiming that it will destroy CJ misses the mark slightly on this one.  TechCrunch.
“Like CPC ads, PPA advertising was not invented by Google. Search engine Snap has been selling ads this way”
Again, it is PPA advertising is just a fancy way of saying affiliate marketing and was invented by neither company.
“Affiliate marketing networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare are screwed.”
I have heard of so many Google products that were suppose to kill other apps.  Google video didn’t hurt YouTube much, oh wait, they knew they were beat so they bought them didn’t they?  And what about Google Answers?  They folded that product because they thought it would never fly, um, Yahoo Answers is doing OK.   And anyway, I agree with Mike Allen that there is lots of room for everyone in this space.
My main issue with the ‘new’ PPA system is that it opens a whole new world for the spammers.  The only marketers that are jumping up and down about this announcement are the Viagra boys.  Just think about it for a minute.  All those annoying ads you love to hate.  Smiley faces, wallpaper, fake Rolex’s, screen savers etc.  Until now those spam marketers were pretty much limited to buying email lists and cheap remnant banner inventory at the lowest possible CPM they could find from ad networks.  But now, now they will have unlimited ad budgets.  They choose to only pay if someone fills in that form for a free ipod or if someone downloads the adware laden toolbar.  These guys will have an absolute field day setting up hundreds of different PPA ‘Ad’ campaigns with different actions required all at ZERO initial upfront costs.  They pay nothing if you don’t fall for the trap.  One of the reasons that Commission junction doesn’t have these types in their system is because of the relatively moderate set-up costs.  It’s not free to become an affiliate with most programs, and marketers are not going to bother to promote your product unless they get paid something significant.  Google will leverage the power of their existing publisher network.  MILLIONS of them.  And get them to spam the crap out of every reader.   I warned you here first…

March 17, 2007

Head 2 Head: Graphical Banners Ads vs.Text Link Ads

1) Click through rates. I would say 468×60 banner ads have probably the lowest click through rates for any banner in history and perhaps a highly targeted text link may do fairly well, but overall, it would clearly be graphical ads that outperform.  Don’t believe me?  Try using a rich media 300×250 big boxes and compare them to any text link ad.  I’ve seen rich media click through rates as high as 10% =  Winner Banners

2) Annoyance Factor.  Although Google Adsense is getting there, small fixed text links are almost not even noticeable on most sites, and nothing can be more annoying than those strobe light type flashy banners.  = Winner Text Links

3)  Branding.  Well its really hard to brand your company without displaying  your company logo, so I would say there is almost no branding effect with text links.  How can you effectively brand your company with words alone?  With a banner you can convey a company image and even a feeling about your company. = Winner Banners.

4) Improving your Google PR.  Well at first thought I would give this to text link ads, but paid text link may not only ‘not’ improve your Google PR rank, it may even hurt it.  See Matt Cutts for more details, after all he would know, he is one of the ones building the Google algorithms. But with that said, any banner certainly won’t help SEO or page rank, and even though Matt says it won’t help, I’m still with most online marketers that believe it might. = Winner Text links
 

5) Message. You can fit so much more information into a large banner than you can into a tiny text link.  Prices, specials, different product information.  Try comparing a 20 character limit link to a 728×90 leader board. = Winner Banners

6) Interaction. No interaction with a text link ad.  Your customers cannot interact with a text ad, the only thing they can do is click on it, with an interactive rich media banner ad, your customer can interact with your product and service without even leaving the site they are on. = Winner Banners

Overall Winner = Graphical Banner Advertisements

Chad
b5media

March 14, 2007

Top 20 online advertisers for 2006…

#1 Vonage = $185 million

#2 AT&T = $166 million

#3 Dell = $136 million

#4 Disney = $133 million

#5 GM = $130 million

6, Expedia 7, Verizon, 8, Apollo, 9, IAC, 10, TD ameritrade.

 And the rest here at MediaPost

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

March 9, 2007

Why Google ‘IS’ Evil

Google’s early days mantra and still informal corporate motto is “Don’t be Evil”, but it seems that beautiful smell of money is making the Googlites turn a blind eye to old saying. 

  

Why is Google Evil?  Google Adsense is single handily responsible for the creation of MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of Splogs.  

Spam + blogs = Splogs 

Spam + Blogs + Google Adsense = Sploogles. :)   

  

The last Technorati count was at 70.6 million Blogs and it’s growing day by day.  Is it growing because everyone really has something useful to say?  I don’t think so.   Not only does Google pretty much accept any site to run Adsense, including broken sites, under-construction, parked domains, they even reward some of the spammers with great PR’s and index them well.  And why not?  More traffic = More Clicks = More money in the vaults.  Even Better, they buy Blogger.com to ensure that future sploggers will have a free home to incessantly blast the web with meaningless dribble. 

  

The 2nd thing that makes them evil.  Penalizing your site, (if they catch you) for buying or selling ‘paid’ text links from anything other than Google Adsense.  It’s OK if you buy them through them, just don’t try to do it on your own. 

  

The last thing that makes Google Evil: Lying.  The ‘Google Code of Conduct’ talks about openness and honesty.  Not being open and honest is the same as lying in my books.  If they are so ‘open’ why do they not disclose how much of a cut they are taking from the Google adsense that is running on YOUR web site?  Wouldn’t you technically be a business partner?  This kind of reminds me of the old Mafia Movies where the thugs come into the store, open the cash register and help themselves.  It’s your content, It’s your site. What do they give you in return for taking your money?  Support? Sales staff? Traffic?  Why give your money to Google?  Don’t they have enough cash… 

March 8, 2007

Online Ad spending up 34% to hit a record high of $16.8 billion in 2006–

Yes, yet another report that shows online advertising is growing.  Yawn.  There is at least 5 of these reports/press release/breaking news everyday.  Why did I post this one?  Well this one is quasi interesting.  Read the IAB report here at Mediapost  OK, I’m going to say it now to everyone.  Yes, we know that online advertising is rising.  We know it will continue to grow year after year and month after month.  Stop stating the obvious. 

March 2, 2007

“7 Reasons why you can’t sell Advertising on your site”

There are so many reasons, but here are a few:
#1 You don’t actively solicit advertising.  Passive may work, Active does work.
#2 Don’t have any quality traffic. (Think, proxy)
#3 Don’t have enough US visitors. US traffic is still the holy grail.
#4 Don’t know your audience.  What are the user demographics of visitors to your site?  Male? Female? Age?  If you don’t know this, why would the advertiser who is looking to target 17 year old males advertise on your site?
#5 Don’t know the market rates.  What are other similar sites to yours charging?
#6 Don’t have targeted traffic to your site.  Yes, believe it or not, marketers are getting smarter and getting smarter means looking for ‘targeted traffic’ not just any old traffic.  What is targeted?  Well if your site is niche focused and has a narrow user demographic, it’s targeted. 

And the main one…
#7 You simply don’t know how to sell.  Yes, it is true.  Everyone thinks they are a salesperson but few people like to admit that they don’t know how to.  It’s one of those professions that everyone thinks they can do, like using quick tax and thinking your an accountant, or playing with your meta keywords and thinking you’re and SEO expert. 

Bottom line:

If you want top dollar for your advertising, leave it to a top sales rep.
Chad
http://www.advertisespace.com
http://www.b5media.com
(This post can be reprinted, scrapped, robbed or ripped off with the links intact)

March 1, 2007

#1 myth of selling Online Advertising

“If you build it, they will come.”

This one just kills me.  I have met so many people that build a website or have a website and their business strategy to make money is always the same.  ” We’re going to build up lots of traffic and then sell advertising on our site.”

Just because you have a lot of traffic to your website, DOES NOT guarantee that someone will want to advertise there.  I see websites over an over that have loads of traffic but just can’t seem to capitalize fully on the traffic or some that haven’t managed to actually ’sell’ any advertising on their site.  (By sell, I mean someone actually gives you X number of dollars for X.  I don’t mean affiliate programs or Google ad sense)  Sure with tonnes of traffic you should be able to monetize it to some degree, that goes without saying.  But I’m talking about profitability.

So why can’t they sell any advertising?

Check back tomorrow for…
“7 Reasons you can’t sell advertising on your site”