Comments on: Selling advertising in a downturn (part 1)

By: Erik Geurts

Erik Geurts — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:13:22 +0000

I’ve just posted the second article in this series, about moving to cost per action marketing:
http://www.erikgeurts.com/blog/selling-advertising-in-a-downturn-part-2/

By: KeyAudioAds

KeyAudioAds — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:04:45 +0000

To be honest, I’m probably talking through my hat, but I don’t think advertisers need to be worried about fraud, and besides that in general, delivery limitations are available, and or some systems have built in fraud protection, but I guess there is always going to be someone smarter, until they are caught.

Anyway, what I don’t get is, very few larger ad networks offer CPM to their publishers or CPC, it seems to be all down to sales, 1 million impressions , 10,000 clicks don’t mean jack, unless a sale is involved.

Perhaps the networks should operate the same system, ie: if our network of publishers can’t make a sale we don’t get paid?

Well if anything it’s an honest approach, but will probably never happen.

Traditional advertising will be around for a long time, what advertisers need to do is look at alternative methods.

By: Rithish

Rithish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:45:51 +0000

@Pierce
True that the CPC model is prone to fraud. But then again, so would be the CPM model. What is to restrict a user from refreshing/calling the page multiple times and thus falsifying an impression?

@Erik
Great series. Looking forward to the rest.

By: Erik Geurts

Erik Geurts — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:02:15 +0000

Hi Pierce,

Yes, it is true that CPC has some draw backs, one of them being clicks that are not valid. In one of the other articles in the series I’m going to address a way of going around that, by moving even further into partnering with your advertisers, through affiliate marketing and cost per action.

Erik

By: Pierce

Pierce — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:36:26 +0000

I read this article a few days ago, but I was not convinced that CPC is the way to go…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/report-click-fraud-at-record-high/

After reading that over 30% of CPC is fraud and its only going to increase in a recession doesn’t it make more sense to use a CPM model based on an estimate of how many conversions you will get for every 1000 impressions?

Pierce

By: Erik Geurts

Erik Geurts — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:26:57 +0000

Hi Oliver,
Thanks for your comment and for adding this.
Erik

By: Erik Geurts

Erik Geurts — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:24:30 +0000

Hi Sean,
Thanks for the comment. It’s actually the other way around, if I remember my Latin from school correctly. M is the abbreviation of the Latin word Mille which means 1,000.
Erik

By: Oliver George

Oliver George — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:32:55 +0000

Hi Erik

This is a good mature approach for pragmatic publishers wanting to give their customers better value for money. There are lots of advantages:

1. Competitive edge
It should give them an edge over other publishers who only sell CPM.

2. Building trust with customers
You’re also more likely to say no to an advertiser whose campaign isn’t going to perform well on your site. That kind of honesty is going to build trust between you and your customers.

3. More revenue
By sharing the risk you also give yourself extra opportunity to make more money. Previously you focused on volume of impressions but now you will be thinking about the quality and relevance of traffic too. What will increase the number of clicks? Create content about related products, find ways to drive relevant traffic to your site.

I’m sure Shawn Collins and the wider affiliate world would heartily agree – performance marketing is the way forward.

cheers,
Oliver George

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olivergeorge

By: Sean Porter

Sean Porter — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:22:39 +0000

CPM is actually ‘cost per thousand’ where M is the roman numeral for 1,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPM

By: Chris Moran

Chris Moran — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:00:01 +0000

Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.

Chris Moran