Cost Per Click Advertising

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by Michael Wong

Click here for an explanation of Cost Per Click or CPC advertising.

Below is a list of popular Cost Per Click advertising networks. Unlike Cost Per Impressions banner advertising, where you are paid for every banner impression you display, you are paid for every visitor who clicks on a banner.

With Cost Per Click advertising, the you carry all the risks. If the banners you are displaying perform poorly, you lose out.

TeknoSurf
Offers cost per impression/click/action ads.

Pays 13-30 cents per click. However they seem to use a prehistoric banner tracking system whereby you will need to change the PAGE NAME for each page that you use the banners on. If you have hundreds of page, it can take you a while to get the banner on every page of your site. I also tested their banners recently. I've heard some good reports of good payouts, but I found the click-through rates to be very poor, giving a rate of about $1CPM.

ValueClick
Sites with at least 1,500 impressions per month receive 12 cents per click-through, 100,000 impressions with 1,000+ click-throughs pays out 15 cents each, and 1 million+ impressions with 10,000+ click-throughs pays out 17 cents per click.

NarrowCast Media
This company approached me via email with an offer to sponsor my site. I thought they were a genuine advertiser until I realized that they only paid for clicks sent to them.

They said they were willing to pay 21 cents for each unique host clickthrough, and guarantee to purchase all the traffic I can provide. Apparently, their banners usually have between a 1.1% to 9.3% clickthrough rate. Sounds good so far, until you read their terms and conditions.

I quote, "Our average clickthrough rate currently is 1%. It is unlikely that any site is going to get a clickthrough rate above 2% legitimately. All sites with more than a 1.5% clickthrough rate are examined very closely. Sites that have a clickthrough rate between 2% and 10% will examined closely and given a chance to explain why their clickthrough rate is dramatically higher than industry averages. If a satisfactory explanation is not received the site will either be sited for cheating or have their clickthrough rate reduced to 1% and then paid as if their clickthrough rate is 1% at NarrowCast Media's sole discretion."

That sounds perfectly reasonable. But then they go on to say...

"Sites with more than a 10% with either be sited for cheating automatically or have their clickthrough rate reduced to 1% and then paid as if their clickthrough rate is 1% at NarrowCast Media's sole discretion."

Hold on a second! If my click-through rate is more than 10%, they would either ban me for cheating, or reduce my click-through rate to 1%!!

That can't be right. I've had Flycast Network banners achieve click-through rates as high as 33%, without any questions from Flycast. I wasn't the one clicking through on these banners. I have better things to do than sit there all day, clicking banners.

Of course, they don't state if the percentage they take is the site average or for each individual banner. So, I wrote to them asking exactly that. They have so far failed to reply, which doesn't look good on them.

The reason why I am telling you this, is to be wary of such claims. Read the contract, or terms and conditions, before you enter into any agreement. Otherwise, you could have signed up to NarrowCast Media, displayed thousands of banner impressions, achieved a 11% click-through rate, only to have them take away 90% of your earnings away from you, through no fault of your own. I'm not a lawyer, so I am be wrong, but that is how it reads to me.