Cost Per Click Advertising
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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, you will
know exactly how much you're paying for each click-through to your
site. The downside is most major sites prefer to sell Cost Per Impressions
banner ads.
So, you'll probably find that most of the sites belonging
to these networks are small sites or homepages with little traffic.
Although there are a lot of very good homepage sites on the net, I
think a lot are quite poor, so I have doubts as to the effectiveness
of having your banners displayed in these sites.
With Cost Per Click advertising, the site displaying
your ad carries more of the risk. If your banner performs poorly,
the site owner will lose out, as little or no click-throughs means
you only have to pay a small amount, if anything. And the problem
is more than likely due to the ineffectiveness of your banner design,
rather than the site itself.
To counteract this risk, most sites accepting Pay Per
Click advertising put a lower limit on the click-through rate that
the advertiser's banner must achieve--usually 2%. If your banner's
click-through rate is lower than the limit set, they are likely to
withdraw your banner.
Some people test new banners with a Pay Per Click network,
before they use them in Pay Per Impression campaigns. I think this
is a great idea, as the risk to the advertiser is minimal.
ClickTrade
Set up your own affiliate program and reward your affiliates on a
pay-per-click, lead or sale basis. Pay out as little as 1 cent per
click-through. You must set up an account with $100 for the pay per
click program and $400 for pay per lead/sale, to cover your pay outs.
ClickTrade charges 30% commission on top of the actual pay-per-action
rate. Has 50,000 affiliates.
Safe-Audit
Over 15,000 host sites with 300 Million Pageviews per month. Seems
to mostly offer homepage sites.
Sellers - They have a policy of allowing even the smallest
of sites with low traffic counts to join.
TeknoSurf
Offers cost per impression/click/action ads.
Sellers - 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
Targeted advertising in 11,000 member sites. You must spend a minimum
of $2,000 within a period of two weeks or less.
Sellers - 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.
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