Is Non-Search PPC Dead? CPA Wave of the Future? Hopes for Flat Rate!

I clearly remember in the mid 90’s you could signup for an ad campaign, make $.03/click all day long, and things were never easier. Over time, the payout rates increased at the same pace as venture capital financing, until anyone without funding who had a workable business model could not really compete with the unrealistic/unsustainable rates paid by cash rich advertisers. This worked well for general publishers who were just trying to make a living putting 2 banners on every page of their site; until the venture financing dried up and all the advertisers with negative returns packed up and went home.

Anyone who was left in the industry after the dotcom implosion of 2000 was pretty much wondering around stunned. There was no trust left, every offer seemed suspicious, and it seemed like everything was coming to and end. It basically was. There was a mix of failing companies trying to hang on, and new companies with new ideas trying to turn profits using certain elements of the first internet economy that were successful. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow would be CPA, or pay per lead revenue. If SiteABC can make $14.00/year average from each user on their site, paying SITEXYZ $2.75 per referred user works. If a large publisher with low quality traffic comes on board sending tons of clicks to advertisers it doesn’t scew any profit margins, they just don’t get paid if they don’t produce signup leads. All Hail CPA!

Search PPC (pay per click) still works to generate revenue for the search engine because they often have keyword bidding systems, and can target words to relevant topics across a huge spectrum. One stop shops for large brokers and networks to use to fulfill their advertising campaigns. Sure you can get a peice of this action by joining AdWords, but it’s not really a very indepedent (they take 30%) solution for you. I can only try to guess at what they actually count as a qualified click-thru at this point. Of course without 100,000s of advertisers bidding against each other the most you’d ever make per click auctioning off your own targetted spots independently would probably yield you 1 cent per click, so an ad network like Adwords is generally the last option people have.

I like the Flat Rate ad sales features in Adbrite. For a long time we have listed our banners at flat rate prices in a shopping cart but there was only 4 or 5 sales total during a year. With adbrite, you can set your flat rate price and it’s seen by 1000s of advertisers. As long as your tracking clicks yourself you can do some simple math if you need to see a price per click breakdown of your income.

Adbrite Flat Rate Ad Sales Increasing

Well either it’s a run of good luck, or people are finally starting to use Adbrite. I had set the adbrite flexible text zones on sitesled to auto-price themselves. When the ad zones are sold out, the price listed for an ad on that zone increases. If there are no buyers the price incrementally dececreases. Those whole idea works great as long as there are a lot of advertisers looking at your ad zones. If there aren’t, the price will eventually decrease to $.80/month for the spot.

On Sitesled, the header banner for example, contains 2 text link spots. 2 weeks ago both were sold for $16.00, and the price raised to $32.00. This week someone bought the $32.00 spot with a “Reoccurring” ad. This means they locked themselves into the spot for $32.00/mo until I reject their ad. Unfortunately, one of the $16.00/mo advertisers locked themselves into a reoccurring ad, so now auto pricing will not matter because there will not be any available space until one of these advertisers pulls their ads, or I reject the $16.00 auto-renewal in hopes that another $32.00 buyer will come in before the $16.00 campaign ends.

AdBrite stats wrong. Possibly worst stats ever?

Adbrite, the golden child of the founder of F*ckedcompany.com (which now doesn’t work anymore), must have the most inaccurate statistics of any program I have ever seen. You ever notice if you are using network ads, you get 90% less clicks recorded , however, on your “Ad Summery Page” (the page that advertisers look at) it will say a 90% higher number than your daily stats show you getting credit for?

Example: I had an adzone that was showing “clicks per 7 day period: 290″ on the adbrite public listing of my zone. But my stats which were only running network ads were crediting me with 2 or 3 hits/day. As soon as the adzone would sell, the stats would jump up to 30-40 clicks/day.

If you use Adbrite make sure to set alternative campaigns if minimum prices can’t be met. They do pay on time (paid on time for 2+ years, 1 of only 3 to achieve this that i have used) but I wouldn’t recommend using them. Potential advertisers from your site often get sold network ad place when they click the “Your Ad Here” link on the adbrite zones. It’s better to just setup a free shopping cart using paypal and sell your banner spaces flat rate, directly on your site.

Since I am still using them for some small scale ad zones I better stop ranting before they cancel my account.