You might have seen the following link because it’s been posted across the internet by every tom dick and harry who’s ever graced a marketing blog or forum (someone even posted it on my blog here – no disrespect to you!)…
I swear, even before this week I’d been told about this by three different people, then this week I’m not joking 3 more people told me about it and I got another at LEAST 7 promo emails about it…
Here’s the link but please, read the rest of this blog post before you click through.
When I first read it I got kind of interested, what it was saying sounded intelligent, but the more I read and the more I heard about this I couldn’t help but thinking what a load of crap it was.
I have to admit the marketing campaign, whatever they have done has been insanely successful because this link is now being posted all over the internet, and I’m talking literally everywhere.
Basically they are trying to get people to opt into this network of web publishers and advertisers – think of Adwords and Adsense…
They have a pool of advertisers who have ads ready to run on the sites of the people who sign up as publishers.
The thing everyone’s talking about is that you “Get Paid For Every Visitor To Your Site” … Sound familiar? Alot like my post “Making Money From Everyone Who Visits Your Blog”
What happens is you put a code on your site and every time the page loads, one of these companies ad, PLAYS – yes, an automatic audio play – you know the ones we all hate??
So that’s the premise, outside all the hype anyway…
Now tell me this… What respectable site that cares anything about it’s visitors would hit them with an automatic audio ad that they didn’t ask for – REGARDLESS of how targetted it is?
The letter even admits and I quote “Traditionally, music and unexpected sales pitches are very annoying”
Haha, you think so?
It goes on to say:
NetAudioAds™ (the patent holder) already has over 550,000 registered members that have been earning income this way for 2 ½ years. Complaints are rare because the ads run for only 5 seconds and are topically related to the content of the website.
550 000 members? Good use of social proof but they didn’t address why these ads are less annoying somehow. Because they only run for 5 seconds? I don’t know if any of you look at your site stats but 5 seconds is well long enough for a user to get PO’d and leave. And as a website publisher, why would you run an ad like this that even COULD annoy your visitor all for the sake of 25% commission per play – when each ad play is worth 25% of what could be (from what my sources tell me) as little as 20c?
Sure I can see that some people will do it – evidently alot have already joined and hey it would be great for spam blogs and made for Adsense type sites where you don’t realy care about your visitors but really, how is this going to take off and make money for real web publishers trying to run quality sites?
If you’re thinking it’s insane, IT IS.
I strongly encourage you not to sign up to this and get sidetracked/waste your time with this overhyped but fantastically marketed service.
All this being said however, I do think you should read the information at the start of the page as it talks about the way that offline advertisers are getting lower returns on their traditional advertising methods (TV etc) and are looking to the internet to connect more closely with their target markets. If you’re onto it, it will reaffirm your reasons for starting and KEEPING niche blogs for the future
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I wonder how many they lost to get that 550,000? Like you I have been blasted by emails trying to get me to signup, that’s irritating enough. Personally I wouldn’t mind an audio ad but what has turned me totally off them is that they blast out so loud. If they were of a more reasonable level they might not be so bad.
Hi Andrew,
I’ve got to disagree with you here with your entire post with the exception of one aspect. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Here’s my case.
When ever I want to see where a movie is being played in my local area I go to fandango.com to see what times the movie is being played and which theater it’s being played at. When I watch a preview, a commercial plays first . Then when I go to the movies…they play commercials (instead of cartoons like the good ole’ days).
Maybe not an example of an “audio ad” but it certainly is an example of a quality information site that is advertising using advertising messages that play first.
It’s classic advertising. It’s forced advertising…just like commercials on the radio. I may want to listen to my favorite music station but I know that there will be commercials.
Now here is where I agree with you:
You do have to be careful and be strategic where you place your ads if you plan on using this ad revenue generating technique.
For example, you may not want to place it on your “home” page. You may want to place it on a “review” page within your site, however.
It really depends on your market and WHAT your message is on your site.
I love your advise and insight on this forum. I subscribe to your RSS feed so that I don’t miss an issue but I disagree that this should be used (if used at all) on as you say:
…”it would be great for spam blogs and made for Adsense type sites where you don’t really care about your visitors”
I don’t think this is the case at all.
You can still send someone to a site with great content and play an advertisement to help monitize your site…
In fact, here’s an idea. Maybe you could create a membership site that you would normally charge, say $10 a month for where your members get top notch content each month. Instead of charging $10 per month, the site could be monitized entirely by ads. Since you get paid by the amount of visitors instead of the amount of “clicks” you are guaranteed to earn revenue off your “FREE” membership site.
See?
There are so many ways to conduct business on the net. I think that advertising is a great way to help pay for the content you share your visitors. If you provide top notch content, perhaps your visitors will not mind the ads. In fact, they will probably grow accustomed to them and not mind them at all…that is if you are providing your visitors with the information or service that they are looking for.
Great blog Andrew. I just wanted to post an alternative opinion.
Keep up the posts. I look forward to your next post.
Hi Andrew,
I mentioned this monetization option in your “What Are Your Goals” post and did ask for your opinion about it.
Thanks for responding and telling us what you think.
Isn’t it smart, though, to selectively place these 5-second audio ads in our websites?
I think the key to succeeding with these audio ads is “selective placement”. I won’t place them on my home pages (or the main pages of my blogs), but I can place them on “some” 2nd-tier and 3rd-tier pages which visitors go to for more targeted content.
I hope you’ll reconsider and give this opportunity a chance on your content sites and blog. It would be real cool if you join our team and continue to exchange ideas about this revenue source.
===
You placed the link above that doesn’t have an affiliate ID attached to it. Here’s a link that will sign you up with my team.
http://etopicana.com/default.html
===
Thanks again for the feedback.
Oscar
Signmeup,
Thanks alot for your comments, I understand what you mean and appreciate your opinion.
With the movies example, I’m not sure whether it exactly correlates. If you want to see a movie preview, you’ll go to that site, and you won’t mind seeing an ad for 5 seconds, but there aren’t many places you can go to get a movie preview as quickly and easily as at that site, so the short ad doesn’t bother you.
Also when we view movie previews we’re in the frame of mind that we’re going to see ads because at cinemas that’s just what happens and we’re conditioned for it now.
But we’re not conditioned to rock up to a website and hear an auto ad – at least not yet.
If I put an ad on my blog on say weight loss, there are another thousand weight loss sites where a user could get similar information to on my site. If I start sticking auto play ads on my site, why will a person keep coming to my site when they can go to a competing site and have similar content without ads?
You’re right about choosing the right place for them, and having them on deep, specific pages rather than homepages etc, and also choosing carefully which sites to use them on but I still think as a concept overall, it’s not what it’s hyped up to be.
All the best,
Andrew
The other thing about this is – with an image ad – you can stick a big banner right at the top of a page in front of my face, and if I like the site and want to read what’s there, I can divert my eyes and ignore it in literally a millisecond…
You can’t ignore an audio coming out of your computer and you can’t start reading the content properly until it’s done – Only 5 seconds I know but that would be plenty long enough to annoy, especially if this is a site I want to revisit day after day… how are those readers going to feel?
Andrew
Oscar,
As for “Isn’t it smart to place these 5 second ads on your websites?”
I don’t know – it depends on your intended purpose for the site – what you’re trying to get out of it.
If monetization is your main goal then hey, test it out, see how your number of bookmarks changes, see how your length of page views changes (how long people stay on a page that has an autoplay audio), see how popular that page becomes on your site…
Like I said, even if it has the CHANCE of pissing someone off, wouldn’t it be better to write some good article on that page and promote some affiliate program if you really want to make money?
Signmeup was right when he said there are alot of ways to make money on the internet and if you think this is worth testing on your site, by all means go ahead.
I know personally, I won’t be signing up any time soon but that’s just because it doesn’t fit the intended outcome of any of my sites.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Yes, I totally agree that it’s important to consider whether or not it fits in with a website’s monetization model.
I think this revenue source has a “best-fit scenario” with so-called AdSense sites, whose primary goal is to get the clicks and earn commission.
Related to this, we learned from Charles that some very persuasive affiliates have signed in some owners of big web properties. One conclusion to gather from this is that these owners determined that this revenue source fits in well with their monetization model.
As for myself, I intend to be selective with the placement of the 5-second audio ads — and definitely not the home pages. I think it’s one revenue source I don’t want to miss.
Thanks and all the best,
Oscar
Over time, people adapt to advertising in ways that render it less effective and PPP will be no different.
PPP will just train people to keep their speakers muted until they actually want to listen to some specific audio or video.
When enough people adapt in this way, the returns on PPP advertising will drop to nill and then the ‘Death of PPP’ reports will begin hitting our email inboxes.
Hey Oscar,
I can see you’re someone who’s put some thought into this and how it fits with your business model and I respect you for that. Alot of people are signing up for the hype without putting much thought into it at all, not recommended.
For anyone interested, there’s an interesting thread going on at the warrior forum presently that’s in agreement with some of my sentiments as well as some of those to the contrary:
Check it out here:
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=206959
Best,
Andrew
I think the points you make are valid as far as blog type sites are concerned, but consider the adsense type site were to generate income you need to generate clicks, this (if it Works) is the perfect comliment, payment for the traffic plus payment for the click. As I say the big question is really will it get off the ground, or is it a really good email collection device, Eitherway I have signed up and will try the system for my self
Graham Taylor
1waylink.net