*****************************************************************
Message delivered directly to members of the group:
internet_marketing_articleblaster@yahoogroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
James Brausch
==================
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in
free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as
the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial
purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly
accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any
sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence,
porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited
Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in
an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we
ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that
contains the article to support[at]glyphius.com (replace [at]
with @)
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links
MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of
the URL where the article is posted to support[at]glyphius.com
(replace [at] with @)
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you
want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as
part of its Article Distribution feature (
http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT
own this article, please respect the author's copyright and
this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of
these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
==================
Article Title: Impressions, Clicks, Leads, Sales
Author: James Brausch
Word Count: 2097
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=72856&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Author's Email Address: support[at]glyphius.com (replace [at]
with @)
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=72856
================== ARTICLE START ==================
Recently someone asked a question that made me realize that
most folks haven�t been around the 'net as several models for
selling advertising were attempted. This primer should help
everyone understood all of the terminology that goes into
selling advertising.
Let�s start with the word �impressions�. This is a model of
selling advertising where you pay for each person that sees an
ad. So in television and radio, they periodically do surveys to
try to figure out how many people watch a particular channel at
a particular time. The most well-known is probably the
�Neilson� ratings. Then the television and radio stations sell
advertising based on how many thousand people are probably
watching a particular commercial.
Rates are usually expressed in �CPM� which stands for �Cost Per
Thousand�. Yes; I and every advertising executive on the planet
knows that �M� isn�t the first letter in �thousand�, but �M� is
the roman numeral for one thousand. So, if you call a radio
station and ask for their rates, they might say that their
standard prime-time rate is $10/CPM. That means you will pay 1
cent for each person who hears the ad� or $10.00 for every
1,000 people. If you advertise a single commercial during a
time when 80,000 people are listening, you would expect to pay
$800.
That leads us to one of the current favorite models� PPC (or
pay-per-click). This trend started when banner advertising was
still in it�s hey day and before it was discovered that text
ads actually did better than animated graphic ads. It has
continued to this day although many networks did ban it because
of fraud years ago. Google actually even started out selling by
the impression and then converted to selling by the click.
However, most of us who went through that transition understand
that internally Google is still charging by the impression. The
PPC model they show outwardly is really just an illusion, but
perhaps that is a topic for another article.
The pay-per-click (PPC) model doesn�t exist outside of the
Internet. This is the first and only model that seems to not
exist in the offline world. However, if you really analyze it�.
it does have a corresponding term in the offline world. It
should be called a lead. A lead is any time you get someone to
raise their hand showing some interest. That is what a click
means. They are raising their hand and saying that they are
interested. You then show them a page that tries to get them to
take a more solid commitment (actually buying or possibly just
giving their email address or phone number so they can be
contacted at a later time).
Many moved to the PPC model to get rid of the fraud with the
impresison model. Of course it didn�t work. It is just as easy
to commit fraud with the click model. People being paid to run
ads on their site can click on their own ads. They can have
friends do it. They can even have robots do it through proxy
servers. Clicking an ad is just as easy as hitting the refresh
button. The fraud problem hasn�t disappeared. Many affiliate
networks used to offer the PPC model, but dropped it years ago
due to this fraud problem. Commission Junction is perhaps the
largest network to no longer allow PPC. That brings us to the
next level in the food chain.
As we have already discussed, a lead is when you get someone to
show some interest in your offer. In the off-line world, perhaps
you ask them to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope for more
information� or to calll an 800 number� or to visit a web-site.
That is a lead. They have viewed your ad (an impression) and
then taken some kind of action to show that they are
interested. A click is one form of a lead. However, in the
online world, we generally call a click a click and don�t call
a lead a lead until they give us some contact information. So
in the offline world, if someone called an 800 number� that
would be a lead. However, in the online world, most people
don�t think of it as a lead when they just click� only when
they provide some contact information.
Many affiliate networks (Commission Junction is one) still
offer programs where they pay per lead. You place ad code on
your site and someone clicks on it. You don�t get paid for
that click. But if they click on it and then fill out a form
giving their contact information� then you get paid. They
haven�t actually bought anything, but they did show enough
interest to give their name and phone number (for instance) or
their name and mailing address� or perhaps just their email
address. The more contact information, the more valuable a lead
is considered.
The person who posted the comment implied that selling leads is
one way of dealing with click fraud. Wrong. Of course they
eliminate click fraud, but just like clicks elminated
impression fraud� leads just replace click fraud with lead
fraud. It may be a bit more difficult to fill out forms with
false information, but the rewards are also higher. If you are
being paid 10 cents per click, you would generally be paid $1
per lead. So the extra time to fill out the form is well
compensated. Lead fraud exists just as much as click fraud.
That gets to the next term� the highest level on the
advertising food chain� the affiliate program. You are being
paid for sales in this model. This model is perhaps the most
fraud-free, but we haven�t looked at the other side of the
equation yet. Fraud exists on both sides of the equation in all
of these shared systems. Let�s look at each of these methods of
selling advertising from both sides of the fence.
There is the advertiser and the publisher in any of these
systems. The advertiser is the person wanting more sales. The
publisher is someone with traffic and wants revenue from that
traffic.
With impressions, the advertiser has the least guarantee of
anything. They take all of the risk. The publisher promises
only that people will hear the ad.
With clicks, the advertiser has at least a guarantee that
people will end up on their site (baring 100% fraud in which
case they are still guaranteed that at least robots will visit
their site). The publisher assumes some of the risk. They now
have an incentive to help the advertiser make their ad better
so that it gets more clicks. The shared responsibility is at a
pretty good balance at this point. It is still the advertisers
sole responsibility to turn those clicks into leads or sales
(and it is usually the advertiser who should be most qualified
at doing this, not the publisher).
With leads, the responsibility shifts very slightly even more
toward the publisher. They are now responsible for not only
getting the advertisers ad in front of people�s eyeballs and
getting them to take the action to click� but they are also
responsible for getting them to give their contact information.
With sales, the advertiser gives up all responsibilty. It is
now the publishers responsibility to actually become the sales
person. This can sometimes be difficult because the publisher
has no control over the sales page. They have responsibility,
but no authority. In this system, fraud is often being
committed on the other side. An advertiser can harvest that
traffic to a lead form or an untracked alternate payment method
or an 800 number� and the publisher never gets paid for the
untracked sales.
The same can happen with leads of course, but the burden and
the elements of fraud slightly shift the other direction.
If you really think it through, all of these methods of selling
advertising are really just semantics. Many advertisers and
publishers choose one and convert all of the others to that one
method for comparison. I mentioned earlier that Google appears
to sell traffic by the click, but internally they are really
selling impressions. The same is true for many affiliate
marketers. They may sign up for CPA programs (where they are
paid per click, lead or sale), but internally they are
calculating their earnings per impression and adjusting what
programs they promote based on that one metric.
Fraud takes place regardless of the model. The majority of that
fraud shifts from publisher to advertiser or vice-versa as you
move from one model to another, but the actual amount of fraud
is a constant.
So how do you decide which model to use when selling
advertising? One factor is to protect yourself from that fraud.
If you want to sell by sales (just putting up the affiliate
link), you will be faced with the very highest amount of fraud
from the advertisers as a publisher. You will need to mitigate
this as best as you can by choosing the best networks and the
most reliable advertisers within that network (the best
networks give you a metric for that� Clickbank it is gravity�
Commission Junction, it is CPC). In the end, I don�t recommend
it. It is a full time job managing that fraud.
Leads moves back on the food chain in your favor a bit. You can
sell leads though one of those affiliate networks or you can do
it on your own. If you do it through an affiliate network, you
still have all of the same fraud issues from the advertiser
side. I don�t recommend that. If you do it on your own, you
will have to find buyers for your leads. Currently, this is
not the standard method of doing business so those who would be
interested in buying leads aren�t doing searches on Google, etc
to find publishers. You will need to contact businesses
directly. There are many real estate agents, car dealerships,
boat and RV dealerships, mortgage lenders and others selling
high dollar items that would be very interested in buying your
leads, but they won�t come looking for you. You have to call or
visit them. I�m not interested in that business model, but it is
a very, very lucrative model. If you are interested in getting
on the phone or driving to local folks of the above type� then
by all means� investigate this model. I know folks who are
bringing in the high 7 figures with this model� but they do
work an awful lot of hours.
Clicks moves back in the chain even more. People will come to
you looking for clicks. However, because the fraud now exists
primarily on the publisher side, they will be leary. You will
have a very low conversion ratio. However, if you deliver high
quality traffic (ie: don�t put their ads on the sites of others
and share in the income� and don�t tell your customers where
they can find their ads� and therefore their competitors ads so
they can click on them)� if you do that, you will have loyal
customers for life who will pay for as many quality clicks as
you can send them� month after month after month for years to
come. I still have my first traffic customer from over 6 years
ago. I have no doubt that they will remain a customer for as
long as I follow that policy of protecting them from click
fraud from the publisher side.
Impressions moves even more in your favor and away from
advertiser fraud. However, it moves so far away that prospects
are so leary they simply will not buy at all unless you are
very well known. For instance, http://wwwProBlogger.net (or
even I could probably do this on my blog) could potentially
sell taffic by the impression. The real estate on known high
traffic blogs is valuable enough and they are high enough
profile that some advertisers would consider paying by the
impression. However, I wouldn�t recommend this in our current
market. Selling by the click is as far in the food chain as
most potential advertisers are currently willing to go. They
are even leary there and would generally prefer moving the
other direction along that advertising food chain.
About The Author: James D. Brausch says to forget about Adsense
and affiliate programs. Selling traffic yourself is the way to
go. Check out his blog here: http://www.JamesBrausch.com
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=72856
================== ARTICLE END ==================
For more free-reprint articles by James Brausch please visit:
http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=James+Brausch
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/internet_marketing_articleblaster/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
internet_marketing_articleblaster-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
No comments:
Post a Comment