Human traffic to any URL at the click of a finger?

[peekaboo]

To be honest, that is definitely not what the advertising industry thinks today.

traditional advertising industry is very happy with the status quo. they are making billions as-is, and any change to performance based models wil only make them poorer. u r probably confusing 'clients' desires for 'advertising industry' or perhaps, confusing some ambitious net upstarts and their courting of the clients for the 'advertising industry'.

as a side note, traditional mass advertisers (clients), by far and large, are still not significantly involved in internet advertising because the critial audience mass to them is not as obvious as with more traditional audience reach. in other words, they spend most money in traditional media, leaving peanutes for their 'new economy' ads. again, that is for the time being.

Interactive advertising is the holy grail of ROI with the technological connections to make it transparent above all traditional media to link cause and effect. I'm not sure whether you have been following the trade, but impressions are the proven food of fools.

in my opinion, u can't have all the traditional media based solely on impressions, and the new media solely on commission. the disrepancies are too wide and too obvious. again, while they might work for someone, it might not work for most, nor will work all the time.

one of the biggest reason is the inability of all your technology and transparancy to 'measure' the impact of an 'impression' in the long-term. in other words, while u can measure the impact of an 'impression', for exampple, referred to u by me which results in a sale (purchase of a good/service by that 'impression' off of your site) -- we can't measure the impact of that same 'impression' if it doesn't result in sale in that particular time/date. because, even if that 'impression' i've sent u today didn't make any buy, that 'impression' still learned about u, your products, your values and all other intricate number of things not easily measured. so, that same 'impression' can next time bypass 'me' and therefore come back to your site directly (by remembering your url, a day, a week, a month, a year after my referral, and can still purchase tons of your goods/services from u -- all that thanks to my initial referral which didn't result in any original purchase, and was therefore seemingly deemed worthless to u. furthermore, even if the impression doesn't ever result in any purchase, the 'impression' is human being and human beings like to talk, share experiences and exchange ideas... therefore, that 'impression' can go on and tell about your site/products to 10 other 'impressions' and so forth, so your site/product/services will undoubtely in many cases gain additional exposure, all which will never ever be measurable by your proposals.

 

[mole]

traditional advertising industry is very happy with the status quo. they are making billions as-is, and any change to performance based models wil only make them poorer. u r probably confusing 'clients' desires for 'advertising industry' or perhaps, confusing some ambitious net upstarts and their courting of the clients for the 'advertising industry'.

as a side note, traditional mass advertisers (clients), by far and large, are still not significantly involved in internet advertising because the critial audience mass to them is not as obvious as with more traditional audience reach. in other words, they spend most money in traditional media, leaving peanutes for their 'new economy' ads. again, that is for the time being.



in my opinion, u can't have all the traditional media based solely on impressions, and the new media solely on commission. the disrepancies are too wide and too obvious. again, while they might work for someone, it might not work for most, nor will work all the time.

one of the biggest reason is the inability of all your technology and transparancy to 'measure' the impact of an 'impression' in the long-term. in other words, while u can measure the impact of an 'impression', for exampple, referred to u by me which results in a sale (purchase of a good/service by that 'impression' off of your site) -- we can't measure the impact of that same 'impression' if it doesn't result in sale in that particular time/date. because, even if that 'impression' i've sent u today didn't make any buy, that 'impression' still learned about u, your products, your values and all other intricate number of things not easily measured. so, that same 'impression' can next time bypass 'me' and therefore come back to your site directly (by remembering your url, a day, a week, a month, a year after my referral, and can still purchase tons of your goods/services from u -- all that thanks to my initial referral which didn't result in any original purchase, and was therefore seemingly deemed worthless to u. furthermore, even if the impression doesn't ever result in any purchase, the 'impression' is human being and human beings like to talk, share experiences and exchange ideas... therefore, that 'impression' can go on and tell about your site/products to 10 other 'impressions' and so forth, so your site/product/services will undoubtely in many cases gain additional exposure, all which will never ever be measurable by your proposals.

Yes, impressions is what feeds the life blood of traditional media, but even traditional media is increasingly being subject to tough business yield comparisons - both in intramedia and intermedia situations.

This is not easy, since the control and isolation of many extraneous variables is much harder in an inherently open looped enviroment.

Interactive, or Online, on the other hand is much more adept at creating closed looped accountability. That's what makes it so direct and simple when it comes to ROI determinations.

 

[deepstar]

But the big problem with pay for performance models is that depending on what you are selling and its price, it takes on average approx' 7 visits (according to research I read about) to a website plus likely phone calls and/or emails before someone actually places the order. Usally a buyer only buys on the original click for very low priced stuff.

For example, say I was a stock broker advertising my services on a website named stockreports. It would be unlikely anyone would immidiately open a trading acct from the adsense click without lots of additional work and likely phone calls with questions and looking into the brokerage firm in more detail.

It's quite unfair if the buyer originally arrived via an adsense, then saved or remembered the url (or picks up the phone, sends email, etc), went back to visit the site directly several times, etc and then ordered but zero compensation.

In this scenario the stockbroker would want to run a CPL campaign. The market has protected itself and pay for performance is the only way as there is significantly too much fraud and crappy clicks out there.

 

[Domagon]

Most folks talking about impression based advertising being dead don't truly appreciate the power of branding and related marketing methods.

Many folks do NOT buy right away - even impulse purchases are often based on *past* knowledge of the product / brand.

Same is true with clicking ... most folks do not click - yet many of those same folks are *still influenced by the ads*.

Performace based advertising, even with the best tracking available, will miss the majority of purchases made sometime in the future, as well often a sizeable percentage of purchases/actions performed in the present due to various technical issues, such as proxies, blocked cookies, etc.

I often buy large amounts of impression based advertising, including in the print media, with the *expectation* of getting minimal additional traffic/actions initially ... so why buy such ads then? -simple: branding!

PPC and performance based advertising have their place, but impression based advertising is likely to grow dramatically, as advertising on the net does, likely even proportionally faster.

Ron

 

[mole]

Most folks talking about impression based advertising being dead don't truly appreciate the power of branding and related marketing methods.

Many folks do NOT buy right away - even impulse purchases are often based on *past* knowledge of the product / brand.

That's an excellent point to remember, Ron.

The challenge, however, is to justify why impressions are better on Interactive Media than on traditional media like TV and Press. The answer seems to lie in twinning both impressions WITH accountability. The problem with rationalising Online media is that you can't really dictate nor predict where the surfer goes, so when you do hook that fish, you pull, HARD.