My Experiences

[muhumbra]

Just a quick whinge about the lack of revenue from CPA programs.

Thought it might be interesting to start a thread and see if anyone else has the same experiences.

My site gets at least 300 visitors a day, I had a selection of text and banner pay per action ads on my site which were all relevant to the content of my site.

After 3 months the number of banner impressions has reached in to the hundreds of thousands , but only a tiny % of these impressions result in a click thru. Even with a couple of thousand click throughs no-one has actually bought anything or signed up for anything. Even if they had, I dont really trust the method of tracking the history of the user that purchases something.

As a result the various companys that I promote on my site get free advertising and visitors coming via my site through a banner or text ad will be genuinely interested in visiting them.

Seems like a waste of time to me. I cant see a way to make any revenue without blatently spamming my visitors (which I dont want to do).

Awaiting your thoughts!

[Matt]

Greetings,

You've encountered exactly the same results as my experimentations with Commission Junction, many moons ago. :(

Although I was receiving a CTR sometimes three times industry standard, the CPA model killed that performance and produced little revenue(I think each month may have brought in a hundred or two).

The sad fact is, CPA performance doesn't translate through. Some people say they have been able to make a decent profit with CPA programs. In no other industry, however, do you see the CPA model. It's all upfront, per-unit models. The CPA is largely a sham(as far as I have been able to see) and one which you will not see the larger sites/portals implementing.

Farewell,

[Robert from SI]

Many large sites, including Yahoo!, MSN, ESPN, Hotmail and others are currently using straight CPA programs.

If you have good (by "good" I mean e-commerce productive) traffic and you target it well CPA programs are your best opportunity to make money from your site.

And CPA has been around in other industries since there were other industries. It's very simlar to commissioned sales.

[Matt]

Greetings,

I don't know where my mind was. Of course, large sites will naturally run CPA-type campaigns and promotions(as I know of the many promotions as well as other industries that employ the same tactics), but I am of the belief these are a small portion of the revenue stream, for the larger portals.

The targetting I was doing with Commission Junction was infinitely more targeted than any Ad Network I've worked with, and while CTRs were high(which would've been good for CPC), I was entirely surprised at the lack of monetary performance.

Farewell,

[Robert from SI]

I'm sure they are a small protion of their revenue stream as well.

I'm also sure they simply break down the CPA into a base CPM figure and then twist the arm of the advertiser to get the CPM they need.

It all spends the same...... ;)

[Matt]

Greetings,

Robert: In a PM to me, and in a few other places, you have inferred and sometimes clearly stated you do not have CPM campaigns, only CPA? Is that true? You simply rely on the performance of the ads to create an effective CPM which you can pay your affiliates?

I must assume you find performance to be high for your company to be as financially stable as it appears?

How do you manage it? Do you do geo-targeting? Do you rotate ads to prevent burnout? Do you do a mix of buttons, text ads, banners, skyscrapers, popups/behinds to achieve the performance?

If I could make a buck through CPA, I certainly would have tried a little harder, if there was some other manner of implementing that I had missed. Although, there are a few things that "tick" me off about it. Namely, it's free advertising for everything except the sale/action that generates the performance.

Do you run _any_ CPM campaigns, or foresee running any CPM campaigns in the future? How do you see the direction of online advertising?

Farewell,

[firstmark]

Matt standard internet primarily sales raw traffic via clicks, or makes money via pay per lead, and pay per sale arrangements.
I am sure like any internet company that standard internet would be more than happy to sell anyone with a high budget a CPM campaign, but to get a real return they get more by tweaking various pay per sale and pay per lead programs. Everyone wants easy high paying CPM deals; it takes the research and testing out of internet advertising but that often is not possible to get good returns.