CJ removes CPC!

[}:8) Supermoo]

PAY-PER-CLICK PROGRAMS

Effective, August 1, 2001, Commission Junction will no longer
enable and will phase out conventional pay-per-click as a
payout option within our network.

The acquisition of sales and leads has become Commission
Junction's forte. Just driving traffic is not enough anymore,
as pay-per-click programs do not directly provide the tangible
ingredient fundamental to the success of every business -
new customers. This is our strength and we need to focus our
business on delivering it better than anyone else.

Advertisers currently running a pay-per-click program have
60 days to convert to a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale program
before we functionally disable this capability. We will still
track and report on all click activity, but advertisers will
no longer be able to use Commission Junction to pay on that
activity. All pay-per-click revenue will be tracked, reported
and paid as usual for the next 60 days.

Advertisers and publishers are encouraged to shift resources
dedicated to pay-per-click programs to pay-per-lead or
pay-per-sale programs. Our Client Services department is
available to work directly with every customer that would
like to consider this as an option. You can contact Client
Services for help with this transition at:
mailto:publishersupport@cj.com


Oh no... :eek:

I think I might be leaving cj.com in less than 60 days... :(

[LastActionHero]

I'am not surprised. This had to happen considering that online advertising is in dumps. Anyways only about 5% of programs on CJ were CPC. There are a lot of lead based programs which pay if a user signs up for a service(usually a free service) and IMHO they are better than the low paying CPC that CJ had.

[someone else]

CPC doesn't matter to me. There were so few CPC programs anyway because they are easily abused.


What's worse is they are forcing advertisers to pay them a minimum of $0.30 per lead or sale. This means any per-lead/sale program that pays under $0.30 will be disappearing, and many of the ones up to $1.00 per lead/sale will close up as well.

While it sounds like small sums for a lead or sale, per-lead mailing list signups like Funny Mail at $0.20 per lead got a lot more hits for me than the better-paying ones, which meant more leads, which meant they made me some decent money. One of my sites has a 75% turnover rate for Funny Mail clicks becoming leads!

Now they're going to probably be forced to shut their affiliate program down due to this new policy.

Things just get worse and worse...

[Woofcat]

CJ's click tracking is so easy to cheat it's not even funny... Eventually they had to either get rid of cpc or do a major rewrite of their click tracking code with some real anti-fraud protection, and since they only ran a few cpc's anyway the latter probably wasn't worth the effort...

[venomx]

This sucks I have a place on CJ thats paying me 25 cents a click. Now where do we go for a place like CJ but with CPC?

[bobyx]

I never got accepted into any cpc programs.... :(

When will internet advertising recover anyway?

[Czar]

venomx, Clickxchange and FineClicks are reasonable alternatives to CJ in terms of their support for CPC programs. My only fear is that the cheaters who brought down CJ's system will simply move on, and increase the pressure on the merchants who operate through CJ's rival managers.

bobyx, the general concensus for the start of the online advertising recovery is the fourth quarter of this year, or first quarter of next. Of course, the recovery will not reward all (the bigger players will receive an increasing proportion of the available dollars), and will not necessarily mean a return to the CPM/CPC rates that we've seen during the past 3 years.

[}:8) Supermoo]

Awwww... the recovery keeps moving further away... :(

[Cheap Bastard]

clickxchange didn't seem very professional to me... also, i noticed they had a 'proposed' payment, and an 'actual' payment... what's up with that? Is it like if the advertiser doesn't like you he can cut your pay?

[Czar]

That feature was brought in a few months back in response to shady behaviour from merchants. Since many affiliates searched for programs in ranked order of the payout offered, many merchants established programs promising, say, 30 cents/click in order to gather a huge range of affiliates, before cutting the rate to a few cents/click after a week or so.

ClickXchange has cleaned up a great deal since incorporating features that assist you in tracking down those merchants whose funds have expired, or whose programs have closed. They also announced a merchant rate hike on the 1st of this month (conveniently simultaneous with CJ's), that should increase the quality of their advertisers.

[Cheap Bastard]

Originally posted by Czar
They also announced a merchant rate hike on the 1st of this month (conveniently simultaneous with CJ's), that should increase the quality of their advertisers.
hey, less competition means higher prices. which in the end is better for us =o)

[jkcity]

I don't liek that they removed them either though I never use them last time I did I got kciked out, and no I was no cheating, but they said I was.

I remember when clicktrade did the same thing i don't think it worked to well for them but I guess back then there was hundreds of pay per click proframs, if only click trade had wiated maybe they woudl be top today.

[Czar]

I remember when clicktrade did the same thing i don't think it worked to well for them but I guess back then there was hundreds of pay per click proframs, if only click trade had wiated maybe they woudl be top today.

I apologise for taking this off-topic, but I completely agree with jkcity here (welcome to the forum, BTW :)). It really is a pity how poorly Microsoft managed its online advertising acquisitions. ClickTrade and LinkExchange once seemed well positioned to lead their respective fields, but during the past 3 years, both have declined to near invisibility. Maybe we'll see Microsoft up their investments in this area as .NET rolls out.