Pay Per Play: The 5-Second Infestation

Pay Per Play, Pay-Per-Play, PayPerPlay, and PPP. However you spell it, advertisers and users will lose.

I just started hearing about a new form of advertising, Pay Per Play Ads. There's currently a big push to get Pay Per Play deployed and I was interested because unlike most advertising, site owners will get paid every time a page is viewed and a 5 second audio Pay Per Play ad is played, or seems to be played.

http://www.sellingppp.com/samples.html

But after hearing some samples, I see Pay Per Play as a bad implementation of a good idea. Recorded ads are good, but having them play automatically is bad.

I listen to music constantly while I am working on the computer, and that is about 10-16 hours a day on average. On many days I would never hear ANY of these ads, since I listen to the radio or a CD and must flip a switch on my stereo to hear any computer sound. When I do have my computer sound on, it's mostly because I am listening to Techno music, and when the ads play they are very hard to hear and understand over that hard-thumping beat I enjoy. And I would hate to be listening to more normal music, a Podcast, or classical music and have these Pay Per Play ads intrude upon my enjoyment. What's funny is one of the sites promoting these audio ads say these are "non-intrusive". Maybe to the eye, but not the ear!

So that is two problems for advertisers, users with no sound on or sound that drowns out their Pay Per Play ads. Advertisers should also worry about "page-view fraud", where pages are requested by automated scripts and no one ever sees them or hears the ads. Yes, a web page file request would not play an ad, but it would be easy enough to request the Flash media file and that would make it seem like the ad was played.

I would not be posting about this dumb Pay Per Play idea, but the promoters are looking for site owners to run the ads, and since it's "impression-based revenue", which means you could have any kind of traffic to your site and earn from it, the incentive will be high for webmasters to add it to their sites. Man if you search for "Pay Per Play" in Google you will see a flood of paid ads for the service, but all that I looked at all seem to be copies of the same affiliate site...!

http://www.sellingppp.com/
http://voice2page.com/info/gaa.html

So check it out and see what you think. I think this idea is headed right for the trash for any self-respecting webmaster that does not want to annoy their visitors, but I fear it will not die completely once it takes root. Contact me if you want to know a simple method to block Pay Per Play Ads on most Windows computers...!

(hris

Jim Wilson Ministries Comment SPAM

I just deleted this spam comment from a really old post in my blog. Normally I don't do anything more than delete them, but after looking at the spammer's site, I think they should get a little more attention. It seems like a scam site to me, and that's just my personal opinion. I could be wrong, but it seems to be just another cheap web marketing junk site with a Christian spin. My advice: Don't just trust someone because the use the words "Ministries", "Faith", and "God" on their site.

Comments:

Jim said...

Jim Wilson Ministries announces the expansion of their marketing and advertising services to passport to wealth members. www.jim wilson ministries.com

December 13, 2007 3:29:00 PM CST

I tried to see their contact information and all I got was an email address. Check their background if you are interested in them, but I would avoid them. Anyone that has to use spam to promote what they are doing is pretty pathetic...

WIPO Whip

Domain Name Dispute Cases and Domain Harassment

I was just contacted by someone that as had not one, but two domain name complaints filed against them, and for the same domain by the same company. Each time this happened, the domainer was charged a $29 fee by Godaddy and his domain name was locked for an extended period of time. While this fee is reported to be mentioned in their Godaddy TOS, I had never heard of it or of anyone being charged it. Being charged twice for the same thing seems excessive and harassment.

What is to stop a company from filing complaint after complaint and using Godaddy to put the pressure on the domain holder? I do not know yet what the domain name is or the company that is filing the complaint, but too often companies either do not know or do not care what the rules are and cause problems for domain holders without contacting them first to see if something can be worked out.

Most domain name owners are not evil and not wealthy. They are just trying to make a buck from registering a domain name and either parking it, developing it, or holding it as an investment and if someone has a real problem with a domain they own they should be willing to talk about it. Just calling in the lawyers and filing complaints only serves to stir up anger and unite the domain industry against the companies.

There are cases where a company has to be tough and protect itself, but I think they will find more advantages in getting to know the person behind the source of their concern or they may discover that it's not just one domainer but an entire industry.

Check out what some of the current disputes are about. Domainers mostly know already, but it will be interesting to note the type of domain names that are attracting complaints.
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cases/2007/d1600-1799.html

(hris