The Internet Advertising String Along.

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The Internet Advertising String Along.

Suppose you are the proud webmaster, happy owner of a website. Your blog, most likely, or some forum, or whatever it is. Along with all the offers for phentermine, pheromones, phenis phenphancement and phrussian phrides, it's impossible you won't get drenched in "Make Money!!!" goobledygook. It occupies the mental space immediately above "Hello I Achmed from my country Nigeria" and immediately bellow "This sum of 500 million will be sent to you for transferring of which you keep 20%..."

In case you somehow aren't a webmaster, and don't even run a blog, let me describe the great Internet advertising string along, for your reading pleasure. (phleasure?)

The idea is that since the Internet is so completely different from the real world, companies will pay money to display their advertisements, just like in the real world. A solidly reasoned proposition, in line with what one'd expect to sprout from the in-between-the-ears space of the marketeering folk.

Practically, this idea is then implemented by a number of "companies". Like so :

I. The CPC diddle.

Google came up with the following, completely ungrounded in reality but otherwise brilliant notion : While you display the advertisements every time you display them, they will only pay you when people click on one. Not only do you get to be paid for actions of third parties you have no control over, but Google furiously insists you don't even try, in the slightest, acquire any control. You can't even say "Hey, click the ads". Google is really jealous of keeping control.

The real world equivalent would be, you put up banners for Coca-Cola, and Coca-Cola pays you whenever a customer buys a coke as a result of seeing your ads.

But wait a minute, if somebody does ever buy a coke, how would you know it was as a result of seeing your ad ? You wouldn't, which is the beauty of it.

You only get paid when third parties act in ways you agree not to try and influence, and you have no way of independently verifying it. If Coca-Cola says they did, they did, otherwise, they did not. You however, you keep running the ads.

You could, in principle, serve the ads through click-measuring scripts, to try and at least measure how many people click, but Google won't hear of it. They specifically want you to agree you will never try and measure clicks, as part of the agreement.

So the deal is, you do something (run ads), for which you are paid, if something unrelated happens (people click ads), over which you agree to not try and exercise any control, and provided you agree to never try and measure.

Who the fuck would care, as a publisher, how often people click on the ads ? How is that the responsibility of anyone other than he who makes the ads ? If the ads are shit, nobody is going to be clicking on them, obviously. But the product you're selling, as a publisher, is ad space. You don't sell clicks, because you don't own clicks. You own space.

Obviously, nobody is dumb enough... no, actually, let me start over. Obviously, the people dumb enough to fall for that sort of deal would be running websites that were made and are being maintained by people dumb enough to fall for that sort of deal. Consequently, Google has a few million publishers that are dumb enough to not grasp the otherwise blatantly obvious points above.

It just so happens that advertisers don't particularly wish to be associated with a few million idiots, and their dingleberrying websites. As a result, Google manages about as much advertising revenue as Muchi-Buchi, the premier advertising agency of Fumbuck, Toga-Toga, the west Pacific (love potions are the rage there too). Before you go ranty, this isn't talking about Google's own, sell ads on our search listings operation. That attracts some advertising dollars. Again, not much. A minute or two of Superbowl covers the entire year's budget. But still, it's better than nothing.

II. AdBrite, or we need lithium.

The competing program, run by Amazon, gets straight the part about selling the space, not Martian filet mignon. That's about all they get straight.

Let's see what they have to say about payments.

What is Net-60 payment?

Net-60 means earnings must mature for roughly 60 days before being eligible to be paid out. In other words, 60 days after we get paid by the advertiser, the publisher gets paid. For example, earnings you made in March 2007 will get paid out in May 2007, given we receive payment from the advertiser.

This is one of the ways we protect against credit card fraud. If a credit card has been used inappropriately, we usually find out about it within 60 days. By paying net-60, we're able to issue a refund to the legit cardholder without any problems.

Not only that, but they're also able to fuck over the publisher without any problems.

Also, I must confess, one day I received a letter about it being possible that I had already won a chance to be elligible to receive a ...

Guess what. Where I come from, you know, the real world, Net-60 refers to credit accounts. Credit accounts are, you know, these things when people owe a company money. This would be a debit account. You know, when the company owes some people (the publishers) money. Not to mention, they're using it backwards. It's for purchase orders paid at a later date, and the publisher isn't purchasing anything, Amazon is, and the advertiser isn't paying at a later date (we'd hope). The publisher should be the one holding Amazon's money for 60 days, not the other way around.

All that aside, since when do private corporations get to act like banks without first getting a banking license ? Admire the breadth of delusion : Amazon thinks it's a bank. Amazon thinks debit accounts can be treated like credit accounts. Amazon thinks it can apply Net-60 either way on either kind of account. This is the equivalent of somebody walking into a drive-in, ordering, then demanding payment, 3 forms of ID and promise to "get back to them" in 2 months.

All that notwithstanding, I don't see exactly why should the publisher care about credit card fraud. The agency, in this case Amazon's AdBrite, makes its money, presumably, in exchange for services. These services would be, take care of billing and payments. It's their risk, they're welcome to get insured, but otherwise, what's the point of running an ad, if you can find out two months later you will not in fact be paid ? You already ran the ad. How's this better than simply letting anyone run their ads on your site, and they'll pay you "in a few months", if they feel like ?

I suppose there'd also be the issue of interest on your money for those two months, but that'd be more pressingly interesting if in fact there were any money there.

These two main approaches have plenty of copycats, that mix and mingle the key points of the two systems freely, for very similar results.

There's two kinds of websites out there. Websites read mostly by people, and websites read mostly by machines. There's forever going to be an infinite supply of the later. However, building your business model on the weaknesses of those (nobody is ever saying no, no matter what harebrained scheme you propose) will leave you with a vast empire of crushed soda cans.

The real websites, and the real advertisers, will continue to wave from a distance at them "Internet Advertising Marketplaces", be they leading or lead-free, and until somebody figures out a real way to cater to both, the entire "Internet Advertising" thing will continue to fit comfortably in between the dents in the sole of the budget of any Fifth Avenue shop.

14 extraneous webmasters feel slightly slighted.

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this page was made using a bent spoon. anything else is for failures