Pay-Per-Click Destined to Evolve into Pay-Per-Action - The Tunover of Advertising Schemes
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Every advertising system, whether it is straight buzz marketing, banner advertising, or a complex business model such as affiliate marketing or PPC, experiences its own unique set of obstacles and/or consequences. Now, with the rampant click fraud, and advertiser’s discomfort with unqualified traffic and untargeted sales audiences (like people who click, but have absolutely no intention of purchasing a product), as well as outrageous keyword bid prices, as much as $5.00 per click for words like “SEO Consulting Firm,” “PageRank,” and other highly competitive key phrases; there is a subtle voice on the wind calling for a change. Bill Gross stepped up to the plate once more.
Bill Gross is still an advertising pioneer, and while he readily admits the problems that grew out of his initial PPC model, he is confident that his new business model is even better. Some would say he’s an advertising genius, or at least ten years ahead of his time, perhaps. I think he is simply just a visionary, one that sees what is possible, and then simply goes after it. But even visions have a point where they seem no longer relevant for the time, and there is a time to revise the vision.
As visitor tracking systems become more sophisticated, two other online advertising models have been developed: "pay per lead" and "pay per sale." These models initially prompted what we know as affiliate marketing, can offer advertisers valuable exposure on a range of relevant websites and offer website publishers the opportunity to generate revenue from their resource sites. It is the “pay per sale” model that is what Gross’ new model is built on.
A year ago, Gross introduced the online world to his new vision: Snap.com, which is providing another commercial twist on search engines while also promising to deliver more useful results than industry leaders Google and Yahoo. The idea is Pay-Per-Action, or PPA, where the “sale” is the action. According to their website, Snap states, “Instead of relying on computer algorithms to rank search results, Snap also uses click-stream information from a network of one million Internet users. By recording and processing which Web sites users spend time on, and which sites they quickly leave, Snap improves the likelihood that the search results you get will be the results you're really looking for.” Gross's record of innovation helped separate Snap from other startups trying to elbow their way into the search engine industry, while offering an innovative and revolutionary method of no-risk advertising.
Banner ads are almost all but obsolete, it seems. Affiliate marketing has almost lost its edge, and is having to make way for new forms of marketing. Ideas like Pixel Ads, which is the concept of selling a single pixel of an online website as advertising space, and other sometimes crazy ideas, are popping up everywhere; and new search technologies like Crystal Semantics’ Textonomy Advance engine which uses contextual advertising with smart, human linguistics to analyze the whole of a web page and bring the most relevant ads to online advertisers. And while some ideas fizzle and fade, others stay put; however, even the ones that will be long-lasting will have to evolve in order to grow or to stay effective.
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