Some Consequences of Pay-Per-Click’s Growing Pains - The Future of Pay-Per-Click
(Page 4 of 4 )
Any internet company that is still around at the age of ten is considered “mature.” But what about business models? Is pay-per-click advertising all grown up? Is click fraud merely a glitch in the system that the search engines can fix with greater vigilance and filtering? Or are attempts to game the system, both with click fraud and the domain name speculation mentioned in the previous section, symptomatic of deeper problems?
Bill Gross has a proven track record of successful ventures behind him, with GoTo.com and its sponsored link advertising model being just the best known. Advertisers and business owners want measurable results. With his new cost-per-action advertising model, that is exactly what they are paying for. If Snap.com follows the same path as his earlier successful internet company, it won’t beat Google. Rather, it will achieve its success by seeing the other major search engines adopt their own versions of its advertising model, and then being purchased by one of them – perhaps Google this time, instead of Yahoo!.
The domain name speculation centering on pay-per-click advertising may itself mature into something else. To anyone who wants to set up a website for the sake of promoting a business or a beloved hobby, the approach seems to put the cart before the horse. Indeed, any SEO will insist that you must build content first – and most businesses would not care to advertise other businesses on their own websites, particularly rivals. But someone setting up a hobbyist site might gain a great deal from posting the appropriate pay-per-click ads from Google or Yahoo!. And somebody trying to gain business by promoting him or herself as an expert in a particular field might give the idea a second glance. At the very least, it is something else to consider and evaluate as to the return on investment.
This of course brings up one of the joys and frustrations of the internet in general: it is ever changing. Just when you think you’ve grasped it, it acts like one of those water-filled toys that wiggles out of your grip the tighter you try to hold it. With pay-per-click advertising, just when we have grasped what it can do for businesses and those who offer it, it appears that it will morph into something else.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
