- CPA networks don’t allow relationships with advertisers
- CPA networks only pay on conversions
- The publisher won’t care if tracking doesn’t work properly. ECPM will drop, therefore another offer will take its place

There is more.

I placed a single text ad on turn.com last week about this time. It actually took 48 hours or so to get approved, so it’s technically only been up for the past 5 days or so. Here’s a quick snapshot of my numbers thus far:
Impressions: 22,…

> Can anybody explain how this affects or doesn’t affect interactive advertising

As a relative latecomer to this thread, I just saw Patricia’s comment above, and Matthew’s post (previous) pointing to an overview article, which I promptly perused. Patricia — I found this article to be an excellent description of how this affects the world of interactive advertising. It’s well worth a read. I recommend it. Thanks to Matthew.

PS. The article is still live, I believe, as of this posting. It’s at:

http://forums.m...z&msg=175.1

They do take it offline at some point, right?

Chris

Stuart
http://www.earnersblog.com

— Umm, keyword selection is the process of selecting your audience. So these ads are basically being sent into the network, sucked through the straw wherever “demand” exists.

Sounds like a recipe for click fraud – or in this case, action fraud.

I have no doubt that Turn will draw some advertisers, but just look at this system from a publisher’s perspective — assuming you can’t attract CPM advertising (which all publishers want first), then you have the choice of reliable AdSense that pays for clicks, or existing CPA networks that allow you to create your own links and ads and have a trusted tracking system and close relationships with your merchant partners, or you can decide to try Turn which gives you no flexibility, only pays you on conversions, doesn’t allow relationships with the advertisers, and only offers the promise of some new technology that targets ads better. Why would they switch? Certainly not because the company was started by former Alta Vista execs.

There’s a new pretender looking to dent, if not unseat, the current king of internet advertising. From Adweek:

Unlike Google, ……

Can anybody explain how this affects or doesn’t affect interactive advertising? I guess I’m having a hard time finding where all of this falls into place compared to what’s going on now.

1. The great majority of successful CPA traffic is driven from emailers and affiliates who bid on paid keywords, not from websites that load banners or text links (those only drive about 10% of any network’s traffic).

2. There seems to be very little concern about whether the advertiser is actually tracking the action. Obviously the algorithm they are using will not display ads that aren’t converting, but if I was an advertiser it would certainly be tempting to sign up and not worry about placing the tracking code on my site to see how much free traffic (not to mention a impressions) I could get. Successful CPA networks monitor this thing actively and get feedback from affiliates who test out the system.

3. CPA works when advertisers and publishers have a close relationship and work together to tailor ads and timing. Turn’s system doesn’t allow for any close relationship at all with the publisher. It’s as if Turn decided that pay per click and CPA could work the same way; but PPC is fine when the publisher is essentially anonymous, not so with CPA.

4. Overall, I think this model is built on faulty logic, again because it was built as though it were a PPC or CPM network. CPM advertising puts all the risk on the advertiser (who pay for impressions in hopes that customers click and convert); CPA advertising puts the risk on the publisher (who gives up inventory in hopes that someone clicks and converts). Publishers are usually only willing to take CPA if a) they aren’t established enough to demand CPM, or b) they know that they can use their own marketing skills to create ads that are relevant to their traffic, or at the very least choose the most appropriate ads. In Turn’s system, the publisher is giving up all control of the ad (as they would in CPM or PPC) but still has to accept the risk of CPA.

Commission Junction, one the world’s largest CPA networks, recently told its publishers it was going to change the ad distribution to a system that prevented them from controlling the creative. The publishers, who understood their profits would suffer if they couldn’t control the ads, revolted and forced CJ to reverse its decision. Turn is trying the same system, but also removing the ability for publishers to use email or PPC arbitrage to drive the traffic.

Overall, the model just doesn’t make sense. CPA works because the publisher has skills as a marketer and therefore accepts the risk of CPA. Behavioral and contextual targeting is great, but its only necessary if the publisher isn’t willing to spend a few minutes to choose (or create) their creative. Their technology may have some application as part of a larger CPA network, to target newbie publishers who don’t know how to drive converting traffic, but as a stand alone offering it seems doomed to fail.

Techcrunch features the new Turn CPA network, which is launching with 18 million in venture capital.  What is interesting about the new network is its approach on CPA and a growing trend “up the food chain” of utilizing CPA but doing so in…

“What all great companies have in common is that they have nothing in common…the leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken – it is no longer remarkable when you do it.” – Seth Godin, All Marketers are Liars

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