Pay-Per-Play Media: I Was Wrong. TC Competitors Should All Sign Up

I instantly close any page that plays audio on load.

On load audio is simply obnoxious and the worst kind of thoughtless marketing opportunism.

You gotta love these loosers for trying. Youre my idol Charles Heflin.

Heh. I am shocked — shocked! — to discover that the genius who built a business around compulsory audio ads comes across as a smug, defensive jerk.

Thank you! I totally agree with you!

This auto-playing ad is a terrible idea. People have never liked those unskippable ads at the start of DVD movies, but those only happen once. I can just imagine the frustration that would be associated with a repeating audio advertisement.
And if Pay-Per-Play’s Director of Marketing’s writing is any indication, the whole company seems like they have no idea what they’re doing, either.

Well…Duncan, you are absolutely right! Get all your competitors to sign up for this great service!!!

Is it normal for management in Web 2.0 companies to use this kind of casual tone when writing emails? I’m more surprised by the “surfer bra” attitude than by the attempt to sell audio ads.

Any site that starts playing audio automatically gets closed immediately and never visited again. That violates acceptable practices as bad as the annoying flash ad that takes over the page with no apparent close button.

10$ cpm is alot.

Who ever wrote that passive aggressive email should be fired. He must be a founder, as a regular employee would never get away with that.

to my previous comment- Its alot, but after re-reading the email sent to TC + the fact the website doesnt even work (404 on signup, etc..) I will have to think its proabably a scam.

To bad, I would have thrown it on some shit websites.

A five second audio ad at page load … not sure that’s a great idea. But hey, it takes an extra five or eight seconds for the page to load right now so the high graphic Techcrunch ads can load … so maybe it would give me something to listen to while I’m waiting for TC to settle into existence.

lol Nice post.

Pay Per Play video, great idea!

I suppose if you thought the world was going to end in a month … “Pay Per Play” would be a great way of milking every last penny out of your site … cause in a month, it really doesn’t matter if you don’t have any traffic to your site anyways.

Yeah, there are LOTS of annoying ad approaches (and lots of crappy websites are annoying for free), but onload audio….. as several commenters have said, I can attest that I would not go back. I’ve done it in the past, and am very near the brink with a site I hit 100x daily b/c a recent ad campaign makes my mouse curser blink (cursor-changing animated schtick).

I think the only thing this will be good for are sites that have been built that are pretty much dead in the water and get garbage traffic. I’d never put the ads up on a site that I cared about. Just my 2 cents…

No thanks. not for me either. It’s not a professional package that I’d want to be represented on my website.

Also, will this be relevant audio/video ads that are served or anything going trough the pipe?

Nice to know I’m a geek with a chip on my shoulder.

It’s rare that I haven’t closed a page immediately *any* audio starts playing… unless that’s what I am expecting or want, for example YouTube. And if I close a page that annoys me, I won’t be back.

Consider that a lot of people surf the web at work. They’re not looking to draw attention to this activity with ads blaring their presence.

Webmasters who use this form of advertising are simply de-monetising their websites.

I don’t see audio ads being an effective tool to generate income.

Wow…. this guy needs to learn how to handle criticism, what a dumb move. But hey, he got his coverage There’s nothing I hate more than websites with audio on page load ( And i run a web based music business ).

Dude,

I’m totally going to start writing PayPerPost blog entries and install Pay Per Play on my site. Anything else I can do that hasn’t been proven to annoy the hell out of people?

Why is this annoying? How is this different from a flash site that has music?

If you land on a site that *YOU* are interested in then turn off the music. If you land on a site that has this 5 second advertising message hold your breath for a few seconds. Of course this task may be difficult for those of you that hit the bong every day (and evening)

–Pay Per Play - I have not seen your product but I’m hoping that you have a counter counting backwards to reflect this message is coming to an end; i.e. “5-4-3-2-1 Thank you!”

Be of good cheer, Duncan. In my world, prime-time web use is 8am-5pm, which means the audience is at work. Audio is more than an inconvenience in the cubicle, and most people automatically mute things anyway. Due diligence, meet a crappy idea.

Duncan, Mike is a pretty big ad-ho (in case you haven’t noticed) - is there any reason you feel comfortable shutting this audio-ad thing down so finitely like that while Mike is away sucking at Bono’s teet at Davos?

I always thought that you were just a writer at TC… you know, the hunchback who hobbles upstairs from the dungeon to post when Mike’s out of town. I’m concerned that you may feel you actually have some power at Crunch Network. Back to your hole, Quasimodo!

What a whiny beetch. (Heflin) If you got that many sign ups, why crow about it? Just enjoy your supposedly massive CPM and gloat silently like a normal person.

Unless you’re inflating your figures which would be SO unusual.

If it’s a huge success then you shouldn’t have the time to even be perusing TC… much less firing off snarky missives.

Next time, type it up…. save a draft, then if you still feel like sending it the next day… go for it. As much as I hated the idea before, now I even hate their Marketing Director.

I too, wish them luck. Prove us wrong Heflin-monster. We’ll all be watching. But we won’t be listening.

Why do people send snarky, impolite emails? That is an invitation for your unkind words to be reproduced to the entire world and for you to be held up to public ridicule. Charles Heflin did himself and his company a disservice with that.

Audio ads don’t really bother me because I’ll never hear them. 99% of the time I have the sound muted on my computer unless I’m specifically doing something like listening to a podcast. Even then, adblock plus or noscript can easily take away most of these annoyances. I’m not sure why anyone would pay to have their advertisement delivered in an ineffectual manner like that. Even if it does get through, it will more likely tick off your potential customers than lure them in.

I do find the concept rather obnoxious, and ideas like that are the reason I have to resort to leaving the mute button on, and installing adblockers into my browser.

-Jeff

NetAudioAds Pay-Per-Play has not actually launched yet and I know that they are adding in some high speed servers tonight so anyone trying to sign up may experience 404s temporarily.

Sorry folks … beta buggers… Net Audio Ads doesn’t actually launch until February 1st and there is a ton of work being done on the back end.

I am not an employee of NetAudioAds I was contracted to launch it… and yes we have had some issues with spammers but we fully expected it as any large promotion would and they are being dealt with.

If you receive unsolicited messages then report them to NetAudioAds at LHost [at] voice2page [dot] com.

Over 30k affiliates and 14 million websites have signed up so far we have and lined up new deals with advertising partners ranging from the high profile Madison Avenue (covers just about every major branding advertiser) crowd down to your corner Joe’s Pizzeria.

We can target audio ads down to the zip code level so Joe’s can announce a 5 second 2 for 1 special to Internet surfers in their delivery area… Pretty cool.

This kind of advertising is vital to stimulate our broken economy. I can see there are many harsh opinions going on and this is natural as well. If we weren’t getting pummeled with controversy then that would mean that we are not shaking the tree.

In 2 months we have gained a very large distribution network (over 100 million BPA verified ad plays per day) through publishers who will enjoy CPMs that are higher than industry standard.

It appears that both advertisers and publishers are loving the idea and this was crucial to a successful “out of the gate” launch.

People seem to miss the bigger picture and look to the past to determine the success or failure of future events before the facts are in. This is human nature and it’s understandable.

If the program fails then that will be too bad, our economies local (US), national & worldwide need a little stimulation… no?

I don’t feel sorry for people that get annoyed with advertising. Like it or not it is vital especially if you are employed by a company that relies on it.

We are all used to 2.2 minutes of television ads but we still watch our favorite TV programs… I don’t believe that 5 seconds of audio will keep people away from their favorite websites.

Big brands (and little ones too) can’t rely on TV ads anymore because they are dying. DVRs like TIVO are killing the effectiveness of TV ads and with people spending more time online, less people are watching.

Internet audio ads offer a new vehicle to reach the audience that left their TV set… We need this folks.

Only ONE 5 second ad is triggered when a visitor arrives on a web page that has the PPP code inserted… Another ad DOES NOT start playing automatically after 3 minutes. Only if the user refreshes the page will another ad be heard (after 3 minutes) or they click to another page with the PPP code (after 3 minutes) … If the user clicks to a new page that has the PPP code a new ad will NOT automatically play.

Audio ads are not appropriate for all websites and it is up to the website owner’s discretion to smartly place these ads in places that won’t detract from the web user experience.

Everyone should want our collective economies to do well. We now have coverage in 192 countries and we have affiliates in these countries who are actively increasing NetAudioAds reach and procuring new advertisers to distribute ads in the network.

To be honest, I never expected this to do so well (I was skeptical at first just like you) and it has shocked me that the reality is quite different than the initial gut reaction… Most people want and like the idea of short Internet audio ads.

The only time I have seen negatives is when a well followed figure like Duncan or Aaron Wall start the thread negatively without researching the facts or at least attempting a short interview to gain them.

I want to thank Duncan for being a rarity in Internet marketing by saying he was wrong and allowing the opportunity to set the record straight.

Thank you,
Charles Heflin

(I am not an employee and I do not speak for NetAudioAds, I speak for myself based on facts I have gathered from NetAudioAds)

and this guy is “Director of Marketing” ???? way to go…

what a jerk…

Petty Fued

If you browse with no sound (e.g. at work), you never hear the ad and they get the click count anyway. Brilliant.

I´m really surprise by the fact that nobody realizes that this is made almost ONLY for

Splogs and Arbitrage.

I can assure you that they are thousands (if not millions) of people that get a “decent” traffic by obscure tactics to sites that don´t provide ANY value and they don´t get even close to a $ 10 CPM.

They will be happy.

And now there is one more incentive to make that kind of trash.

Until this “serious enterprise” elegantly joins the Dead Pool

Chuck,

Although I’m not thrilled by the idea, I’m not particularly offended by it either. Good luck with your business, and next time don’t send questionable emails to Duncan (the “missing link” here at TechCrunch) - he might accidentally tap out a coherent post, and he will surely try to sink you to make himself feel big.

How can somebody be “Director of Marketing” and at the same say “I am not an employee and I do not speak for NetAudioAds”?

Charles, are you high or something?

@J.P … I directed the marketing for them but am not an owner or officer and what I say cannot be construed as coming from NetAudioAds.

Duncan

i love reading your blog, but you are sounding like a sour puss. come on you guys can’t be right all the time. suck it up and move on.

Sure thing GladOS.

Garth@6: Yes, and we’re lucky that he spelled all of the words out.

Beyond that, if you think any of Charles’ little statistics are not completely made up in order to make himself look good and justify his paycheck, then you have a bright future ahead of you indeed.

It’s also inspiring to know that nobody there knows how to exclude spammers from the get-go. Hey everybody, email them if one slips through. LOL, whoops sorry about that!

I give this idea 10 minutes out of the starting gate until AdBlock filters audio and releases an update: “…when a visitor arrives on a web page that has the PPP code inserted.” Gosh, that’s gonna be a hard annoyance to fix. Maybe they’re hoping grandma and Senor Cho-cho on vacation in Bali are going to feather their beds with their ignorance. Who’s got the chip on their shoulder again?

for a Marketing Director -inhouse or not- you have to be an idiot who does not take his business serious when using LOL’s and Dude and other childish tone when you communicate in business, let alone a media outlet that will publicize it.

Very poor judgment, very poor website design, and very poor copywrite!
(may i suggest a proofread of your content because i found errors in your tier system breakdown page.)

@26 Charles

Good write up! The fact you have shared the stats (below), please let us know how many VC’s contact you on Monday/Tuesday. I think this has a shot at success. AND a company like Adbrite may want to buy you quickly (Iggy - are you reading this?).

……”Over 30k affiliates and 14 million websites have signed up so far we have and lined up new deals with advertising partners ranging from the high profile Madison Avenue…..”

I don’t like waiting 3 seconds for a page to load and Pay-Per-Play wants a study about 5 seconds of audio? Fine. I vote it’s annoying.

I just read abot the AdBlocker idea proposed by #36. I have to agree, if audio ads are used, there will be (very effective) blockers for them — my mute is always on at work.

A few hours before you wrote your PPP post last night, I wrote up an analysis of their business model (getting story ideas from my blog again Duncan? ).

In order to pay their publishers $10 CPM, they’re having to sell ads at $40 CPM. As a veteran of multiple online ad startups, I can tell you that they’re not going to get $40 for ads without response tracking mechanisms, no real room for a brand message, and that run on random blog content.

See http://kalsey.com/2008/01/netaudioads_bad_idea/ for my writeup.

case in point for how annoying even “good” content can be: i can’t stand how espn.com auto-starts their videos when i land on their site, even though i like their content–video included–for the most part.

i can’t imagine how crappy this experience would be for ads.

I think this is a perfect acquisition for Pay-Per-Post. Posties will do anything for a roll of pennies, so this is right up their alley. Since their sites don’t get any traffic, they can take turns creating page views on each other sites to work the system and they don’t have to worry about google cutting them off at the knees!

@EH - I haven’t been paid … yet.

I am paid a commission on sales just like the publishers, this is nothing but another product launch. If it flops, it flops … I move on to the next project.

@Faramarz - Poor judgment or not, the debate here and in many other forums is extending the distribution network.

@Adam Kalsey - Nobody at NetAudioAds, nor myself ever stated that there would be a $10 CPM payout to webmasters… My email to Duncan was in reference to his posting of $.01 per play.

The real number is $.02 +/- per play and publishers get 25% of that which will come out to about a $3.50 CPM … Still well above standard.

Did this guy ever stop and ask himself “hey I wonder if people will find this annoying?” I doubt it.

Audio Ads are annoying. Just imagine if you are going to a porn site late at night while the kids and wife are asleep and and audio ad sounds loudly. “Naked Sluts For Free.”

Audio ads suck.

@TheDuhMoment - The fact that 20% of people will never hear an ad when triggered has already been taken into account in their pricing model for advertisers.

Advertisers are also told, up-front, that only 80% of ad plays will be heard.

AdBlockers, volume down, all of this has been researched … NetAudioAds is now 5 years in development… This isn’t a whim. The facts have caused them to start a major marketing push.

I believe in the end there is only one honest ad: the Donate button. If the web would truly evolve there would only be donate buttons, no ads anymore. I dislike ads too as a user, but as a website owner I still use them. That’s why I decided recently to click on ads when I like a website. I am not really interested in the ad I click on, but I feel like I should give a little back to the site owner, because I like him or his business. If there was an ‘instant donate $.01 button’, I would probably click that. However the current ads are actually an easier way to donate, and I don’t even have to pay for it!

ESPN plays the annoying video right when you go to ESPN.com. I stopped going to ESPN.com when they started doing that. Lot’s of my friends also stopped. ESPN keeps losing “mad” traffic as a result. You guys are right about this. Audio sucks. Why doesn’t this schmuck focus instead on building an audience rather than try to make money with annoying things. Last I checked, no one has ever made money with telemarketing services or cluttering your post box with direct mail. What about those annoying inserts that fall out of my NY Times…so annoying. Also, sometimes when I am looking for a domain name for my cool social networking start-up, some of them are taken, and totally not used; those guys parking domains are losing money and just pissed their domain registration fee away. So annoying.

This guy needs to stop worrying about $10 CPM and start worrying about SEO, CRM, Web 2.0, AJAX, Open Source, CMS, Cloud computing, social networking, and the blogosphere.

Especially hate audio ad while at work even worst if you are in meeting

Michiel van der Blonk is right. I hate ads too. But sometimes, despite my moral superiority, I like to show support to sites I like by clicking fraudulently on ads I have no interest in. It is not stealing if you defraud an advertiser to support things or people you like.

This brings me back to the days of when people used to embed a huge WAV file in HTML code… kind of like this guy.

The sad notion is, PPP Media probably won’t fail right away - they will end up taking a ton of money from businesses with little online marketing experience.

The stats aren’t made up, I’m sure - there are masses of spam sites out there that will add this kind of crap to their site. What’s more, any good sales manager will try it out at those prices - but wait until it hits the webmaster, marketing manager, etc, and those figures will come down.

As for the realistic ones that want to keep users… well I have friends in leading ad agencies and publishers in UK and US and haven’t heard any of them talking about this. What I do know is that they tested ‘play-video-on-load’ and abandoned it in favour of ‘play-video-on-demand’ for all the reasons listed here:
1. Massive abandon rates, which were caused by either the browser hanging due to incompatible software, slow connection, etc, or simply people saying ‘WTF???’ and hitting the back button.
2. Of those that didn’t abandon, conversion and retention was much lower… again, negative opinions of advertising meant negative opinion of brand.
3. The advertisers themselves got terrible ROI (unsurprisingly).

Yes advertising is necessary, but there is good advertising that users accept, don’t react adversely too, and even pay attention to. Then there is bad advertising which benefits nobody - neither advertiser, publisher, nor user. This is why AdSense can charge more than a fully-interactive flash banner - relevance and integration win every time over invasiveness.

lot’s of people love to donate to media they actually like. Like to all those file-sharing services.

Reading these posts and most of you just do not get it. Still. I mean it is a no brainer basically. If you do not get it, that is fine. But please do not screw it up for those that do. All these posts, are basically opinions. Where are your facts people? I want to see them. Like I said before in my first post, if you could see the numbers I see, you would change your mind really quick. Numbers do not lie and my bank account will not either. Oh yeah. I want to personally thank all of the haters out there for making us a success. Best week to date! Keep adding those zeros to the end of my bank account balance. I love you all! Here is to an early retirement!

Dear Mr. Heflin,

Next time you are criticized for inventing an intrusive ad format, use the following response:

“In the early days of TV, ads used to be more like product placement. For example, ‘the Palmolive comedy hour.’ And the ads were read live by the stars before the show. The ads became more and more intrusive (annoying), until finally TV networks would just STOP the programming continually throughout the show to play 4 minutes of prerecordes ads, as they do today.”

It’s true, and it’s what I say…

Rock on,
Pud
Founder, AdBrite

I hate to see dorks arguing.

@ 57 Pud

read #38…..

preroll video ads on cnn are annoying

the crush banner I saw on TC that wants me to pay 6$/month to receive SMS alerts was annoying

dancing ladies selling mortgages on usa today are annoying

the CLICK ME gorilla on the top of TC right now is annoying

and YES, these audio ads are annoying

it’s all just levels of annoying, I am glad we have TC to help draw the line in the sand since the rest of us I guess are just too dumb to have our own opinion…

oh, and brilliant for these guys for goading a 2nd mention out of TC

#57 Pud - The TV industrial complex is in it’s current pathetic state because of that model. You don’t have any long terms sustainability by going that route.

People do the obvious which is to ignore stuff.

You only get my attention if you ask for my permission first. Auto-play video/sound is exactly the opposite.

I happen to know, FOR A FACT, that this opportunity is legit and for real.
In a world where there is soooooooo much BS scams out there, This is NOT A SCAM WHAT SO EVER.
Do your research!!!
It’s real people, making REAL MONEY, and it’s such an amazing opportunity that I feel the need to share in this convo to stress it.
It really doesn’t matter if anyone gets it or doesn’t get it because the ‘LUCKY’ people who DO know about it and are involved are going to be so profitable that it won’t matter who’s saying what lol.
There’s always going to be people trying to bring negativity into anything that is successful that they aren’t a part of bc they are jealous…..and that’s OK. This is so BIG and is only going to get BIGGER that it really doesn’t matter what anyone says at this point!
Hey PPP GUYS……thanks for helping me grow my bank account as well!!
2008 is the year!!!!

62 - Wtf?! what money?? it states on the site that payment will start the week of Feb 1st.

I love how this is all being done not for profits, but for the good of the economy. How noble! Brings a tear to my eye and HA HA HA HO HO OMFG HAAA! er, sorry about that, just burst out.

lol, great post.

What. The. Fuck. PPPlay is taking a 75% cut for themselves? (I guess it’ll be less when they pay out the pyramid) but as a publisher I aint standing for networks taking huge comissions anymore.

The internet is supposed to be all about delivering your product/service effectively/efficienciently and cheaply. Paying me a 25% cut is utter tripe. I don’t care if the service is annoying, somebody will make a firefox plugin to fix it. But at least pay your publishers properly, seriously you guys make me want to vomit in a package and fedex it too you.

I tried to restrain myself to express how stupid this audio ad idea was. This Charles Heflin, I meant, Dude, can actually read through the comments on any blog writing about this and find out how much people hate audio ads, no need to waste money to study this.

do not want.

@PUD #57 - I am with you… LOL

I got half spammy mail from that Heflin guy, he sucks.

must be the audio ad campaign being unsuccessful that’s why Charles has so much time spamming people. By the way, why did he spam you, Sebastian?

This kind of pissing match makes me want to unsubscribe from your feed. Any more of this and I will.

Worst idea ever. I work in marketing for a web 2.0 company so advertising comes up often in conversation. Both at work and outside of work, every person I have spoken with has offered that they would never return to a site that had such an intrusive ad. That is a fact.

Maybe this is a two-pronged approach: sell audio ads, and then sell the ability for visitors to block the ads. I’m certain more money could be made from being able to block the ads than from the penny per play you get for harassing unsuspecting visitors. New business idea? I don’t use ad blocking software, but if this ever caught on I would be the first to install some.

It would be interesting to study how quickly traffic vaporates from a website that implements this… I’m betting you cut your traffic in half, easily. If there is anything more annoying than spam, this is it.

I’m launching a new website starting March 1, 2008. I have signed up for the PPP, of course that doesnt mean ill use it. i have thought about this for awhile. i need some kind of ad program that pays better than adsense because i will be giving items away completely free. This would cover the costs completely. if anyone has any suggesstions let me know. I only want to do whats best for the consumer. for real, so im not going to stick with this if it will fail. I just thought a little, maybe people will be fine with the ads as long as they are getting free stuff from me in the process. you know. i also just thought about giving it a run for a while to see how it goes. maybe starting the site with it will get ppl to deal with it, rather than putting it on an already established site. i dont know though. i need your help. im open to all opinions. i can take constructive criticism. haha.

yeah I am signing up and prepare to frustrate every single one who come across my site

Seems like the 5 second length is short enough to deliver the ad before the average person can leave the page, so the ad gets delivered. No doubt makes their venture capital backers happy.

Duncan, http://www.blogbucks.com is a much better idea that works. Get the dream traffic of your dreams by doing nothing!

Audio playing = website closed ASAP

I would never place audio ads on a site I was running (unless I did not care about maximizing traffic that is…)

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I have six months hear news about this, but I do not think that the Pay Per Play Media will enjoy success with advertisers.

I just hope they arent like those damn commercials on tv that repeat the same exact saying 3 times in an extremely loud obnoxious fashion. You know what im talking about

@Michiel van der Blonk:
Clicking on ads you are not interested, just to support a website is stealing money from advertisers. Not only you are making advertisers lose money you are actually harming the website you click the ads on. When your clicks don’t convert for the advertiser in the form of a sale or signup, they would consider traffic from those sites as useless. Consequently, advertisers would stop advertising on those sites that are sending fraud traffic. Result: the website owner lose money.

Never ever click on ads you are not genuinely interested. Don’t harm website owners.

dude…$10 cpm is crazy!!

more like 2-3 is appropriate!!!

10 will the advertiser out of business…

joe
dishonesrealtor.com

I happen to agree with TechCrunch’s origional theory. I have already been hearing “Congratulations, you’ve been selected to receive two free ipod nano’s” for the last month and there isn’t even an ad in site. If the audio plays automatically and the ad for it is at the bottom of the page, won’t that be confusing to the visitor. I cannot say that this is connected with pay-per-play, but it is driving me nuts. http://www.tylastarstruck.com

Most people are saying that the idea will annoy visitors and people will leave ASAP, etc. I agree to a certain extent. I think actually the dea ha potential. It will just require overall approval. If they get enough website owners to do it, people will learn to expect the 5 second ad, by either turning the volume off or dealing with it. Its just like we got use to radio and television advertisements. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I do feel it would be hard to add it to an already established site, because users are not always up for change. I liked how someone said earlier that it would be more in approval if Google were to launch the service. i agree 100% (just a side-note). So personally, i think I am willing to give it a try.

the you have been selected for an ipod nano and what not is very annoying, however it is repeated and lasts quite a bit longer. These ads will last only 5 seconds. I don’t i guess we will see what happens. But my site launches March 1, 2008. It will free things away to users without the hassle of filling out forms, getting credits, etc. So i feel users will be willing to here the 5 second ads if they are getting free merchandise in return. just a thought. let me know your honest opinion.

It’s so funny that every positive post, except the one purportedly from the founder of adbrite, about PPP reads like it was written by a very young teenager:
@Chris: no need to elaborate
@56: “Oh yeah. I want to personally thank all of the haters out there for making us a success.”
@74: “for real”
“you know”
random “haha”

However, as childish as PPP’s staff seems and despite the tremendous amount of criticism here, I’m not so against the concept. I’m not convinced people will really get discouraged from visiting a site after hearing a 5 second audio ad. You could say the same about text ads, banner ads and especially flash ads. Is 5 seconds of potentially targeted audio more annoying than a flash ad which takes over the whole page temporarily?

If the concept really does work, I expect competitors with staff members above 13 years old and more generous publisher percentages to quickly take over PPP’s new market.

Right on! Now if you could get rid of those http://snapsucks.org popups, that’d be dandy. Talk about annoying (and if your inner voice sounds like the guy of pay-per-play right now you know what to do).

@50: Last I checked, no one has ever made money with telemarketing services or cluttering your post box with direct mail.

You must not have checked recently then.

On the audio ads side, it sounds like it will be annoying even with the ‘only repeats once every 3 minutes’ condition. But just because something is annoying doesn’t mean it won’t become very successful - I mean, look at Will Ferrell…

Auto-play audio spam is really annoying and no doubt will lead in less frequent visitors, so you’re balancing revisitors coming to your site for revenue, vs spam audio bringing new revenue stream.

I’d like to see a study done on this, but gut feeling says word of mouth and revisitor value on any business is worth more than one-off spam pay.

However, I can see how this offering would apply to the flash-in-the-pan crowd looking for quick fixes instead of building a business.

So, this will likely lead to splogs, scraper directories, and the like now supplying even more value with audio spam.

Good luck with the business model, dude.

I simply cannot stop laughing….

I visited their website….the sound was so annoying i had to leave….

how people quickly forget the annoying “Bzzzzzzzzz” mosquito advert.

This does sound like a return to early 90’s website construction.. what next, the resurrection of the marquee and flash tags?

The sad thing is, this will more than likely be successful if only because of the general laziness of the great browsing public.

After reading the email he had sent I had to create a blog entry about it. I quoted the email within my entry I hope you do not mind.

http://mropportunist.com/2008/.....at-a-joke/

I will never understand the extremes people will take to make money with their website.

ahahah well said, Duncan!
on load audio ads?? please

i don’t watch. or even own, tv anymore, commercials chased me away, years ago

if it overrides my mute switch, at least i know who to come looking for

lowest common denominator is the future of the web, and of the economy? sad.

I have already joine it.Waiting for Feb 1st!!

http://technoq.blogspot.com

This has to be a joke. I’ve never heard of a worse idea.

Pay-Per-Play (Pee Pee Pee)

d(^^ )

///*|*\\\ Lol Nice post

I manage ad ops for a site that has a streaming audio ad product, and let me tell you, if there’s no actionability, there’s no big CPM. Now, if this ad was tied to a companion banner, perhaps it’d have value. But if you’re doing that, why bother with all this crap? Just put a user-initiated Flash banner with audio in an established network.

Second, a 3-minute cap on the re-play is ridiculously short. Talk about a high annoyance factor. A better model would be a :10 ad that can actually impart some information, and a 15-minute session cap on hearing another ad. This way you get a reasonably actionable message and less intrusion.

It does sound like a company run by high schoolers. I highly doubt they have “major brand advertisers” on board.

My favorite part of Charles’s post was:

“This kind of advertising is vital to stimulate our broken economy”

That’s like flushing the toilet every third use to save water. It might make a very minute difference, but it fuckin stinks.

I hate that shit. It already is a pain in the ass everytime you open someones myspace page and it scares the shit out of you. Also, its funny because people look at you and then ask what the hell your looking at online. In addition, what if it isin the middle of the night? Shit business model. Maybe they will follow the roadmap of claria. Dead..

Director of Marketing? he sounds like a ten year old kid.

The idea SUCKS.

I’m surprised no one has posted his (probable) LinkedIn profile

http://www.linkedin.com/in/seo2020

Lots of interesting stuff there, including the fact that he made his coin on the sub-prime mortgage business.

I also like this nearly Al Gore like statement:

“I was responsible for contemplating and developing the first main stream affiliate network online.”

All of which is actually just fine, and he might be a good and aggressive businessman. His response reflects a lack of professionalism. And in this business, it’s about networking, so why try to burn this bridge?

Sounds annoying as fuck to me… 1 second of audio is bad enough to drive me away.

I don’t think I will ever use this in my sites, but with 10$ CPM many will do…

There’s an idea: after playing the audio ad, the browser should instantly redirect to the sponsor site.

@108
I have a better idea.we can have pop-ups..

DO YOU PAY ME?

My visitors do not pay me when they visit my sites. Sure they click on my links from time-to-time. For all my visitors who drop in and visit without paying me the respect of a PPC…

Welcome to “My Turn To Get Paid!” …. I really hope you enjoy your audio advertisments, because there will be more to come…. PPP is a great way to induce a reversal of fortune into my pocket.

I’m getting paid for all my website visits…

Like it or not… I’m getting PAID!

@87 I noticed the same thing about positive posts sounding childish. I couldn’t help but laugh. And I am glad to see you are not against the concept entirely.

I think general acceptance is all that is needed. It will happen sooner or later. I was reading some information I found showing the Harley Davidson, Tacobell, and others have jumped aboard the PPP “revolution” if you want to call it that. I am trying to find the site again for others to look at, but not having luck anymore. I wonder what that means. Haha.

Definately, the persons behind the idea need to learn some proper business etiquette. They are not proving a very good reputation by spamming and replying ‘dude’ to anyone who has an opinion. Not a good idea.

I feel that 5 second ads are not enough to send people away. Perhaps I will try a month with it and without to test the statistics and traffic differences. I will also keep an eye out for growth related changes based upon when the ads were playing and when they weren’t.

I like the idea of only playing the ads to users that are not members, and then cancelling them out for users that sign up for a paid version of a site. (depends on if you have premium services)

You have to keep in mind, most people will have several sites open and not even have enough time to realize where the ad is coming from before it is over.

I agree audio ads are hot!

I won’t play them to my members… only to my visitors. And yes, people who don’t like audio already have their volume down or off, anyway.

Audio ads are powerful… As a business having 15 million people hearing about my company, products or services…

Wow!

I can’t believe un-initiated audio is making a comeback. Who cares about frequency or CPM, this was an annoying problem back in 1997 and it was a common rule not to serve it up.

I like how he started a business email with the word “Dude”

I appreciate everyone taking the time to post their comments.

Thank you to everyone who blogged about this post as well…

This is a case study in controversial marketing … it works like a charm every time. Though this isn’t my favorite form of marketing, it is quick and highly effective.

Update …

Mark Hopkins over at Mashable reveals his study where auto playing audio actually increased their subscriber base.

http://mashable.com/2008/01/25/pay-per-play/

Maskable won’t use it! Dude (as you say), you lose.

@TheDuhMoment

Dude … or Dudette …

You have missed the point completely… Sorry I was not more clear.

Sweet, I hope this does take off.

Dibs on being the website that doesn’t have annoying audio ads.