Re: CPM Pricing Models

From: Matt Dooley <MDooley_at_wsls.com>
Date: Tue 22 Jan 2002 08:48:03 -0500

"Brad Jensen" <brad_at_elstore.com>, quoting
"Janet Attard" <attard_at_businessknowhow.com> wrote:

>> A content web site that keeps people coming back isn't in
>> the business of selling products any more than any magazine,
>> radio station, TV station or other media is in the business
>> of selling products.

>Sure they are. If they don't sell products, they go off the air.
>They target their audience based on demographics, they measure and
>trumpet the results.


WHOOOOAH THERE. TV stations don't survive by selling products,
other than air time. They survive by providing audience. If
you air a car commercial to 250,000 people but don't sell a
single car, the TV station doesn't go out of business. To put
it another way, the newspapers, TV, and radio, provide YOU
a chance to sell YOUR product. We don't sell it FOR you. It's
up to you to have a good product and an enticing offer.


Here's a new question or three for the CPA folks.
1- how many widgets can you sell to a given buyer? If I've got
1M users, can you sell more than 1M widgets? My point here is
that CPA will tend to be like slash and burn farming. Jump in,
get a bunch of sales, and then move on, because clicks have
dried up, leaving an exhausted ad provider in your wake.

2- what sort of accounting mechanisims are in place to help
publishers get their money? In other words, if you make 30
sales after people click, how do I KNOW you made the sales
in order to get paid? If advertisers only pay when they
make a sale, there's a VERY strong incentive for them to
underreport sales.

3- if I'm getting paid per Action, does that mean when your
phone rings as a result of someone seeing your ad on my site,
that I get a commission? I'm not getting paid for providing
clicks, but for providing sales, right? So a "view-call-sale",
is payable just like a "view-click-sale", right? A study
by Avenue A found that 80% of actions took place post-
impression. Seems I should get paid on those actions as well,
shouldn't I?

-Matt Dooley




Received on Tue Jan 22 2002 - 07:48:03 CST