Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Pay Per Impression?

Posted by Anonymous on 5/9/2008 at 6:28 PM ET 50 Points
Someone - a directory of sorts, similar to Citysearch, is currently sending me a good bit of traffic, free. The traffic they are sending me is actually pretty good. An average of $7.93 a visit, compared to the overall site average $3.30 a visit. The conversion rate is more than double the site average. I've sold more to their traffic this month than I have from Citysearch this year.

They are after me to advertise, and I have the room in the budget. My question is, at what price? They are looking for between 10 and 22 cents per impression, depending on the number of impressions per month and the length of contract.

Is this pricing reasonable? Does anyone know what some of their competitors are charging? Is pay per impression a viable pricing model? Am I about to pay for traffic I'm already getting for free?

I'm probably going to go ahead with a very small investment, just because I can, and it is a very small investment (<$2000 for 6 months.)

I'm still interested in what the professional here think of the proposition.

Paul
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 5/9/2008 at 6:35 PM Accepted
    From what I understand, to me it makes no sense to invest into such model since you are already reaping the benefits of it for free.

    If you invest, do they promise additional traffic? How do you know that the quality of additional traffic compared to the traffic you are already getting from them. How does it stack up?
  • Posted on 5/9/2008 at 7:02 PM Author
    They are offering an interesting proposition. They aren't banner ads or the like. When you search their site, they bring up a list with a fairly long "brief description."

    If you search for "wine," you get a list of eleven stores per page (ten plus a sponsored ad) with the brief description of each. If you click on a store, you get a longer description, pictures, reviews, etc. including a link to the store's web site.

    As a sponsor, my brief description will appear at the top of their search results, labeled as sponsored, but definitely highlighted. Right now, I'm not on the first page city wide, and not in the top three for my neighborhood.

    The other place my ad will appear is on my competitors' pages, between their description and the customer's reviews.

    That's pretty well targeted, and it's business I want. I really try to take care of my neighborhood first, and look on web sales as a profitable adjunct to the brick and mortar.

    I think it may work out well - I just don't know if I'm paying too much.
  • Posted by Harry Hallman on 5/10/2008 at 9:27 AM Accepted
    Why wouldn't you test this site with ads to see if paying gets you better results. If it doesn't work stop advertising?
  • Posted on 5/10/2008 at 9:57 AM Author
    I'm going into it for six months at the lowest level. The cost is less than $2000 for the entire six months. That's my test. To give an idea of our ad budget, we spend over $200,000 a year on the New York Times alone. This deal is not a huge outlay. If I were to go to the highest level with a full year contract, the cost would still be less than a single full page ad in the Times. We ran about 25 full page ads last year.

    My real question is about the price per impression, not whether or not I should try it. That decision has almost certainly been made.

    I'm interested in whether anyone else here is using a pay per impression model, either as publisher or advertiser. If anyone has gone down this road before and has first hand experience, I would love to hear about it.
  • Posted on 5/13/2008 at 9:38 AM Author
    I'm really surprised that no one on this board does any pay per impression advertising or publishing. This isn't an urgent question, so I'll leave it open for another day.

    If anyone is involved with pay per impression, I would really like to hear your experiences.
  • Posted on 5/14/2008 at 9:05 AM Author
    My thanks to Harry and desantnik2 for taking the time to answer. I now wonder if this model works, since no one here seems to be using it. I guess I'll know soon enough.

    Paul
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