Looking for feedback on new content monetization idea

Marketing
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Hi All,

I run a small software company and we’re toying with an idea for a new content monetization product. <snip/> here’s the quick version:

  1. Visitor clicks an external link in your site
  2. We open a new page & show them a single ad, targeted against the content you’re linking to
  3. After a few seconds they’re automatically redirected to the link they clicked on

We’d pay you 70% of all ad income.

It would be really easy to implement from the content site owners point of view. Just sign up with us, give us your paypal address for payments and insert a small amount of JS into each page (this shows the ads when an external link is clicked).

So I know there are a few people here who run content based sites. What are your thoughts? like the idea? loathe it?

Assuming you have a lot of page views (e.g. >100,000 per month)? Is this something you’d be willing to try out?

Just to stress, this isn’t spam, you can’t sign up yet, I just wanted to get some feedback before progressing the idea.

Thanks,
Jon

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Jon,

I can’t comment on whether or not this is likely to succeed. I simply don’t know the answer to that. I can only tell you how I, as the owner of some content-based sites, would react:

I wouldn’t touch it.

Sorry to be so frank. The fact is that I personally find this sort of thing intensely irritating. If a site that I visited regularly started doing it, I would abandon the site. I think it would significantly lower the quality of my site. It would also detract from the sites that I am linking to, which is particularly regrettable, because the owners of those sites would have no control over the whole thing, and would not share in the revenue.

Finally, I think it’s a poor deal from the advertisers’ point of view. If the ad only appears for a few seconds, the advertiser only has that amount of time to catch the viewer’s attention, give him time to read the ad, and then let him go ahead and click. I can imagine many visitors being frustrated because they are actually interested in the ad, only to see it disappear before they have a chance to react.

But that’s just my opinion. Maybe others will disagree. It’s good that you are doing this market research before going any further with it. Whatever you decide, the best of luck with it.

Mike

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Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response. I really appreciate your honesty. The last thing I’d want to do is hoist something on really annoying on the world, and this type of feedback is instrumental in figuring that out.

I do have a couple of responses, but please don’t think I’m dismissing your opinion (I’m definitely taking it into account);

> The fact is that I personally find this sort of thing intensely irritating.

I can see that. There would definitely be a group of people who feel this way (I don’t know at the moment how big that group would be). Personally I’m pretty neutral towards this kind of advertising. For example, when I’m using YouTube and I have to wait through an entire ad at the start (20 secs or more) that annoys me. On the other hand if I can dismiss the ad after 5 seconds or so I don’t mind it so much. I’d rather that than have ads during the video.

> It would also detract from the sites that I am linking to

There’s some truth there, and it’s something that concerns me, but at the same time, you’re giving them the link :wink:

> If the ad only appears for a few seconds, the advertiser only has that amount of time to catch the viewer’s attention, give him time to read the ad, and then let him go ahead and click.

I think if advertisers were using a CPM model that’s true, and I’d only use that model if they were fully aware of how it would work. At least at first I’d go for a CPA or CPC model, so they wouldn’t be damaged by the ad only being shown for a limited time.

> can imagine many visitors being frustrated because they are actually interested in the ad, only to see it disappear before they have a chance to react.

I can see that too. Perhaps an approach more like YouTube would be better, i.e. “You can skip this ad in x secs”. On the other hand as the user I wouldn’t want to have to click again from an ergonomic point of view. This is stuff I’d experiment with, but I wouldn’t allow test cases that cross the line of being truly irritating. That’s something I’m acutely aware of with this idea.

Thanks again. All good stuff. It’s by no means certain I’m going to pursue this. Good to know this stuff before spending any time on implementation :slight_smile:

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Jon,

I don’t want to monopolise this discussion, and I hope others will give you alternative points of views. But just to pick up the point about the viewer not having time to click the ad before it disappears. Perhaps you should test two different approaches: (i) the ad disappearing after a given number of seconds; and (ii) the viewer having to explicitly click the ad in order to get past it. Neither is ideal, but by testing them both, at least you would know which one was more profitable.

I don’t think going to CPC rather than CPM is the answer to this particular issue. It doesn’t address the problem of the visitor who actually wants to click the ad but doesn’t have time to do so.

Mike

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Well there a few similar setups around the web already so it’s nothing new. They are commonly used on the shadier parts of the web such as adult, hacking, gambling etc.

Personally I find it extremely annoying and would never thrust it on my sites visitors, I know of one very high profile newspaper web site who do something similar but with inbound links.

It may work for you, the only way to find out is run some trials before launching it as a fully fledged product. I’d suggest that you may find more success with themes such as adult/gambling rather than mainstream…

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Mike:
> I don’t think going to CPC rather than CPM is the answer to this particular issue. It doesn’t address the problem of the visitor who actually wants to click the ad but doesn’t have time to do so.

No, it doesn’t solve that issue, I’m thinking that just from the point of view of the advertiser, not wanting them to feel cheated by the short display time.

On the experimentation, yes, that would be key.

bluedreamer:
> I’d suggest that you may find more success with themes such as adult/gambling rather than mainstream

Yes, you might be right there. But to be honest, I’d rather deal with the mainstream. That’s not to say I have anything against those things, they’re just not my bag.

You’re right about the mainstream news source using something similar (I know the one you mean).

Thanks for the feedback :slight_smile:

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I don’t understand. This is nothing new. Sites have been doing it for years. “You will be redirected in 3…2…1”.

Find almost any WSJ article.

Google Adwords does not allow it, but large sites don’t need to follow rules. It was actually a pretty big controversy just a couple months ago.

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Jon,

I’ve just thought of another possible snag. What effect will your scheme have on search engine crawlers? Given that the outgoing links will be replaced by JavaScript, will the crawlers be able to follow them? If not, that might not matter for the advertisers or the hosting sites, but the owners of the target sites will be pretty upset. (Then again, maybe that doesn’t matter either, given that it is not those sites who are your customers.)

Just a thought.

Mike

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