Pay Per Play Ads

Pay per play ads are the latest buzz amount internet marketers and website owners seeking to earn some extra cash from their websites. The principle is simple: five seconds of an advert are played to each and every visitor to your site, and you get paid for it. It's attractive to website owners who have been running pay-per-click ad like adsense because they don't have to worry about placing an ad somewhere on the page and they don't have to convince anyone to click it.

There's one catch though, the visitor has to spend at least two seconds listening to the ad. If they bounce away as quickly as they came (or as soon as they hear the ad play) then you don't get any money for it. However, the ads still pay out even if your viewers have their sound off, so even if the ad isn't heard you still get the benefit.

But consider it from a reader's point of view: it's one heck of a surprise! They come to your website expecting to read something, not toe hear an ad. They may have music playing from their computer and your ad suddenly plays (possibly very loudly), ticking them off. Sure, you just earn a fraction of a cent, but they're not coming back.

There's also the possibility that if a viewer gets over the first ad and spends more than 3 minutes browsing your site, then they will be played a second ad. The result of this will be to encourage users to turn off their sound, or spend less than three minutes on your site. There's also no indication at this point as to whether the ads will be geographically or contextually relevant, especially for a website or blog that is targeting a very specific niche such as my own.

Also, if you use social networking and that network does not permit the submission of sites which have an automatically playing noise, then pay per play ads will disqualify you from that network, which may mean a significant drop in traffic.

Although Pay per play ads still seemed tempting, after reading all the information that they have publicly available I still do not think they are appropriate for my current blogs. If I had the opportunity to browse advertisers and see which ads would most likely appear on my site then perhaps I would consider them. Likewise, if I could edit the settings so that each visitor was subjected to only one ad per 24 hours.

I think the hype about it is overkill, and I think that on the 1^st of February 2008 the internet is going to become a lot noisier, and sites that are still quiet will be a refuge from the racquet.