Why Flat Rate Banner Ads are Back on the Rise Part I (hopefully)

By: Biz Guru

If you are reading this then you are wondering what are the benefits of choosing a flat rate banner ad over a CPM or CPC banner advertisement.  I am inviting Pathrunner or any of the other business professionals on here to complete this.

Anyway, I did some research and here is the conclusion that I can honestly put my word to.

PPC and CPC banner ads are rarely worth the investment anymore.  With PPC (pay per click) and CPC (Charge Per Click) you pay every single time that someone clicks on your banner ad or advertisement.  There are several problems with this including your competition being able to click on your ad, people accidentally clicking on your ad and lesser websites looking to take advantage of their commissions by using different methods of clicking your ads from their site.  In looking online I found several hundred companies that specialize in doing nothing else other than that.  In one example I found, the company was very blatant in their statement once you register and they verify that you are not a spy for a search engine:

“If people want to give you money for clicking on their ad, we will be happy to help you take that money.  If you don’t do it someone else will.”

Besides turning my stomach, I have to tell you that I had to turn off my own advertising programs because I used those.  But after reading all the sites that were apparently getting away with these scams, I really had to wonder how many of my clicks were genuine and how many of them were people happily taking my money.

CPM is another popular method in which an advertiser pays as they go.  With CPM (Cost Per Thousand) an advertising company pays a certain amount every time their ad is seen by a thousand people.  There are several inherent problems with this.  Once again there are companies that can be paid to build false traffic to a website that click all around the site in somewhat randomized times making it harder for the search engines to detect.  Another issue is the fact that banners can be placed anywhere including redirects (a page that counts down before sending someone to another site), high traffic, low stay pages (usually a page someone clicks on their way to another page), and pages that really have nothing to do with what you are selling.  I actually was sitting on another website reading about how to talk to your teen about not having sex that had a popular roman-named condom ad on it.

All of these methods are the same mental principle as placing penny slot machines in casinos.  Eventually, what seemed like a small amount ends up costing more in the long run.

One of the biggest disappointments on these methods is the need to out bid someone else to have a better chance of exposure.  There is no way that a small mom and pop electronics store can compete in PPC and CPM with places like Amazon, Wal-Mart, and the other suffocating giants.

Now I am not going to write Part II to this story.  I’m going to leave that to you Pathrunner.  Tell everyone the benefits of Flat Rate Banner ads and title Why Flat Rate

Banner Ads are Back on the Rise Part II.