I thought this was too funny and revealing not to share.
I was speaking with someone from a web toolbar company the other day. They have a very cool product and a private affiliate program and they pay per install, like most any toolbar offer you might find on a CPA network. They want traffic and specifically had a reason to want to talk to me.
They’re working with a “big brand” ad agency out of New York, who is running traffic and getting data for them, etc. This big agency apparently decided to try popunder (PPV) traffic to see how it would perform. Their consensus? Popunders weren’t worth pursuing because out of 2,000 pops they “only” got 18 installs.
EIGHTEEN INSTALLS ON SOMEWHERE BETWEEN $2 AND $20 WORTH OF TRAFFIC AND THEY SAID IT DIDN’T WORK?!?!?
For those who may be unfamiliar with PPV, let me explain just how cheap this traffic is. You can get this traffic for easily anywhere from $2 per 1,000 pops, to $10 per 1,000. If this company got 18 installs on 2,000 impressions and paid $10 per 1,000 impressions, that means they had a per-user acquisition cost of $1.11.
Now to a toolbar company, the value of an install has got to be a hell of a lot more than $1. So if they can get installs for around a buck, they’re laughing all the way to the bank!
And this was just an initial small test… but this big ad agency thinks it’s not worth doing.
Can they really be that blind? Do they just not know how to optimize to increase the ROI? Do they not have more networks to go to for increased traffic??
Well frankly I don’t care. This guy knew me and knew I was a PPV guy, so now I’m going to be handling their PPV traffic needs and watching the installs roll in. Madison Avenue’s loss is my gain!
I’m just shocked that a supposedly very highly regarded agency, who really knows what they’re doing, would not see the tremendous potential in PPV after that initial test. It’s like they don’t know how to calculate basic metrics or something.
Jonathan
Man, I am a PPI guy for 3 years and if I could get this CPA I would be more than happy! Seems like this advertising agency doesn’t know what they do…
By the way: Where is it allowed advertise PPI offers on PPV? I have searched and asked a lot but everybody say “No” to this type of offers…
Hey Steffen!
I don’t know where that agency was advertising, but Adonnetwork has been known to turn a blind eye to it. Not sure if that’s a “wink & a nod” kind of thing or what but I know they’ve allowed them in the past. For all I know that agency was cloaking and masking… unfortunately I couldn’t get any more info on where they ran, I wish I could!
Jonathan
The performance would really depend on the exact type of CPV traffic. Most CPV traffic has been achieved from an initial toolbar installation. For instance, if the CPV company distributed bing, you could not distribute any other bing toolbars on that traffic, as each PC only counts 1 time. In theory you could do very well by the numbers and then have your advertiser(toolbar company) filter out all the installs because they have already counted that IP/PC ID.