Fair Weathered Pixel Practices
If it didn’t make me sound both old and/or worse behind the times, I would have begun this piece with “Back in my day.” But, really, back when my job involved, for lack of a better word, squeezing out the highest value per user from a registration path, I often considered it a job well done if we earned $.25 per user. In case that doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me, the registration path refers to a type of advertisement that asks users to enter some piece of information, generally an email address, in order to receive an item of interest of greater perceived value than the perceived cost of their data. In 2000, it did not require an item of actual value; the predominant marketer using this promotion type for example, Colonize, offered a “$125 Shopping Spree.” In reality, this “shopping spree” equated to what a person could save by participating in certain offers, as opposed to a kitty they got for being in the right place at the right time. Additionally, the user did not receive their spree at the time of entry. They first had to view many offers before ultimately learning they could only get their prize by checking their inbox, hence the name registration path.
With respect to the registration path offers, which also go by the name email submit, two things happened. The first change revolved around the method of marketing, driven primarily by increased expectations on the part of the consumer. A shopping spree, especially a pseudo-one did not carry a high enough perceived value for surfers on the web to part with the email address. Marketers accustomed to obtaining a large database had to turn to alternate methods. They could no longer offer a simple promotion but a tangible good. In the world of email submit marketing, a counterpart to the registration path existed, the incentive site. In this type of offer, users received a tangible good in exchange for participation, i.e. completing other offers. Netflip and YFDirect (now Netblue) were the early pioneers in this approach. They too, however, experienced the same thing. Incentive sites and registration path/promotion sites merged techniques, becoming what I have for several years referred to as incentive promotion.
The second major trend came about from the supply side, i.e. the cost of obtaining a user. It too increased…dramatically. In July of 2004, when I started writing about the industry, that $.25 had already increased to $.50 and like Google’s stock would continue to increase as more and more companies figured out how to create incentive promotion offers and tried to attract affiliates to drive traffic to them. The truth, though, is that for all but the very best, earning $1.50+ on a single page submit, doesn’t happen. So, how then can they offer to pay out $1.50 if they do not earn $1.50? They do so by not showing, aka firing the pixel. Fortunately, almost all understand the concept of the pixel as it relates to tracking, that we do not need to cover. (Take a flashback to some older articles for more on pixels here http://clients.freelancewebdesigner.com/jw/20110620-dmctest/backissues/2004/09/16/trends.htm and here http://clients.freelancewebdesigner.com/jw/20110620-dmctest/backissues/2004/04/01/newsletter.04012004.html.) The pixel became the arbiter of payout. It became the mechanism by which a company could offer the payout necessary to attract publishers.
In the past two years, since email submit offers hit their peak with respect to payout, the lead generation market has advanced significantly. It has become more generally understood that all leads are not equal. Those in the incentive promotion space knew this too. The root domain of the email address often dictated the value. With filters becoming more prevalent, pushing more and more commercial email to the junk/bulk folder, it meant a large price gap existed between a user with domain x whose mail went to junk and domain y whose mail went to the inbox. Publishers though, might have known this but didn’t care. They felt their job was to produce leads and wanted equal payment on all regardless of value. Leadpoint, the most well known marketplace for buyers and sellers of leads has come a long way in changing this attitude. They pay sellers of lead based on the actual value of the lead. The ones who produce great leads, the inbox leads using our email submit parallel, can make multiples more than those whose leads go to the junk box. Now you have a range from $3.00 per submit to $.20 instead of all receiving the blended average.
Today, the incentive promotion/email submit offers still thrive, but more and more, other lead generation offers have started to supplant them as the prominent form of marketing by publishers. The pixel issue though still persists. While payment based on true value makes a lot of sense, for many it introduces too many additional variables and makes the acquisition of traffic too complex. As a result, quite a few publishers would still prefer to earn money based on a flat rate for data, not a dynamic market rate. To get volume, advertisers and networks will gladly comply. Unfortunately, many don’t actually comply, and it sends the wrong message to those generating the traffic. The issue comes from the gap between a form fill, publisher goal, and a sold lead, advertiser lead.
Publishers and affiliates promote the offer believing they will get paid for a form fill. Advertisers only make money off a sold lead. Lead buyers often rely on call centers to take the leads and work on closing the customer. Leads called close to the time of submit do better than those leads called with a day or more delay. Most call centers do not run 24/7, though, so leads at night and those generated on the weekend, do not close as well as those generated during the day time. As a result, they are not as valuable. Does that make them not valid, though, and not worthy of a pixel load? What about leads generated during callable hours but ones that get rejected by a backend validation system such as TARGUSinfo. Should the pixel show on these?
The answer to the questions above are what the advertiser decides, but they must have this dialogue with publishers openly and honestly. They cannot do what some do and set the expectation of paying out on form fill only to selectively show the pixel in order to manage their margin. Offer to show the pixel or allow for returns; More than anything, both sides need to understand the other. Acquiring traffic today is tough, very tough. Those doing it need reliable revenue information and the pixel is all they have; it cannot become, as some have made it, a margin management tool to compensate for, among other things, a poor sales team. On the flip side, affiliates need to understand the complexities of the lead buying process and be willing to make some sacrifices. You cannot have the highest payout on every form fill regardless of the quality of the data. Be willing to test and move on if the advertiser doesn’t seem to uphold their end of the bargain. The pixel is not the bargain, not something to be used by one side without the consent of the other. Both sides engage – the better the dialogue the more consistent the tracking, which will lead to better leads and all will win.
