July 27, 1998

Some mouse traps that you'll love

Arun Katiyar

Does advertising on the Internet really work? A massive study released early this year by the Internet Advertising Bureau suggests that it does. A giant Morgan Stanley report says that it does. Reports from Jupiter Communications, a company which tracks advertising on the Internet, insist that it does. Yet, there are advertisers who are not convinced. They want better results, better exposure, better rates and better servicing. They want to pay, only if they can see results. Okay, say some website managers, there's no point shooting dice over the effectiveness of Net advertising, so how about this: pay only for results?

Now we are talking. Briefly, this is how it works: the advertiser pays every time someone clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser's website. Imagine making the same promise for other media -- what if an advertiser in this magazine said he would pay up only if he were sure you "consumed" his ad? Not just outrageous but impossible as well. On the Net, it's a different samba. Website managers are starting to make this offer to advertisers -- pay approximately Rs 20 for every click on an ad. A budget of Rs 1 lakh therefore guarantees that 5,000 people will have consumed your advertising. The figures change a little from case to case, but you get the idea. Charming, all right; but not sexy.

What happens if the ad is not attractive enough and people refuse to click on it? Does the website manager wait endlessly to get in the revenue? Of course not. He employs one of several simple -- not to speak of obvious -- ploys to "deliver" the necessary clickthroughs.

To my mind, pay-per-clickthrough is a dangerous model to adopt -- especially if you aren't sure about how good your ad design and the message on it is. So why fight shy of logic? Just do the obvious. Reward the customer for consuming your advertising.

Sites that offer this ability will break new ground. Consider for a moment that you are rewarded with five points every time you click on an ad at a particular site. 200 points get you a free CD, 500 points get you a silk scarf or whatever. What I am suggesting is the equivalent of Club Reward Points, in much the same way that credit card companies do it. The question you may want to ask is, "What if I keep 'consuming' the advertising and amass a vast number of points?" The technology to prevent this abuse already exists, so there is little reason to agonise over the question. Websites just need to adopt this model. It is The Next Step. What's more, this advertising model could end up doing what sites have been hoping for all along: provide a guaranteed way of developing an endless stream of traffic.

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