If your company is still advertising on major display advertising networks such as Specific Media, 24/7 Real Media, CPX Interactive, Double Click, adGardner, etc….? STOP and re-negotiate your rates or STOP advertising on these networks all together. It is costing you an arm and a leg for shitty results. Yes, that’s right, shitty results. You may be featured on some of the most prominent websites, but you are also paying an arm and a leg and your banners are “blind” to the audience you are trying to reach. Only two out of ten impressions actually “see” your banner and out of that 20% only 1/10 will click on your ad, resulting in a CTR of around .02%. That’s pathetic, we regularly get 1%+ CTR with the banners and placement we create. But wait, there is a better way: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Adsonar (AOL). Dump your CPM buys and buy CPC - you will actually get traffic.BannerBlindness.com regularly delivers hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to major portals looking to grow their subscriber base. Why would you want to pay for an impression when you can actually pay for a visitor. We can help - yes this is a shameless plug post promoting our services. We recently helped BuddyTV.com generate tens of thousands of new users. They are in a battle with TV.com for online market share of “online television social-networking”. This is the bread and butter way for major television networks to attract viewers for prime time television shows.

CPC advertising on a display network is cheaper and far more effective than purchasing hundreds of thousands of dollars of CPM buys throughout the year. Again: why would you pay for an impression when you can pay for an actual visitor. So you might be saying, and this is a common statement; “Well it’s worth it to pay for CPM advertising when your banners are very targeted” or “We have such a large marketing budget that we can’t achieve our goals through a cpc buy”. WRONG. I don’t have the time to conduct an actual statistical investigation into how much more effective cpc advertising is vs. cpm advertising - but I can assure you, that the observations and actual experience that my 10 years of online advertising experience disprove any notion that CPM advertising is EVER more effective then cpc advertising. Companies like Blue Lithium, Right Media, Advertising.com, etc… were founded on a performance based model; but quickly warped into CPM advertising as they saw an incredible opportunity to rip off major corporations through HUGE CPM buys. What the hell does a 60 year old marketing manager know about CPM buys? NOTHING.

The major online display advertising networks have been milking major corporations with major advertising budgets for years. I was discussing with an associate of mine recently, that even though major corporations like Budweiser, Ford, GM, Toyota, etc… may be losing out big on CPM advertising; it’s still probably yielding better results then traditional media buys (magazines, television, radio). So they may be getting ripped off, but at least it’s not as bad as it could be. But it’s time to get smart, and it’s time to get lean — corporations! Stop throwing your share holder money down the CPM toilet, and start paying for actual visitors not just impressions!

Contact Banner Blindness if you are interested in making a major dent in your daily and monthly uniques. We have helped clients double their daily traffic numbers, and achieve metrics such as: registrations, newsletter sign-ups, purchases, recurring visitors, landing page optimization, etc… We can very affordably and quickly send you hundreds of thousands of unique visitors through large CPC buys using all the major advertising networks. Additionally, if you are a publisher (as many of our clients are) you will be arbitraging your purchase with us, as you will make it up on the number of impressions you can serve based on the number of unique visitors we deliver. Remeber, only pay for for unique visitors - NEVER just impressions.

The above creatives are very very good. The landing page is very attractive with only a few fields to fill out and is somewhat generic. They truly emphasized “less is more” The banner creative is simple and to the point, but could probably use a more attractive female and the color scheme should match the landing page.

I was recently in Florida visiting some family and picking up a new convertible. My aunt and uncle have a few friends that are senior citizens and I was amazed at how many of them live month to month on social security and other fixed income cash flow; and boy do they love the race track. It was sad to see so many poor senior citizens at the race track gambling away their rent and food money. Anyhow, I was amazed to see how many of them had gold, diamonds, and other vintage jewelry that could probably be converted into cash. The company running the “cash to gold” offer is most likely Right Media/Yahoo and they get paid a CPA (cost per action) of probably $5 - $10 per lead filled out. I didn’t fill out the form, but I would imagine the user is immediately sent an email follow up and a phone call to close the deal. I think most people that mail in their gold are probably ripped off by the company and given an unfair price for their gold/valuables. If you try and dispute the amount given I would bet you have to pay for return shipping, handling, and insurance - which can be quite expensive.

It’s sad to see so many seniors, middle-class, and even poor people truly suffering from the recession the US is going through. I recently read a statistic that over 20 million Americans are using food stamps to help them eat. It’s even worse to see ruthless companies buying up their gold for pennies on the dollar.