Online advertising in a soup - PPC

Posted on December 30, 2007 
Filed Under Media and advertising

There are several online advertising agencies which serves advertisements on web sites. And the advertiser is charged for clicks being made on the ad, out of the amount charged a portion of it is given to the web site owner displaying those ads. More commonly know as concept of PPC (Pay Per Click).

Few smart pants have came up with a new way to fool around with online advertising agency. That is by giving away direct contact details which would not require clicking the ad. Like in the banner ad as displayed below the company is asking the viewer to send an SMS to them, the viewer will almost never click the advertisement. Leaving the advertisement agency and the web site displaying the ad been misused.

On the another hand the company who is interested in generating leads for their business is getting quality leads as the viewer will be spending money to send SMS and is more likely to be serious. At the same time also saving money as rarely there will be clicks on the advertisement which they are displaying on Internet.

Quite possibly due to advertising agency policies the advertiser had to add a text "To know more click here". But in the banner below which is exactly the size as it appeared, one can never make out its written at bottom right corner without using a magnifying lens. It seems more like "Terms and conditions apply".

For big companies if they are concerned of tracking the source of leads been generated then they might use a different channel for example a different number where the requests will be received.

Now the concern over here here is less about not getting paid for the advertisements but about displaying them for free. More importantly how online advertising industry is going to deal with such problems.

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PS: Explanation for such situations is requested from Google with ticket# 228394073

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