What Is PPV or Pay Per View Marketing?
Ppv marketing? I spent a couple of hours on this the other day. Normally I can answer a question like this in a much shorter amount of time, but this ppv endeavor is cloaked in such secrecy that it took some serious digging. My quest started when I was reading up on affiliate marketing strategies and happened across a pretty well known guy in the field talking about how he was giving up on adsense ppc and going solely with what he called pay per view, or ppv. He made an excellent argument about the pitfalls and shortcomings of affiliate marketing through google’s ppc (pay per click) and talked about the wonderful benefits of this new method described as pay per view. Well, my research brought me back full circle to this individuals argument, which as it turns out, was a sales pitch.. and one hell of a good one.
Here is what ppv marketing is. Adware. I know you have heard the term, but may not be familiar with what it is. Have you ever had a virus like issue where, whenever you type a url in the address box or tried to perform a google search, and a new, seemingly random browser window opens up over your intended result? That is adware. I have never experienced it personally, but had it happen on a work computer several years ago after a co-worker downloaded the file sharing application kazaa. The two ways it can plant itself on a users computer is by the user downloading an application like kazaa, where in the fine print… let me correct myself… in the minuscule print, you agree to allow them to show you advertisements in exchange for their free application. The other way that a user can have this happen is, for no better term, a virus. A virus known as adware.
The way ppv marketing works: An affiliate advertiser signs up with an adware company and from there it works in much the same way as google adwords. They can bid on the same keywords as they would on google, and when the user of an infected computer performs a search on that term, the user will get their normal google search results, but, the adware causes their computer to open a browser on top of their google search results with their ad. In addition, the affiliate marketer can also bid on URLs. This causes the adware to open their ad or page in a browser window when the user of an infected computer types a certain url into the address bar. Let’s say you are selling pet medications. You open an account with an adware company and bid on the url www.petmeds.com. Now when a user of an infected computer types www.petmeds.com into their address bar, your page will open up on top of the page they intended to view.
The benefits of this form of advertising that will be thrown at you is that that keywords or urls are much cheaper to bid on compared to adwords. Even with the “ad blindness” and click fraud involved in adwords, you have to factor in one huge factor on the ppv, or pay per view, side. Most people, once their computer is infected with adware, get rid of it without interacting with a single ad. This explains the cheaper bidding prices. Your ad would be shown to many, many people who simply ignore it and eventually reformat their hard drive, (most adware is impossible for the average computer owner to remove) or sadly, pay someone to remove it. In addition to this equalization of the bidding prices, advertising through adware could very likely get your affiliate account banned. Most affiliate marketing companies specifically ban the use of adware advertising in their terms of service.
OK, now that I have downed this so called “new” advertising method of ppv marketing, I am also somewhat intrigued. While I say that most people will clean their computer of the infected adware without interacting with a single pitch, I also know that this is a big world we live in. I also know that their are a lot of… well, less than intelligent people out there (explains camo stretchy pants) that know very little about computers or how internet browsers work. I also know that a good percentage of those people have credit cards. So while I can explain away the majority of the keyword cost difference between ppc and ppv marketing, it does seem that there may be a little wiggle room. This wiggle room could be provided by that fact that as I already mentioned, there is next to no information available as to what ppv marketing is, and therefore, less competition. This morning, I actually signed up for a ppv account. As further example of the secrecy involved here, you are not immediately approved, but must conduct a phone interview. Three of the major ppv marketing outfits that you can sign up for are: trafficvance.com, mediatraffic.com, and zango.com.
Anyway, back to the full circle. As I mentioned, nobody will give you information on what ppv is like I have. Do a google search on ppv marketing as of today’s post, and you will find the same as I did. A few people touting this “new” form of marketing, but rather than tell you what it is, want you to buy the info. The guy I mentioned at the beginning is well known in the affiliate marketing field and makes excellent money with ppc. His sales pitch was that ppv (of which he explains nothing) is so wonderful that he has now completely cancelled his ppc ventures (laughable). Remember, he is an affiliate marketer! He is a good friend of a guy (whom he mentions several times) selling a ppv guide for several hundred dollars.
In closing, I am happy to share this info with you for free and would like to ask each of you one thing. I’ll beg if you want me to. Please link to this post, foreword it, digg it, etc, so that in the future when someone wants info on this subject, they can get it for free. Hell, I’m not even making anything off adsense right now because I apparently threw away the letter with my pin in it and now I’m showing public service ads.
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November 27th, 2008 at 9:09 am
I had spent a lot of time digging to find this info also, thanks for sharing it.
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December 1st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Reading this leaves one with a feeling that PPV is not a reasonable method of marketing, as it sends one one’s material to be seen in a negative light. The advertising pages that pop up when one’s computer has a malicious program are generally ones that are not looked at in a positive light. Promoting one’s content there could hurt the site’s reputation.
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January 20th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I disagree with some of what you are saying. I know with trafficvnce and mediatraffic that you are given the software to install on your computer if you want to download their product. Mediatraffic has a series of very nice screensavers among other things. Trafficvance has gaming software. It is made clear what the programs are and it is not spyware or virus. it is adware, ad serving software. Much, not all of what you are talking about took place in the old days, a few years ago before all of the law suites, laws and complaints changed the majority of the industry.
In fact a large (majority?) of the affiliate networks are starting to allow ppv traffic also know as contextual and dls (downloadable software).
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Nate reply on October 27, 2009:
I didn’t mean they were doing anything illegal, it’s just that the vast majority of people don’t read the fine print of those “user agreements” Wasn’t bad-mouthing them, I actually have an account and am tinkering with how to make money from it. Check back for updates.
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Kenneth S. reply on October 27, 2009:
Maybe. It still seems a little crooked. If the companies that have the AdWare warn users
about it, then buyer beware.
It does seem like something to investigate. Like a lot of products, there are good and bad
companies producing the same type of product. But using the bad AdWare could
get your Web site banned by many affiliate companies, Google and maybe others.
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Nate reply on October 28, 2009:
Agree. NEVER use ppv on a landing page that has adsense on it. You just don’t want to test google, plus, I’m not a fan of people trying to scam adsense, and by proxy, cheat advertisers. Use it only with affiliate companies that approve of it. Working on that now.
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:36 am
It’s ok to have a comment.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:58 am
So I take it this all fell apart and you went back to working a regular job?
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Nate reply on October 28, 2009:
I’m back now!!
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August 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
hi,
I am trying to get accepted to trafficvance but I am required to have get a recomendation. I do not have any friends who are using TV. Would anyone be so kind as to give me an email recomendation to get into TV.
Thanks
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Nate reply on October 28, 2009:
Any luck yet?
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October 25th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Thanks for sharing, I have been lokking for sometime on PPV. It seems like its the hotest trend in Online Marketing… I am stil not clear, how the monetization is going to be here in PPV…. Viral……
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Nate reply on October 27, 2009:
Working on that now…no real success yet, but I’ll update soon.
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October 27th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Thanks for sharing, I had spent a lot of time looking to find what is PPV, many thanks for sharing it.
Candy.
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Nate reply on October 27, 2009:
Glad I could help. It has been a while since I wrote that post…and when I did there was even LESS (as in 0) honest descriptions of it on the web. I’m unemployed again, so I’m tinkering with ways to make some money with it now. I’ll update soon!
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October 28th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Great post Nate! I had questions flowing through my head on what PPV Marketing was this post was very enlightening.
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October 28th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’m glad to hear that you are going to dig this niche further. It could be helpful for all of us.
Candy.
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October 29th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I was wondering what PPV was all about and after reading your post I get a clear picture of what it is. I’ve heard about people making a killing using this ad strategy and would like to know how to take advantage of it myself. Looks like it’s still time to join the first wave of early movers… how many will there be?
Ciao,
Jorge R.
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Nate reply on October 30, 2009:
Beware of the people telling you how they are making a killing on something….they usually want to sell you their “secret”!!
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October 30th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
thnx for this! I use PPC as my sole traffic source (thru adwords) with lots of success (i’m not an affiliate marketer tho) and was intrigued with the thought of a lower cost/ visitor… here’s my hang up: there’s no free lunch… specially in marketing. you get what you pay for for the most part & PPC has a higher cost/ visitor because its bar none the most direct way to bring targeted, highly interested traffic to one’s site.
think about this: if your target customer is a bottom of the barrel type person (for lack of a better term) that actually clicks an ad like that… be my guest and use PPV. I’ll be on PPC raking in high converting, savvy users to my business all day
thanks for the post. much appreciated!
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November 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 am
I don’t use PPC anymore to churn out traffic to my website but i use PPV now.
It’s cheap and targeted.You can get 1 cent per view but for PPC it cost more than 400% minimum.
You got to look for a good PPV company and thankfully i found a guide which describe this.
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November 18th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I use lots of PPV make me lots of money. Trafficvance.com has become really expensive so now I have moved on to a new PPV company called linksador.com. Mediatraffic is allright but I dont like their small popups and they are a real pain in the ass to get something approved.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
It doesn’t matter how you spin it, it is still called Spam. If you send advertising to anybody whether by e-mail or popups if the popup comes from another business it’s spam.
When I type a url I expect that site to come up and not a PPV.
PPV is pay-for view and you are paid when you send traffic to a certain site.
The company that you are sending traffic to will cancel your affiliate account when you get caught because you are cheating them. They wan’t targeted traffic and not traffic created by spam.
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December 13th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I have changed myself from google adwords to PPV Marketing. I found a system out only a couple months now called Mass PPV Traffic. It has a complete system and tutorials detailing everything. I have reduced my costs from Adwords from using a 400.00 budget to now an average $30.00 to $50.00 budget. 1 thing needed to really get your PPV campaign up to speed is the use of a good URL scraper. this saves huge amounts of time from manually scrapping urls. in minutes your ready to go. However it is not necessary to use one if you have the time (lots) you can get by. My PPV Ad’s are more targeted then adwords cheaper and I am getting better conversions & affiliate sales too. I hope this helps you folks who are still not sure if your ready to jump in or not.
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January 11th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Even Amish Shah talks about media buys and using PPV in Magic bullet system that he is launching today. It’s interesting reading the pros and cons. Need more research into this topic.
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February 3rd, 2010 at 3:43 pm
If PPV is so popular, why is it associated with all o fthese negative connatations? Seems like to me you’d be better off sticking with the tried & true and goping viral with every available chance you get.
But seriously, I think you may very well be wrong about it being adware.
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February 17th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Durka durka durk
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February 18th, 2010 at 12:10 am
i know that some of the websites uses Pay per click facility that may help them to lead in ranking but most of the websites are also using free directories that can help new users. i have flights to london
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February 22nd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Wow, that makes a lot of sense to me. I f they can find a way to squeeeze a dime out of you they will.
Jess
http://www.online-anonymity.vze.com
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March 9th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
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