I originally read about the new Net Audio Ads affiliate program via the Art Of Money blog, and was reminded of it again today by Michael Aulia’s post on the same subject. I’m both intrigued and turned off by the concept. While the premise of a no-click-needed money-making affiliate program is definitely appealing, I can’t help but wonder if an ad on auto-play being the first impression a website to a new viewer is really that smart of an idea.

I mean, one of the most-hated aspects of websites like MySpace is when people leave their songs on auto-play. Is there anybody out there that actually enjoys being essentially jumped via audio? It makes me suspicious that any first-time viewer that visits my website will hear the auto-play, and immediately close out my site, never to return again. I mean, I know my reaction to embedded audio tends to go that way - I either click out of the site, or if it’s a site I know has something specifically desirable on it, I immediately mute my speakers. The first course of action hurts both the publisher and advertiser of the audio ads, while the second just makes the ad a waste of effort.

The Net Audio Ads website addresses some of these issues, and rather than force you to go find their FAQ, I’ll just post the ones that are most relevent to my concerns:

QUESTION: Will this offend or cause people to not come to my website due to the audio ads?

ANSWER: We are currently running these ads on 550,000 web pages, because the ad spot is only 5 seconds, complaints have been rare.

QUESTION: How have these 5 second audio ads been performing for advertisers?

ANSWER: We have consistently outperformed, radio, television and paper ads plus the fact that we spider the website just like Google does, we only deliver ads that are directly related to the contextual nature of the site.

QUESTION: Will the PPP ads be targeted to the content of my website?

ANSWER: Yes, we will crawl the “readable” content of your website to determine what kinds of ads to play. The ads that play will be targeted to your market or niche.

QUESTION: Does the visitor have to click on anything for me to get paid from an audio ad?

ANSWER: No, audio ads automatically play when a visitor enters your website. When the audio plays you get paid, no clicks necessary.

QUESTION: How is it that publishers get to keep 100% of their traffic (by not requiring a click)? Aren’t you losing money?

ANSWER: This is a common misunderstanding and this is why PPP is so revolutionary. The advertiser has paid to have a 5 second audio ad played on your website. You are paid just for the ad playing, no clicks or action from the website visitor is necessary. We are not losing money, we actually make more because the ad is triggered on 100% of the website’s traffic. In essence the website owner is then paid for 100% of their traffic. Best of all, the visitor never leaves your website so you have the chance to monetize even more. All other forms of media require a click or some kind of action that leads people away from a website. As you can see PPP is quite different.

I’m pretty much undecided about whether I think this is a good idea yet. Obviously, although Net Audio Ads seems to have no rules against putting the ads on an adult website, that strikes me as a very stupid/inconvenient-for-surfers move, so I doubt I’d ever put the ads on any of my porn websites. The last thing I want is for someone to get put in an embarassing/awkward situation due to my websites, because then they probably won’t return.

As for my mainstream websites, who knows? I may give them a test run and see how they do for me; as I said before, the idea of making money off a surfer without them having to click off your website is extremely appealing. If I do end up using Net Audio Ads, I’ll definitely post about it and let everyone know how it’s working out - the service goes live on February 1st, 2008, so it’s rapidly approaching decision-making time.

EDIT: I’ve decided to at the very least put the code on THIS website, as it’s mostly directed at other webmasters, so we can all see what it’s like. Right now it just plays a bit of white noise, but ads will start on February 1st as previously stated. Please feel free to weigh in on how intrusive you think the ads are, and if you personally will be promoting them.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Affiliate Programs, Mainstream. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.