Seth Godin confused about click marketing
by Brian Turner
Seth Godin has created a backlash among search marketers for advocating what many see as clickfraud.
Seth suggested that surfers could “tip” websites they liked by clicking on ads – for which the website would be paid for – as a means of thanks.
As many have rightly pointed out, at best this is clickfraud – and at worst it’s a recommendation to completely undermine the online advertising industry.
Seth counters that advertisers want visitors, so this is still good apparently – because it will force advertisers to focus more on conversions.
But in doing so, he completely misses the points, which are:
1. Worthless clicks generate unnecessary costs for the advertiser
2. Worthless clicks devalue the worth of the originating website
We’re living in some of the tightest economic conditions since the Great Depression of the 1930′s, which means advertising spend needs to be further justified as an investment, not cost.
Additionally, search marketing remains a young technology that has found a value proposition in being able to connect those people making purchasing decisions with suppliers. It’s a tentative balance that depends on the good faith intentions of both parties.
Issues such as clickfraud and the diminished value in content networks have plagued search marketing and threatened to undermine it – but it appears that balance remains strong enough to overcome such concerns.
All the more reason why Seth’s comments are both unhelpful and damaging.
When it comes to the internet attention spans are so short, so the only real way to engage users is to ensure you offer something they are looking for in the first place. It’s called targeted marketing.
Advertisers don’t want random eyeballs – that’s old school marketing, and has been rightly slammed as wasteful, invasive, and irrelevant.
The power of online marketing is the clear connection between user intent and supplier intent. That’s why contextually relevant advertising has really taken off.
If surfers really want to tip the blogs and sites they read, then they should do it with their own money instead, via making a donation of the previously popular “buy a beer” meme.
Clicking on the ads is spending other people’s money, and as a habit, is an act of fraud.
Discuss this in the Internet Business forums
Story link: Seth Godin confused about click marketing
Related stories:
2 Responses to “Seth Godin confused about click marketing”
Leave a Reply
Previous: « vbulletin updates: 3.7.2 Patch Level 2, vb 3.7.3, vb 3.8 and vb4.0
Next: Why Yahoo should be franchised »
Visited 5368 times, 1 so far today
Posted in: Marketing
I guess it comes down to your definition of “worthless.”
In fact, the most “worthy” potential consumers are the very people who never ever ever click on an online ad. These are people who buy a lot online, usually from trusted merchants like Amazon. They are curious and early adopters and likely to buy a new thing as soon as they are sold on it.
But they’re not showing up via cpc ads. That’s because many cpc ads are seen as a come on or a waste of time.
I wasn’t recommending click fraud. I was recommending the very thing people do with magazines they like. If you see an ad in Stereophile, or Field and Stream, take a second to consider it, possibly buy from it. Don’t dismiss it out of hand.
That was my goal. I didn’t make it very clear, but that’s what I meant.
Thanks for the reply, Seth – it sounds like you’re talking about a discontinuity between the customer intent and advertiser intent in a certain target segment – ie, of a customer seeking to make a value judgement on a sale through their own process of discovery, with little direct marketing by the supplier.
In which case, this serves primarily as an argument as to why advertisers need to employ multiple marketing approaches, not least through direct communication with the social web via contact with connectors. I don’t think it argues for new behaviours with CPC.
The CPC model seems to be working on a general mass appeal basis, but the concern for advertisers and publishers alike is the danger of ad-blindness creeping into this model.
I saw the fall out for publishers and their income crash when the dotcom bubble burst – as a publisher today I need to be concerned about the value contextual CPC advertising can add to a site, rather than detract from it.
For that I need my content to be regarded as valuable for advertising purposes – with issues such as clickfraud, value perception is a very real issue.
You can run site targeted ads via Google Adwords and similar ad models, so that remains an option – but we need customers to feel drawn to explore what is being advertised, not encouraged, pushed, or co-erced, in such a way that may denigrate whatever ad model is being used.
2c.