When browsing the SDMB there are often ads at the bottom of the screen for some clickbait (on my iPad anyway). How does this work? I presume the SDMB sells advertising spaces to doubleclick and doubleclick sells that space to some clickbait site who, presumably, make their money from selling ads.
In normal transactions, the internet has cut out the middle-man. But in this case there seems to be a whole middle-village. How is this feasible?
Let me describe the situation like I see it:
How it should work:
Someone is trying to sell gizmos™. Market research has shown that people with my browsing habits likely want to buy gizmos™. So the gizmomaker™ buys advertising to people with my browsing habits ----> an ad for gizmos from gizmomaker™ shows up on my screen when I browse the dope. I see the ad and hopefully next time I want to buy a gizmo™ I will remember that seller and buy my stuff there.
How can I tweak this scenario that it makes economic sense to insert some clickbait into this? Or: How does doubleclick make more money by creating this scenic route?
I sell gizmos (not really). I, however, have no idea how to market them at the bottom of the SDMB when you browse on your iPad. However, I can email doubleclick and say “I’ll give you 5¢ each time someone clicks over to my site (or any of the other various payments schemes)”.
I think that’s about it. I don’t have to do any research, I’ll leave that up to doubleclick. They know what market my gizmo will collect the most clicks in and put it there.
In meatspace, it’s no different than me calling up the person that owns all the billboards in the area and telling them I want to rent one. We might talk about which one and negotiate a price and some other details, but it’s a whole lot easier than me doing it on my own. Why jump through all those hoops and pay 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars for a single billboard when I can pay one company that already has the infrastructure a few hundred dollars to have my sign up in a week.
We could even extend it to a TV commercials. You could shoot your own and figure out how to get it on TV or just call an advertising agency and let them handle it.
I think I understand most businessmodels involved:
the SDMB sells clicks to doubleclick.
doubleclick sells clicks to the gizmomaker™.
the gizmomaker™ sells gizmos™.
I think even understand the businessmodel of the clickbait-site.
But I cannot figure out how you can pay for ads when your only income is ads. The drostebus doesn’t make any sense to me.
Someone clicks on “my” ad. I give 5¢ to doubleclick they give 2¢ to the SDMB. That’s their business model, that’s what makes them the middle man.
I’m not sure I understand the rest of the questions. Yes, but how does your 5¢ end up financing some clickbait (the #1 worst exercise for aging!; 15 foods you shouldn’t keep in your refridgerator!!!)
It doesn’t. The clickbait people pay for the same adspace that I do. They might pay more to be in a better spot or in more spots, but they pay just like I do. My money doesn’t go to them. They’re competing for the same space as me. That’s like asking how the money I spend on US Weekly ends up in the hands of the National Enquirer. Two magazines, same rack. My gizmos and clickbait, two ads, same space. I cannot make sense why doubleclick doesn’t just put your ad on the bottom of the page.
Um, it does, you said that in your OP?
Why not? How do you think an advertising agency gets their name out there?
I know the name of my local billboard company is Lamar because when they have an unused billboard, they run ads for themself on it.
But, I don’t think that’s the problem, I think your overthinking it. You have to think about doubleclicks income and expense as two separate things, they have nothing to do with each other. When it comes to them buying adspace, it doesn’t matter where they get the money from. When it comes to them earning income, what difference does it make where the money will go.
Is it any different than a produce store buying oranges just to sell oranges or a shoe store buying shoes just to sell them to someone else? That’s all doubleclick is doing, they’re buying adspace to sell it to an enduser.
Everyone complains about targeted advertising, but the actual problem is that it isn’t targeted enough. For most gizmos, nobody has any clue where the best site is to advertise them on, so they just advertise them on every site where they can buy space. That includes the “You won’t believe these photos-- Number 6 is amazing!” sites.
The internet has cut out the middle-man when it comes to services that used to be provided by actual humans, but can be done by algorithms.
But for ad sales and placement, it’s algorithms all the way down. And there are many companies at many different stages of the pipeline all trying to optimize their little part of it.
I see the ad and hopefully next time I want to buy a gizmo™ I will remember that seller and buy my stuff there.
That isn’t how it works at all.
“Clicks” are a product like any other. There is a margin between the purchase price of the click and the selling price of the click and that’s were the profit is for click sellers. Works the same way for “impressions” or “views” if that’s how the advertising is being sold.
It’s on the sellers to turn the clicks they pay for into sales. Advertising gets you into the store, it’s up to the store to sell you something, even if the “store” is a web page with more ads.
I’m not positive what the OP is asking, but I think this is relevant:
These links sometimes feed into link-sites, which feed into dubious content sites. Both may be backed by venture capital funding. So some of these excessive middlemen are engaged in a nonsustainable enterprise. Meaning, once their capital dries up, they will go out of business. The venture capitalists, OTOH, are hoping that 1 out of 10 businesses will thrive.
I followed once of these dubious ads for 2 levels and found my browser performing slower and slower. Which means that they are jam packed with trackers. (I then cleared my browser cache thanks. Then turned off javascript. Then shut the browser down.)
I suspect that as you dive deeper into the well, you get ads for scammy stuff. And that the scammers are trying to select out the gullible rubes. Scammers pay top dollars for clicks. The core scam involves getting your credit card number, delivering you a pile of fine print, then billing you for $7.83 per month in the hopes that you will just ignore that charge. In addition to the $29.95 charge for herbal viagggrra2.
“You won’t believe these photos” is click bait, not targeted advertising (in most cases). Targeted advertising is showing you ads for swim suits for three days when spent 5 minutes searching for swim suits on Amazon or Google figuring out that you’re male, 40, probably make about 60-80k, live in a upscale neighborhood and have kids, so websites will show you ads for Audis while your blue collar neighbor that runs a landscaping business with no kids gets ads for the Tundras and Silverados.
An advertiser, which we will refer to as the “clickbait site,” places an ad on SMDB that reads “Find out the 27 foods that cause cancer.” A curious SMDB reader clicks on this ad. The clickbait site then pays SMDB x cents regardless of what happens next.
The curious reader then starts clicking though a list of foods that cause cancer. Next to each food is an advertisement. Maybe one out of a hundred SMDB readers will click on one of these advertisements. When a reader clicks on one of these advertisements, the clickbait site gets paid a fee of y cents.
So, to make this work, y needs to be more that 100 * x. If it’s not, then the clickbait site is losing money each time somebody clicks on its ad at the bottom of SMDB.
Is this an accurate description of how the money flows? Does the clickbait site really deliver so much more value that it can charge 100 times more for an ad than SMDB does?
One way the clickbait site can make a net income on this is by getting more clicks.
If every click is worth 0.01, then SDMB gets its 0.01 for sending someone to click bait site. But the click bait site is designed so that you (on average) click three times at their site, generating them 0.03 in revenue.
Or the click bait site might sell its ads on a per-view basis. If you view a dozen pages of their site, you might generate enough revenue to justify the ads to get you there in the first place.
And I definitely agree with Measure for Measure: many of these sites are not sustainable, though I doubt the money comes from venture capital. There are get rich quick scams about how you can buy and sell clicks to make a living. They’ll say “Sure you’ll lose money at first, but just put in another $1,000 to keep boosting your rankings. Glory and riches will be right around the corner!”
Let me amplify the 2nd aspect. Most of the clickbait I see today links to dubious articles. But it used to link to dubious products and services. (My ad blocker uses the Malware Domains list - this may have something to do with it.) I’m guessing that if you click deep enough, you will find dubious product clickbait - like here. Maybe, possibly, speculatively, reputable websites are trying to avoid that crapola now. Or rather they link to websites that are less choosy.
Slate article on One Weird Trick and enticing folks to sign up for MaleBlendXXWow for $89.95 on credit card autorenewal.
ETA: I’ve tried to find the article I read once about an internet millionaire who works these scams. I can’t seem to locate it. (Was it an old Atlantic Magazine article?)