Pay-per-play audio ads are being promoted as a new and "revolutionary" form of Internet advertising "set to take the Web by storm".

When I see this sort of stuff, red flags pop up and I have to question whether it's merely more of the Internet hype we've come to expect from the Internet marketing crowd, or are PPP ads really going to change internet advertising as we know it?

First off, let's see exactly what constitutes a PPP audio ad? In a nutshell, pay-per-play ads are brief (5 second) audio commercials that play automatically when a visitor opens a web page. And, as the name implies, the web publisher get paid each time the ad is played.

No Action Necessary

Unlike most conventional internet advertising, payment to the publisher does not depend on the website visitor taking some sort of action, like clicking on an AdSense ad, or providing information to the advertiser (pay per lead). Every single time your visitors open a web page, the audio ad is aired and you get paid. As an example, if you have the code inserted in 100 pages on your site and each page is viewed 10 times in a day, that's 1000 times the ad gets played and 1000 times you get paid!

The amount publishers will get paid per play is not stated, but advertisers will be bidding for ad space and the publisher will get 25% of the bid. So if an advertiser (like one of the major brands) bids 10c for each time its ads is played, the website publisher will get 2.5c. (The amounts being touted as possible earnings per play are higher than this).

Too Good to be True?

Sounds almost too good to be true for website publishers - I mean, instead of hoping your visitors will click on the AdSense ads scattered across your pages, you can now earn money just because someone opens one of your pages. Note that for the audio ads there is a two-second delay, so if your visitor clicks away almost immediately, the ad won't play (and you won't get paid).

Okay, so is pay-per-play advertising simply too good to be true? Only time will tell, but the person primarily promoting PPP ads is Charles Heflin, which immediately gives me confidence. For those of you who've never heard the name, Charles is the respected author of "The Plan" and it's big brother, "The Master Plan", and is also the person behind University 20/20.com.

Long Term Strategies

Charles has never been a promoter of Get Rich Quick Schemes, as anyone who's read The Master Plan will know. In fact, he's quite the opposite and has always advocated long term strategies for anyone hoping to make money on the Internet ("Long term strategies continue to provide a reliable, sustained and growing income, while short term strategies require constant maintenance just to make a basic income").

In one of his courses at University 20/20, he warns specifically about the "treacherous cycle of addiction" that results when those new to internet marketing chase every new scheme that promises to teach them how to make money. The alternative that Charles advocates is solid business and market research, combined with a clear understanding of why people use the Internet.

Unless he's the ultimate charlatan and hypocrite who's now promoting a short-term get-rich-quick scheme, one has to believe Charles's enthusiasm for pay-per-play audio ads, where his task, as marketing director, is to get the entire campaign off the ground.

You're Invited!

And to launch the campaign, website publishers are being sought as pathfinders, not only to place ads on their pages, but also to get in on the ground floor by promoting the audio ads technology and earning long-term residual income.

If you're intererested in finding out more and are keen to sign up, head now for the Pay Per Play Advertising website.

Recent Questions

As I mentioned earlier, I was asked these two questions on a forum where I'd mentioned pay per play ads:
1. Have you tried this personally?
2. Do they actually pay what they owe?

I'm afraid I can't answer those questions as yet. But for my own benefit and for anyone else interested, I've tried to pick through the promotional literature and summarise it as follows:

NetAudioAds is an existing business that pays website publishers to place audio ads on their pages. We're told there are 550,000 websites already serving up 40 million ads each month. But there are more than 60,000 advertisers wanting to participate and not nearly enough websites, so more - lots more - web pages are needed to air the ads.

NetAudioAds cannot handle this anticipated expansion on its own, so has partnered with a "major search engine" with deep pockets. Which search engine we don't know yet, but presumably it's not Google, Yahoo or MSN - otherwise they wouldn't be calling it a "top five" search engine.

I'm not sure why NetAudioAds is partnering with a major search engine - we're told it's for the "deep pockets", but I would think it's also for the expertise required to operate an advertiser bidding system (like Google AdWords), plus the ability to target ads based on website content. The promo says "advertisers will choose the types of site they want their ads played on and will then bid for placement. As in all management systems, the high bidder wins premium placement".

Immediate Objective

Right now the objective is to get as many web publishers as possible to sign up and put the pay-per-play code (a few lines of javascript) on their sites in order to "establish a footprint" that can be verified by an independent 3rd party. During this period, even though you add the code to your website, the ads will not actually play, so it's not like your site is airing the ads for free.

Advertiser bidding will only start in Feb 2008, after which the ads will go "live" and website publishers will start getting paid, with first checks going out in March.

For publishers, it's being punted as an exciting new opportunity to monetise web pages - but as yet no one can say for sure how successful this will be or whether publishers will get paid. Which means there is some risk involved. No one wants to have audio ads playing on their site, possibly antagonising and chasing away visitors, and then not get paid.

However, I believe there're too many established players involved for this to be a scam. Adverts from Harley-Davidson, Taco Bell, HBO are being uses as examples and I'm sure they'd soon put a stop to this if they suspected anything amiss. NetAudioAds holds a patent to the audio technology that's used and has been operating for a couple of years.

Dispel any Doubts

Once we know the name of the search engine involved, this should finally dispel any doubts about the legitimacy of the business model. It doesn't cost anything to get involved and, like other forms of Net advertising, the website publisher has control, so if you don't like the ads, you simply remove the code.

For me the big question at this stage is how visitors will react to audio ads. From the samples I've heard, they're not objectionable when played a few times, but who knows how visitors will react once they've been subjected to (possibly) the same ad a dozen times?

I would hestitate to put audio ads on any pages where I was trying to sell something or where the content was of a serious nature - I really don't want to hear a Taco Bell ad while researching dread disease medical insurance. However, if the ad is relevant to the content, then it could be a different story.

Okay, that's my take on PPP ads, but I could be totally wrong. I do believe for sites that cater to casual visitors offering more lightweight or "fun" content - like jokes, quizzes, pictures, puzzles, lyrics, baby names etc - that pay-per-play ads could be a fantastic way to earn additional revenue, based on this philosophy: "Enjoy my content at no cost, but let me have five seconds of your attention."

So why not go check Pay-per-play audio ads for yourself?