Of course, most publishers should see this coming, and require that all ads meet their approval before being run. If an ad performs poorly, the publisher loses, while the advertiser takes no risk and loses nothing. If an advertiser is unwilling to take the risk associated with traditional advertising, he or she will also miss out on the potential benefits. What some advertisers don't understand, and what they need to be educated about, is that if we as publishers want to sell ads on a CPA basis, we'll go out and find the affiliate program that best matches our ezine's audience rather than accepting CPA ads from potential sponsors. We'll then be able to promote that program at our leisure in unsold ad spots, and not worry about delivering a pre-defined number of clicks or actions to an advertiser.
Marketers looking to only spend money on a CPA basis have a number of options available.
But CPA and CPC marketing have their limitations as well, most notably the lack of enough inventory to give every marketer all the traffic or sales they would ever want. It's when these CPA and CPC solutions don't deliver enough traffic, sales, and branding that marketers have no choice but to look at traditional paid advertising. And email advertising sold on a CPM basis is a great medium for marketers who realize this. In Part II of this series tomorrow, we'll look at how the CPA model can create potential problems for advertisers as well. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.