It s a very inefficient way of generating revenue. More importantly, the real opportunity for revenue is when you re sending traffic to other sites. Ads on Web sites are a very heavily discounted advance on traf- fic. Think about it. I m paying on the hope of banner ads being successful.
Traffic is the real lifeblood of the Web.
We monetize unique visitors. If I send you to one of my partners sites, you can click through any number of times, but we only get credit for the first time you go there. The additional downstream click-throughs are a bonus to the publisher, so we believe there s plenty of incentive for them to be a part of this. Obviously there are only a finite number of first time click-throughs, but I guess we have a long, long way to go before you have to be concerned with that. According to the latest Neilsen Net ratings, the average user goes to only 10 different sites a month, so there are hundreds of thousands of sites most people never get to.