There is an alarming level of frugality amongst internet marketing specialists and online advertisers, one that has only increased since the last major recession took grip. Once accommodating advertising budgets took a severe hit, previously unshakable marketing methods have become difficult to justify, and comfortable per-click costs have been tightened to the point of impossibility.
This has led to two alarming results:
1. A distinct lack of big-budget internet marketing specialists and online advertisers to fill webmaster inventory; and
2. A sea of ultra-cheap individual advertisers and affiliates.
Some of the websites that were once packed with advertising space are now left with bottom-of-the-barrel partners, filling space for pennies on the dollar, and ultimately ruining any long-term possibility.
As tempting as it may be to join the pack of low-cost advertisers, there are real, worthwhile, and quite important reasons not to. Internet marketing specialists and online advertisers with distinct focus on the long term should be familiar the following realities before starting a low-cost traffic generation campaign or even considering the option to buy web traffic:
Three Reasons you should never buy Cheap Web Traffic
Cheap PPC Advertising Options as Left-Over Inventory
There are thousands of blog networks out there, each offering advertising inventory at a fraction of its previous standard price. Lucrative CPM deals have disappeared and have been replaced with desperate website space and inexpensive advertising spots.
The problem with these advertising placements is not the rate assigned to them or the website selling them, but their positioning and on-page placement. It is generally expected that internet marketing specialists and online advertisers that pay the lowest possible per-click rate end up seeing their advertisements placed in an area where accidental clicks are frequent or almost invisible on the page. They may even be plastered alongside a competitor’s message.
Cheap Web Traffic Sources as Auto-Surfers and Transition Pages
Auto-surfing is an unfortunate reality for internet marketing specialists and online advertisers. It is one that has grown significantly more common over the last five years. Shady entrepreneurs have created websites where users are paid for every indexed and loaded page, leading to a flood of useless web traffic for marketers and an immense drain on precious server resources.
Before internet marketing specialists and online advertisers avail of any ultra-cheap web traffic deal, they should ensure that it is from a company that is not involved with auto-surf communities. If advertisers end up dealing with one of such companies, their web traffic will not only fail to convert and cause a major branding risk, but also likely cripple their servers due to the large number of scripts it requires to handle zero-value web traffic.
Cheap Cost-per-Thousand Advertising Packages as Misleading Options
Facebook recently surprised the direct response marketing community with their new advertising policies. Cost-per-thousand display advertisements – known to some internet marketing specialists and online advertisers as CPM ads – are to be placed in less popular locations as part of an effort to promote long-term branding efforts and encourage major advertisers.
The move caused instant backlash and led to a slight revision to the industry’s perception of cost-per-thousand advertising. With a number of leading advertising platforms assigning the worst placements to cost-per-thousand advertisements, it could be worth re-examining whether an inexpensive branding-based pricing model is worth the associated performance drop.
Not all cheap web traffic generation deals are bad but it is always worthwhile to examine the methods to be used before availing of such packages. If the methods are not disclosed, such deals are best avoided.
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