An alternative to google adsense
projectwonderful.com
projectwonderful.com
Personally, I think the auction model project wonderful uses works fairly well
http://www.projectwonderful.com/abouttheinfiniteauction.php
it's not perfect, nothing ever is, but I think it meets my needs (and resists fraud) better than either the cost per click or cost per impression model.
that, and I think the time-based auction model is less vulnerable to fraud than charging on total impressions or clickthroughs. Hopefully other ad networks will copy that model.
Here we are fully in agreement.
It's just that if you have a site that has (tens of) millions of impressions per day that it can be quite hard to get that inventory sold, and the ad delivery network will have to be able to keep up with the demands such sites make on its infrastructure.
If I have some time next week I think I'll set up a trial account with them and see how well it performs as compared with adsense on the same body of traffic.
But that's not what you are asking. I don't have a direct financial interest in this; but as someone who buys ads, I do hope that more sites use the 'time based auction' model of advertising, as it fits well with the way I advertise. See, when I buy advertising, I want to say "Hey, look, I exist" I think my prices provide a compelling argument to research my company further, and I think that many people who need what I'm selling, upon researching my company, will find me to be a good value (or at least worth a try.) I don't expect people to click through a banner ad and buy what I am selling during that session.
Also, I want to make the point that google is not the only choice in this market. Without competition, google will stagnate like any other monopoly. (Or maybe I am just cheesed at google because they bought dejanews, but no longer allow you to search much of the historical NNTP archive. )
And look I gave you chance to enlarge your point, that's good isn't it.
One of these days, though, once I get myself setup with some cheap storage, I'm going to start archiving non-binary NNTP groups, and setup historical NNTP search. nntp-> email gateways, I think, are also one of the better ways of making mailing lists searchable.