Recently, I received an offer for Pay Per Play advertising. If you haven’t heard of it, in a nutshell it is a 5 second audio commercial that will play each time a visitor hits your site. You will get paid for every visitor to your website, 100% conversion with nothing to do and nothing to click.

To me, this concept is huge. TV and Radio have been doing this to us for years, whether or not we want to hear an advertisement, it is presented to us. The big corporate giants have been branding themselves this way on TV and radio for a millennium. Sure you can change the channel to avoid an advertisement, but; you have already heard the sponsors message. I get up and leave the room when the commercial stretch comes on during a program I’m watching. I have commented to my wife on numerous occasions that there are way too commercials during my favorite shows. Pay Per Play is different though; it’s a one shot, 5 second clip. It’s here and then it’s gone. It doesn’t play over and over and there is never more than one. If a major advertiser wants to throw me a few pennies to say their name on my website, more power to them. To me, it’s all upside for the website owner; or so I thought. I went to the site and read everything I could find and my conclusion at the end of my research was favorable. Then I did a search on Pay Per Play on the search engines. What was a solid decision in the beginning became a bit unsteady; but for me, I believe the scale still tips toward Pay Per Play being a good addition to a website. I found that across the web, Pay Per Play is being met with mixed emotions. Pay Per Play is not scheduled to go live until February 1st, 2008 so everything is speculation about it’s debut and further it’s efficacy to publishers and advertisers alike. Some believe Pay Per Play will rival Google AdSense for revenue to it’s publishers. Others are not so sure, in fact many netizens have come right out against such an unwanted intrusion and vowed to immediately leave a website if such an audio message is played over their speakers. I also found that there is some dirt being thrown about the company that has brought the concept to market. To mention them here is not appropriate; but due diligence is warranted if you think Pay Per Play is a good opportunity for your sites. As with any new opportunity, the people that come to the table have histories of successful and not so successful ventures and there seems to be some bad blood regarding a previous affiliate program. If I were being asked to lay down a large amount of cash here, I might have some reservations and be inclined to do more research before moving forward.

With Pay Per Play as it is, there is no upfront cost, so to me the company and the players will start with a clean slate; but I will keep a keen eye to make sure everything stays on the up and up. This opportunity seems to be profound. I have often compared the internet to the California Gold Rush in the 1800’s. Many, many affiliate marketers that were lucky enough to get in before the Dot Com crash had the opportunity to mine the easy gold and make huge piles of cash with not a lot of effort. Fast forward to today and the rest of us show up and find there is real money still left to be made; but it will require rolling up our sleeves and working harder and smarter to find the gold. Ahh and be ever cautious of the fools gold! In the gold rush days, many a fortune were lost on Fools Gold. So that begs the question, is Pay Per Play a new found gold mine or is it fools gold? Will it rival Google AdSense? The jury is still out on the answer; but somebody, somewhere will stumble onto the next big internet wave.