SEM Tycoon

**rex_b** · 07-17-2007, 10:50 PM

Ok so I was reading about how alot of new systems are still moving to Ajax which takes away atleast 2-3 steps with pages to view i.e. pageviews. And advertisers know this.

So since you will be doing multiple tasks on one page with one ad Advertisers are now looking at time of engagement i.e. how long a user stay on a page as payment.

So what do we call this now CPE - Cost Per Engagement and how do we define how long an engagement is?

**BamaStangGuy** · 07-17-2007, 10:58 PM

Interesting. Haven't heard anything about this. Look forward to seeing the responses.

**Mike** · 07-18-2007, 12:22 AM

I'm not familiar with this either, and from the sound of it, I don't think I want to get familiar with it.

**freelancesam** · 07-18-2007, 06:08 AM

it does sound logical...

**DaveB** · 07-18-2007, 10:21 AM

All I know is that COD (Cost of Divorce) is much higher than CPE (Cost Per Engagement). LOL :-)

**LeeD** · 07-18-2007, 10:51 AM

Are there any real world examples of advertisers shifting their determinations in this direction yet? This methodology would seem to give social networks and online communities a great advantage...

**rex_b** · 07-18-2007, 01:02 PM

Indeed it would. And let me remind everyone who came up with this expression CPE.

Don't be stealin!!!

**Frito Pie** · 07-18-2007, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rex_b

Indeed it would. And let me remind everyone who came up with this expression CPE.

Don't be stealin!!!

:lol:

Its an interesting idea. Tell how a community/forum would benefit by this?

**GeorgeB** · 07-18-2007, 09:41 PM

I'll take it a step further and call it CPME

Cost Per Thousand Engagements

**JulieLA** · 07-19-2007, 10:01 AM

I ran across an interesting Business Week article along these lines but I can't post a link.

Go to Business Week's web site and look for the article titled "The Next Small Thing." If Lee or someone wants the link, I can PM it for posting by someone who is allowed.

**LeeD** · 07-19-2007, 10:10 AM

Here is the link: The Next Small Thing

**rex_b** · 07-19-2007, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frito Pie

:lol:

Its an interesting idea. Tell how a community/forum would benefit by this?

Well if your forum is on the latest vB with Ajax enabled you have lost a good number of pageviews. Thus loosing some rev.

With a CPE type of program you could recoop those losses.

**Mike** · 07-19-2007, 09:48 PM

I never really liked dealing with CPM, to be honest. I like to keep it simple and go strictly on a per month basis. It may be outdated, but it is simple

**johniman7** · 07-23-2007, 01:18 PM

Sounds interesting. I think there would be a lot of problems with people leaving pages open for hours. I know when I need to leave I just hit the power on my monitor and my amp and go sometimes leaving 20 tabs open all day.

**JDDunn9** · 07-24-2007, 01:18 AM

Without reading the article, I'd say that it is a pretty fair bet that CPE is not going to affect most of us anytime soon. Sites like MySpace that were built to generate pageviews are used as examples of when CPM fails. That's what companies like Yahoo say anyway.

Companies like Yahoo try to sell advertisers on charging a higher CPM based on the quality over quantity. However, if you're like most of us you just use a 3rd party network and don't deal directly with advertisers, therefore how do you plan on selling your unique value proposition? Stick with CPM unless you're getting enough visitors to get advertisers direct.

**on-on** · 07-24-2007, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee

Are there any real world examples of advertisers shifting their determinations in this direction yet? This methodology would seem to give social networks and online communities a great advantage...

I know Nielsen's implementing it and I've read on Adotas or somewhere that "some networks" "are looking at the metric," but I don't work with anyone who does placements these days, just transactional stuff, so it hasn't hit my radar. It's probably mostly just buzz at this point.

My general guess is that monitoring time spent (and sessions) makes sense given that a site uses all kinds of dynamic fetching, but generally speaking it's going to end up being gamed to death just like visits and pageviews. If they do go with it, in the beginning it should provide a good arbitrage opportunity because it hasn't been gamed to death yet like pageviews/hits/visits have, so the advertisers won't be wise to all the various schemes that online marketers come up with to increase their engagement - or time spent, basically.

While I think there's definitely some good discussion to be had here, a lot of the buzz is just the bLOLosphere looking for some non-original content to post and opine impotently about.

**john546** · 07-25-2007, 05:45 PM

Sites will benefit from it as it will make a page load faster for the end user. I'm not sure about the advertising benefits yet though. The thing is that if someone is playing a game on a site, then they can spend anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours just playing that one game whereas if someone is looking for information where they are more likely to click the ads, they will not be on the page for that long at all.

It's all not going to make much sense in how they can work all this advertising situation out. Maybe it could actually kill CPM altogether.

**junger** · 07-30-2007, 11:47 AM

CPA (cost per action) is the preferred way to describe this "engagement." Whether it's filling out your information or downloading a file, this is the "action" many advertisers are looking for.