Trends Report: Enter your email to read this article.
by Jay Weintraub
Fifty
Cent - ask the general public what that means, and you'll
hear about this Eminem protégé. Ask people in our industry,
and you’re more likely to hear that it’s the value of an
email address… or at least it used to be.
Not too
long ago, $.50 almost guaranteed an advertiser volume
traffic. Today, that places someone on the low end of the
payout totem pole. Some see the proliferation of the free
prize / gift arena as a relatively new phenomenon. The
existence of this marketing technique; however, predates
many of the people working in the space, but the
proliferation and sheer quantity of advertisers and products
they promote is a much newer occurrence.
In 2003,
the existence of a gift card was a novel idea. Now consumers
(and publishers) have the option of iPods, PS2s, Xboxes, BBQ
Grills, Home Theaters, and more. It feels like a renaissance
in the free gift market, but what really is that market? For
those that see many of these ads but dare not to enter your
address or a fake to see what they are all about, here is a
quick rundown.
While its
policy here at the Confidential not to single out companies,
one deserves a special shout-out, and that is Colonize. They
are, I believe, the innovators of the email address only
site, creating one of today’s major types of such sites, the
registration path. In 2000, they were also among the biggest
media buyers online, so the potential for these uber-direct
marketing sites has existed for several years. It’s a
testament to their success that the banners they helped
pioneer can still be found being recycled now. You have one
message waiting, anyone?
Colonize’s original offer and current ones exemplify the
registration path model they pioneered - its goal, to keep
you previewing offers under the guise that you needed to
reach the end in order to claim that for which you initially
clicked. In addition to the registration path, the second
email only category revolves around those that focus on
items users can earn by completing marketing offers. I call
these the incentive sites or incentivized sites. The third
major type is the hybrid, one that combines the registration
path with the incentivized offers.
The pure
registration path players still exist but the volume, both
in impressions and revenues not to mention hype, comes from
those that have the incentives. The registration path
certainly paved the way for today’s offers and provides that
additional bump in earnings per user that can be elusive for
the incentive only players. Today’s boon did not come from
the existence of the incentive model per se, it was making
the incentive something of such known value that users
couldn’t pass up entering their email. A $125 shopping
spree, while good, sounds somewhat suspect. A $25 to $50
gift card to a known brand sounds pretty tempting and
certainly helped re-launch the free gift genre. But a free
digital camera, iPod or game system, now that was the stroke
of genius. Heck, I’ve almost earned two of my free items.
What
looks too good to be true though often is; that is why
today’s Digital Thoughts reflect on the broader
implications of the proliferation of the free prize sites.
It’s not just the values of the offers that are higher, the
stakes are tougher too. Gone, it seems, almost over night are
the days of $.50 email payouts. Welcome to the dollar days.
That’s a lot of money for a name, and with prices climbing
so high so quickly, some of us wonder where it will go and
how long it will last. There aren’t a lot of tricks to
squeeze out more money per user, not for the foreseeable
future until someone comes up with that next amazing leap.
In the meantime, the publishers will certainly benefit, but
those in the space will be forced to work hard to keep their
traffic and maintain a quantifiable edge over the next Xbox.
Jay Weintraub
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
