Why some South African online advertisers suck.

So we’ve been hounded by the pin-stripe wearing, MIB wannabes that tried selling us advertising space on what they claim to be South Africa’s largest *decided not to mention thier name or what they do*

Could smell that they wanted to sell us advertising space for one of our projects but insisted they only wanted to meet with us. This company called us again yesterday trying to get us to buy banner ads on their website. I’ve expereinced the sales pitch many years ago and they only offered CPM. So while they were on the line trying to secure a time to meet with us I asked them the following: “Last time, your company only offered CPM. Do you offer CPC or even CPA becuase that will be the only way we will consider advertising on *******?”

Before continuing, heres a few quick definitions of CPA, CPC & CPM:

CPM: Paid advertising by which the advertiser is billed based on the number of times an ad is seen by a consumer, regardless of the consumer’s subsequent action. Most graphical online advertising, and nearly all offline advertising, is sold on some kind of CPM basis. The M in CPM is Latin for “one-thousand.”

CPA: online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

CPC: When referring to banner ads, CPC is the cost the advertiser pays to the site publisher each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser’s ad.

“What is CPC?”, the online advertising sales person asked.

With that I hung up the phone. Why do some South African online advertisers suck? They still operate in the pre-bubble internet world of 1999. C’mon guys. I’d refer you to wikipedia for some free education but might just cause an information overload.

Before selling ice to eskimos, learn their language.

Quirk have some free resources available: Emarketing 101 & a buzzword bible they like to call the emarketng glossary. Once you’ve gotten your head aroud that and you’ve just about thought you’ve learnt enough and are ready to call… There’s more. Gino Cosme has compiled Social Media: A Free Introductory Guide for Marketers.

If you ever want to sell advertising space to a Web AddiCT, read that before you call.

[update]

A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.

The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.

Maybe they should read this too
[/update]