Sedo Flags Possible Changes In Advertising Provisions
August 23, 7 Comments - Author: Simon Johnson
Early this morning I received an email from Sedo regarding possible changes to the way their “primary advertising provider” monetizes Sedo parking pages.
I’m going to take a wild guess here (I could be wrong) and say that “primary advertising provider” is code for Google, although Sedo does not mention the name of their “primary advertising provider” anywhere in the email.
Here is a brief extract:
“Based on current discussions it is possible that our ad provider will cease its provision of advertising to URL-parked pages and in consequence only support DNS parked domains.
This step is considered by the online advertising provider in response to advertiser feedback and would affect all URL-parking customers at all parking companies worldwide that share this advertising provider.
This change could happen in the near future (potentially as early as the fourth quarter of 2010) and we wanted you to have this information in advance to take into account for your internal planning.“
What’s The Issue?
Let me cut through the spin and give you some context:
1. Traffic aggregators such as Park Logic, KeyRPM & Above use URL forwarding (amongst other techniques) to send traffic to multiple parking companies. URL forwarding allows them to quickly point the domain somewhere else, and therefore identify who is paying the most for a particular keyword. This is essentially an arbitrage opportunity. The problem for both the advertisers and parking companies, is that it makes their traffic numbers (and therefore their revenue line) less predictable.
2. There is certainly “no love lost” between parking companies, traffic aggregators and ad companies like Google. Yahoo. All of them take a slice of the parking pie!
What Does This Mean For Me?
Given the current environment, its a bit of a strange strategy for a “primary advertising provider” to undertake. It seems like its a demand, eg: “you are either with us or against us”.
Here is the bottom line, if you use traffic aggregators, you better make sure they support changing DNS (nameservers), so that you can still use parking companies that rely on the Google advertising feed (such as Sedo). For those that use KeyRPM or Park Logic, you are fine (they support changing nameservers) and I confirmed this with both companies today.
For the record, I have tried to contact Sedo for a comment and will update this post if/when I hear back.
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Facebook comments:
Dang this captcha….
This is bad news for traffic aggregators that have to use their own DNS to point traffic to parking companies during time-slice testing. But the real reason is click fraud, already a pandemic with Google, which is the main provider at Sedo as far as I am aware of.
…to continue: By using their own DNS, Sedo eliminates part of the click fraud problem as it’s easier to identify fraudulent clicks that occur on the Sedo nameservers than from forwarded URL traffic. It actually makes a lot of sense.
Hi Acro. I’ll do a special κώδικας for you.
Why would it help identify click fraud? The referrer in an access_log perhaps?
Google wants things in “order” and they define their rules of the game. Obviously, click fraud produces substantial loss for the ad providers and the industry. The more defined and orderly a process is, the better it can be monitored and managed. I would be surprised if the reasons are different.
DNS solves a few problems. But the most important is that domains have to really exist. Most people would be surprised how many people try to send traffic from domains they don’t own or that don’t even exist.
Sorry to say, SEDO parking revenues suck. The pay pennies…
I’ll have to disagree with Bruce; it’s all a matter of whether your traffic converts or not. While PPC fluctuates, Sedo’s rates by far are among the highest.