Publishers try to upend current digital ad model

[Bob Cook]

Instead of cost per pageview, or cost per click, it's cost per amount of time the ad appears:

http://adage.com/article/media/digital-advertising-ready-ditch-click/295143/

The idea is that if you can make time the premium, then you can charge more.

 

[LongTimeListener]

But wait -- the revenue model isn't working? Some people on the AP Twitter thread call bull****.

 

[MisterCreosote]

It would be partially based on how much time the ad is posted for, and partly on how much time users spend on a page, right? The second part could be a little tricky.

 

[Songbird]

Interesting article that's probably a bit too long (as I'm still reading) but this is an interesting nugget:

Using technology from Chartbeat, the Financial Times starts its timer when at least 50% of an ad has appeared on screen for five seconds. "Any time an ad is on screen for five seconds or more it goes into a pot of one hour," Mr. Slade said. If a reader scrolls or clicks away from the ad before five seconds have passed, the time doesn't count toward the hour of time an advertiser has bought.

The Web (desktop and mobile) is about user impatience. Even if you give me a reason to click (on Facebook or Twitter or Vox or Trentonian.com or BuzzFeed or Rimjobs.lick etc etc), you have so little precious time to keep my attention on the content (let alone seeing the ads, which I'll never ever click) because time is of the essence when I'm trying to scroll the entire Internet

 

[Songbird]

But what I *will* do is share content I like. Maybe the emphasis should be on sharing content so that you can get those 5-second eyeballs.

Then again, #ONA14 spent a chunk of time trying to figure out the whole "viral" thing without much success.

Because at this point I gloss over the "MOST AMAZING THING YOU EVER SAW!" headlines having been duped into clicking only to be disappointed.

 

[DeskMonkey1]

I remember back in the dark ages of the 1990s, there was a toolbar that would pay you to let it flash ads while you surfed the net. The pay was atrociously low (may likely have even been a scam, a vehicle to get malware onto your machine) but when I was in full desperation mode (think one step away from homelessness) I considered it and even read the TOS. Apparently, the time didn't count if your screen was kept static, which implied you had left the keyboard and just left the toolbar up to drain the clock.