Robots and adverts

[Rosco]

Looking for some thoughts and advice on something I've never had much dealings with... web advertising - whether it be paying for number of page impressions/times an advert appears, or PPC campaigns.

What is the impact of search engine robots on these?  I'm assuming rel="nofollow" is used for most so that people aren't paying for 'clicks' (or are they?), but what about advertisers paying for a number of page impressions on a site that is being crawled all the time?

[Rosco]

anyone?

[Mr Anderson]

I would imagine that a well developed ad system would be able to filter by user agent, so common SEs that report who they are can be ignored by the system? And perhaps ignore others with empty user agents? I'd expect that Google would have considered this, and likely others too.

[Rosco]

I would have thought so too.  I've had a client ask me about a claim they read that cost-per-impression schemes were a waste of time because SE robots eat up the quota, and that paying for an ad spot by the month/year is better purely because of this.  I thought it didn't really add up because Adwords wouldn't be very successful if Google were making their own customers squander money... but I thought I'd check it out before offering my opinion, in case it is actually problem/common gripe

[suedenem]

Things to consider:

• Page impressions != advert impressions
• Advert impressions != advert engagement
• Page impressions are counted in different ways, and you should be aware of which measure of impressions is being used. Consider whether the measure counts cached page views, JS dependency, bots and so on
• Banner ads are typically served via JavaScript these days; some bots will follow, some won't
• Even if paying on a monthly subscription basis, the price is still likely to be loosely based upon expected/typical page views (probably rounded up); at least with literally paying per impression you'll have KPI data to base further decisions upon
• CPM models tend to be better for branding/awareness exercises where direct action is not expected.  CPA/CPC models tend to be more appropriate to drive direct action.
• Larger publishers may be ABC audited, which provides a benchmark for measurement

To a certain extent it doesn't matter which costing method you choose, as long as you're aware of all the particularities and take them into account when planning the campaign.  Assuming that your client isn't Nike, start small, tailor the campaign (test different banner ads and landing pages) and then ramp up the spend when you're happy with the ROI.