Cheap Traffic Grabs #1: Buying traffic (this one’s not so cheap)
I recently read a piece on Cnet about a failed music start up called SpiralFrog (shocking name!). The site was touted as an iTunes killer offering free, legal downloads, fully ad-supported. The site managed to amass 7M unique visitors at its peak using almost entirely search and affiliate marketing to drive traffic. They spent $11M on search and marketing in their final year of operation but only generated $1.1M in revenue (ouch!).
The house of cards collapsed when the funding dried up. Search marketing was turned off and inevitably their traffic fell like a stone to almost nothing. Essentially they legally conned investors, media and advertisers by buying traffic to present a mirage of success. The site had no organic growth, no brand loyalty and its content was not sticky. The visitors simply bounced off it accidentally as they browsed the web and didn’t ‘engage’. This quote from the article says it all “The smoking gun is if the traffic disappears when you stop buying. The idea is not to buy traffic. It’s to generate loyalty.” Andrew Frank, Gartner analyst.
Buying traffic is one of online publishing’s dirty little secrets. SpiralFrog is an extreme example of how you can use bought Google adwords traffic to sell a story built around Total Unique Browsers to advertisers. Although clearly in the case of SpiralFrog, US advertisers saw through the charade.
In Australia the practice is the accepted norm with a recent smh article claiming Google advertising contributes up to 20% of News Limited and Fairfax’s traffic and I suspect in some areas it’s a lot more. It’s like a potent and addictive drug. Once you take the first hit, you can’t stop.
At Sound Alliance we have not succumbed to the ‘me too’ wonder drug that is Google adwords. Our entire Google spend ever amounts to about $3,000. Our growth has been organic with no quick fix, rapid growth spikes, just steady, constant growth fuelled by word of mouth, constant membership growth and investment in content. Our marketing budgets are virtually non-existent.
You might argue that we are missing a trick by not playing the same game. After all we could be adding an extra 20% in traffic if we just sent Google a cheque each month. But we see this as one of our key points of difference from our competitors. The engagement story is all real. There’s no smoke and mirrors.
I’d love to see this important factor considered in media buying decisions. If a site is basically buying most of its traffic what does that really say about the brand, its content and therefore the advertising cut through? I hear stories of some niche sites spending over $60k a month on Google to deliver over half of their traffic. Clearly some advertisers are falling for it without seeing the complete picture.
Audited metrics exist to identify sites that truly engage. I’m optimistic that agencies and advertisers are slowly wising up to these tricks of the trade and using the tools and metrics provided to influence where they commit advertising spends.
5 Responses to “Cheap Traffic Grabs #1: Buying traffic (this one’s not so cheap)”
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The Sound Alliance, Suite 5, 113 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills NSW, 2010
Telephone: +61 2 9282 4000
www.thesoundalliance.net
Photograph by Calum Paton
Great blog post, it is awesome to hear the thoughts from the online publishers side of things. Looking forward to reading more.
Thanks Julian. Appreciate the feedback.
Although we’ve never actually met I’m pretty sure I saw you today at Tommy’s Cafe. I’ll say hi and introduce myself next time.
Hey Neil,
Great post – totally agree with you. At Allure we would have spent a grand total of $3k on SEM in the past 2 years. All our traffic growth is organic and referred. What it’s resulted in is a loyal, engaged and passionate audience that loves the content. You can really tell the difference amongst the media buyes from those that ask what marketing we do to grow traffic (above the line) to those that see the value in a targeted and loyal audience that’s been acquired via a rich content strategy.
Ben
good post … too many digital publishers are simply traffic resellers (or attempting to be) … buying from google and selling the same traffic back at a mark up to advertisers.
file it amongst the dirty secrets of some online publishers.
Cough, the vine.