The Seth Godin Tip Jar

Seth Godin wrote an interesting post today that sparked some debate within a networking group that I belong to.

Since I honor the “what is said on the list stays on the list,” I can’t bring you the whole discussion. Suffice it to say the debate was about whether or not what Seth was encouraging was click fraud or not. Just for fun on a Friday afternoon, I decided to take the contrary point of view, and I’m going to share it with you here. Its worth some consideration.

I’ll bite on the controversial point of view.

I’m a bit amazed that he didn’t get into more specifics, since CPM based advertising provides the content producers with some revenue whether the user clicks or not. Maybe the “tip jar” analogy doesn’t work for everyone, but people should thank the advertisers for bringing us all this great, free content. All we’re really asking for is the user to give our clients a little consideration when they are making their next purchasing decisions.

As a staunch defender of pre-roll, I often find myself explaining a contrary point of view. As (I hope) most of you saw, there were three independent pieces that came out in support of pre-roll this week. Tremor (self interest disclosed right here), Break/Panache, and Nate Elliott’s report for Jupiter. We all understand that there is a value exchange that has to take place in order for our business to survive. Sure we want to squeeze every last bit of performance out of our advertising and marketing efforts, but at the end of the day, someone or something has to pay to produce that content. We work in an ad-supported industry. So don’t the ads actually have to support the industry somehow?

When I see a pre-roll (reasonably targeted, appropriate length for the content, but not the point of this discussion) that “presents” or “sponsors” or otherwise enables me to get the content that I want for free, I say “Thank you” in my head, because the alternative is paying for it. Do most of us buy the NY Times at the newstand or read it for free online? Thought so.

Seth didn’t get into enough detail to make a strong case for “saying thanks” vs click fraud, and thats a shame. While display and text ads are much easier to avoid, tune out, or not engage with than video ads are, without clicking, we’d all need to go back to a straight CPM based pricing model to ensure that revenue moves into the hands of content producers. If content providers and producers dont get paid, then what we have is a hobby and not a business.

Performance based pricing models put the pressure on all of us to make our advertising really work, and that is certainly a good thing. But doing whatever it takes to ensure that people can continue to bring us the content that we want for the price we want to pay (read: nothing), then the tip-jar-click shouldn’t really be considered fraud. Advertisers don’t have to pay, and content producers don’t get paid, when we see an ad and it registers and reminds us to buy something in the store over the weekend. Maybe Dynamic Logic can introduce a “pay per brand consideration” pricing model. Again, I’m just taking the other POV for fun this afternoon. Don’t hate me because I pre-roll.

Just to keep the conversation lively, is the idea so different than Radiohead’s “pay whatever you want” to download their last album? The people that liked what they got said thanks by paying for it. Comscore reported that 38% of the people who downloaded the album paid for it at an average of about $8.

I’m well aware that we’re talking aout paying directly for the content vs. forcing an advertiser to pony up for someone elses product, but is it really “click fraud” or just the natural course of events of the business model we operate in? Maybe Seth – or all of us, for that matter – should just slap a PayPal button on every article and allow the money to flow straight to the publishers. Whatever happened to that micropayment concept anyway?