Joe Levi:
a cross-discipline, multi-dimensional problem solver who thinks outside the box – but within reality™

Audio Ads

The web has been transformed from static hypertext to CSS styled pages, and it now undergoing a multimedia revolution. Audio and video are commonplace on the web — just look at runaway success of YouTube if you don’t believe me.

Hosting content on the web takes money, even my little corner of the web ends up costing me around $150 per year in hard costs alone. Once you factor in domain registration, email and web hosting, and any traffic overages that I have to pay — and that’s just hard costs, I’m not factoring in how much time I put in to maintaining code and writing articles and reviews.

I’m not alone, every other website out there has costs associated with it as well. YouTube’s costs are HUGE due to the massive amount of storage space, servers, and especially bandwidth needed just to offer their service. How do they do it? Well, certainly not for free. They charge their visitors every time they view a page. What? You’ve never had to send a check to YouTube? Well, not exactly — you’ve looked at their ads. Their advertisers pay them to post (and link) ads on relevant videos. Since YouTube has such a huge viewer-base, they can charge advertisers just for using the space — us little fish in the pond only get paid when someone clicks on an ad.

Do online ads work?

I don’t make enough money though the ads on my site to break even. While that’s not a true test of the success (or failure) of online ads, it’s indicative of a problem that us little guys face.

It’s there another way?

Television and radio make their money from advertisers, too. But watchers/listeners can’t "click" an TV or radio spot, right? They’re more like YouTube, which gets paid just for posting an ad.

So, since traditional online ads don’t work (or don’t work well), is there a way us little guys and earn from every visitor to our site?

Why not combine the new multimedia nature of the web with advertisements? That’s what NetAudioAds has done.

How does it work?

A web publisher first signs up with the NetAudioAds service, agree’s to their TOS, and embeds the NetAudioAds code fragment on their website(s).

When a visitor visits your site they hear a five second audio ad, similar to the commercials that you hear on the radio between your favorite TV shows (if the writer’s strike ever ends).

First Impressions

Does it work well? Well, the signup process has you submit all of your personal information (name, phone number, email address, home address, website address, etc.), they don’t ask you for your TIN or SSN (luckily) noting instead that if your payout is more than $575/year that you must fax them a W9 form (which DOES as for your TIN/SSN).

Pay-outs can be made via mailed check, PayPal deposit, or direct deposits into a couple partner-banks. It should be noted that paid advertising isn’t happening now, but is said to begin in February, 2008.

Like most advertisers, a confirmation email is sent to the address that you provided during the signup process. This usually includes a verification or activation link that, when clicked, will take you to the next step in the process (which is probably where to get and how to install the "NetAudioAds code fragment" mentioned above.

Why do I say "usually" or "probably"? That’s as far as I got in the process. I’m still waiting for the email to arrive (nope, not even in my junk mail box). So, as soon as that eventually gets here, I’ll update you on how the rest of the process goes.

Second Impressions

I finally got the email, it lists my referral code (you get paid for those that sign up beneath you, so "get in on the bottom floor" messages plaster the site), and links me to my dashboard where I can get the JavaScript to add to my pages. This is what is looks like:

   1:  <script type="text/javascript"> 
   2:  naa_siteid="1204804085"; naa_sitename="www.JoeLevi.com"; naa_test="no";
   3:  </script>
   4:  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://aa.voice2page.com/naa_1x1.js"></script>

I didn’t see any options for a SSL (https://) version of the code. The dashboard design (UI/UX) is pretty rough around the edges.

Even after adding the code snippet to my site, I’m met with the following message in my dashboard:

There are NO URLs listed for this account

WARNING

NONE of your URLs are generating traffic.

I’ve emailed their support crew, but I am willing to bet this is because "We are STILL making extensive database changes Monday and Tuesday. Your website hits and URL list will not be correct until this is completed. We will advise everyone once we are done!"

Looks like I’ll come back with third and fourth impressions within the next few days.

UPDATE: Wow, tech support is really fast. I send off my message and within 5 minutes I had a response back… Looks like I was right, they are updating databases right now, so that message is to be expected. I’ll check back in a couple days and let you know how it’s going.

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