Crowdsourcing PPC Ads
Daniel Neville
Crowdsourcing and Search Engine Marketing are, in my humble opinion, two of the coolest things known to man. Thus, it seemed only logical that they would at some point converge and create a cocktail of pure awesomeness. Thanks to the savvy peeps at Trada, that time has now arrived.
Basically, much in the way that Idea Bounty does, Trada’s PPC crowdsourcing project holds much promise for both advertisers and professionals. In theory, corporations get access to a huge pool of talent at a relatively low price, and marketers get to work on their own terms and are handsomely rewarded for their successes.
It’s early days yet, and it’s hard to gauge just how successful the venture has been, but it’s certainly exciting. Although, with that said, there are a couple of potential pitfalls that demand consideration. Firstly, unlike crowdsourcing in the Idea Bounty vein, agencies are required to put money on the line before any work has been done. There’s no offering up a reward and waiting for the concepts to roll in – pay-per-click calls for investment from the word go, and money spent poorly is money wasted.
Trada’s selection process needs to be extremely stringent, and, even then, there’s always the off chance that they’ll end up with a candidate ill suited to the job.
I’m not sure what their exact approach is, but for this reason it would be best advised that they start very small and build from there – only moving onto the big fish once they have a database of proven professionals to call upon. Once they’re in the position to do this, honestly, the sky’s the limit. Whether or not they get there depends largely on how well they manage the program in the short term, but, either way, it will be very interesting to see things play out. What do think of Trada and their application of Crowdsourcing to PPC ads?
Comments
Thanks Dan.
It's certainly intriguing.
Right now it represents a potential goldmine to PPC marketers, but if Trada aren't careful they could end up with a lot of disgruntled clients.
Definitely one to keen an eye on.
I like the idea but one concern is that the rewards for the PPC manager appear to be based on clicks generated and not sales from the click.
How will Trada monitor and prevent potential click fraud abuse and what would happen if unfortunately it did happen ?
It will be good to see their policy on this.
Nah, as it states in the image above, campaign managers will be evaluated on either clicks or conversions depending on the nature of the campaign.
Any other approach and they'd be committing business suicide. ;)
Click fraud could come into play for campaigns judged solely on click performance, but Trada's selection process should prevent this. If they're careful to only select marketers with a proven track record, participants will be more concerned with upholding their reputation than making a few extra bucks through insidious means.
Isn't this affiliate marketing by a different name? Only less controlled...
Dan on 10/11/2009
Very interesting move - but also very risky. My immediate reaction was... "sweet what a cool idea" but the more I think about it the more problems with their model (some of which you have pointed out) I see.
Its going to be seriously interesting to see how this one plays out - personally im keen to know which companies are using the service already.
I have a feeling this would be an awesome way for guys already involved in running PPC campaigns to make some extra cash on the side... especially if they know what they are doing.
Awesome post Tim.