How to Make It Work

Pay per view, or Cost Per View (CPV) is an alternative paid traffic technique than its cousin Pay Per Click (PPC).    You basically sign up with a CPV agency online as an advertiser (note:  when you drive traffic as an affiliate marketer in any capacity other than CPV, you are known as a Publisher; the merchants whose products you are trying to sell are the Advertisers).

Ok, so how does CPV work?  This is basically Adware we’re talking about.  Don’t confuse Adware with Spyware.  In Adware, the person purposefully downloads and installs the Adware on his computer in exchange for something, such as free video games, free screensavers, free smileys, premium content, and so on.  The catch is, that in order to access their free services they agree to let the Adware application serve advertisements (pop ups, pop unders) on their computer while they are browsing the internet.   A CPV Affiliate is a person who has his own Adware, and advertises it on the internet.  The CPV agency then serves ads through its affiliates’ Adware application.

And how does the CPV agency know what ads to serve to a particular internet browser (user) who has the Adware installed?  Well, the ads can be triggered by keywords that the user searches for in any search engine, or they can be triggered by a website URL that the user is visiting.

You as the CPV advertiser, set up a campaign that is either a keyword based or URL based campaign.  Let’s say you set up a keyword CPV campaign.  Here are the steps:

(First sign up for a CPV agency like Direct CPV and Media Traffic.  You will first have to fund your account using a credit card, usually $100 minimum.)

1.  Find a good affiliate offer (any CPA agency like Commission Junction, Clickbooth, Pepperjam, Shareasale; or any ClickBank product, or anything else).

2.  Compile a bunch of keywords related to your chosen offer.  Use Google’s keyword tool to quickly come up with some good keywords.

3.  Enter the keywords in your account.

4.  Set up your minimum and maximum PPV bids (CPV is much lower than PPC, as low as $.01 a click), and maximum spend per day.  Many CPV agencies will allow you to see where your bid falls and what rank you will be for each keyword you are bidding on so that you can increase/decrease it appropriately.  Generally, the top four bids for a keyword will have their ads rotated, with the highest bidder obviously getting the most views.

5.  You’ll need to have a landing page URL (the ad that will pop up when one of your keywords triggers it on someone’s computer), so make one and insert the affiliate link (you can also direct link to the affiliate offer, as long as it meets the guidelines).

6.  Save your campaign, and keep track of your stats.

I’ve been running campaigns on Direct CPV (an exercise equipment, iPad offer, stop smoking, and debt relief) for a couple of weeks, and I have to say the results have been disappointing.  Yes, a lot of the clicks are only $.01 but you get what you pay for.  My belief is that the CPV traffic is only as good as the Adware applications that it serves through.  Remember, these people who have the Adware installed may have a severe case of ad blindness as their main intent is to access the free services.  I’ve gotten thousands of impressions, with no clicks on my ad.  I am going to try another CPV agency and see how it goes there.

Don’t let this discourage you; there are some people making money on the cheap traffic available through CPV.  Try a couple of campaigns in different niches; play with the bid amounts, keywords and URLs; try different CPV agencies and see if you hit some luck.