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We have all heard of pay-per-click (PPC) and have seen it rise to become the primary form of online advertising in the space of only a few years. Most webmasters carry PPC ads on their sites these days, be it Google or any of the other PPC providers such as Yahoo or Miva. But how many people have heard of pay-per-play (PPP) and will it work?

As the name suggests, rather than getting paid for each ad-click, webmasters will get paid for each ad-play. A play consists of a five second ad each time a page is loaded that has the PPP code installed. It is a sound based ad that will be based around brand advertising rather than trying to sell a particular product. If the user stays on the page they will not continue to get ads, it is the just the single five second ad, unless they refresh the page.

The million dollar question though is, will PPP work? Sound can be really irritating for website visitors, especially when they are not expecting it. This in itself might deter some webmasters as it might scare their visitors away. On the other hand, it is only a five second ad and if enough websites adopt it, maybe it will become the norm and people will just get used to it.

As a webmaster myself I can see an immediate opportunity to make some quick cash from PPP via traffic exchanges and in particular, auto traffic exchanges. Most traffic exchanges require a page view for between twenty and thirty seconds and we all know most surfers are simply trying to build up their surfing credits. If I put the code on a page explaining what PPP is, surfers will get an ad alongside an explanation and on an auto traffic exchange that page could easily get hundreds of views per day. Each time an ad plays, I am earning a commission. And there are plenty of traffic exchanges that allow sound, so I can't imagine this will do anything but earn me some bucks.

However, I will still need to be convinced of the risk/reward of putting the PPP code on all my website pages. I'd be really interested to see what other webmasters think about the risk/reward of PPP ads. The risk as I see it is that my visitors will be scared off. The reward is a commission for each ad played. While I intend to take the opportunity of earning some money from the traffic exchange concept, I am not yet ready to dive on in and put the code all over my site.

And what about the advertisers?

Most advertisers looking to promote a brand will be fairly large corporate type advertisers. They will only be attracted by PPP if it is widely adopted by webmasters. They are unlikely to experience the benefit if their ads are primarily being played in traffic exchange type environments. Corporate advertisers will want mainstream coverage. But they will only get mainstream coverage if webmasters are prepared to adopt the concept for the majority of their sites.

We seem to have reached a classic catch 22 scenario.

So are there any other considerations? The website that is currently signing up webmasters for the PPP launch on 1st February 2008 has an Alexa rating of 25000 but a Google page rank of 0. That means some serious marketing is going on behind this program. The website hasn't been around for very long as borne out by their page rank but already they have enough traffic to put them in the top 25000 websites on the internet. Sure, a three tier affiliate program will help but nonetheless, there must be some serious money behind them. Further, they claim to be backed by a major search engine, as yet unnamed.

In short, I am yet to be convinced by PPP and whether it will work over the longer term. However, on the basis that it might work, I'd like to be a part of it. I'd also love to hear the views of other webmasters.