CPC, CPM, CPA, CTR, Conv... what does it all mean?

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CPC - Cost Per Click - online advertising pricing method whereby the advertiser pays for each click on their advertisement. For example: $0.05 CPC or 5 cents per click. Note: GAO operates on CPC basis but does not charge advertisers for multiple clicks on the same advertisement by the same visitor in a 24 hour period.

CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions (1000 impressions is represented by roman numeral M) - online advertising pricing method whereby the advertiser pays for each thousand ad views / impressions of their advertisement. For example: $1 CPM or $1 per 1000 impressions.

CPA - Cost Per Action - online advertising pricing method whereby the advertiser pays for each action (for example player signup or game client download) resulting from their advertisement. For example: $1 CPA or $1 per action.

CTR - Click Through Ratio - the percentage of ad views / impressions that result in a click. For example: 1000 impressions that generated 10 clicks is 1% CTR. The most common CTR values are between 0.2% and 2%.

Conv - Conversion Ratio - the percentage of clicks that result in an action (for example player signup or game client download). For example: 100 clicks that generated 75 actions is 75% Conversion Ratio.

Which payment methods are available on GAO?

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GAO operates on a pre-payment basis. Pre-paid funds are added to the client's advertiser account balance. The cost of each valid click delivered to the client is deducted from the client's advertiser account balance in real time.

PayPal, as well as all major credit cards are securely accepted (select the "Don't have a PayPal Account" option in the PayPal payment gateway to pay using a credit card). We also accept bank wire transfers. Advertising account top-ups can be made at any time. Unused account balance does not expire and can be refunded with no questions asked.

The minimum payment amount is 50 US Dollars.

GAO publishers are entitled to +20% bonus to all funds converted from publisher earnings to advertiser account credit.

Does GAO charge for repeated clicks?

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GAO incorporates duplicate click protection to prevent click fraud and to make sure that advertisers are not charged for repeated clicks: if the same site visitor clicks the same ad multiple times during a 24 hour period, it will only be tracked as 1 click.

What is the GAO Action tracking System?

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To make tracking your campaigns at GAO as easy and comprehensive as possible, we've developed the GAO Action Tracking System alongside with full simultaneous support for your own internal tracking devices.

GAO Action Tracking System allows you to track how many of the clicks from your GAO ad campaign reach a specific page within your web site, such the game download page, the registration success page, or the e-mail validation success page. All you need to do is add the GAO ATS hidden image code to the page of your site, loading of which will be considered an action. You can find the code in the Profile page of your advertiser account after making the initial deposit. Each time this code is triggered, GAO ATS will check the IP of the visitor who triggered it against the last 48 hours of your campaign's click-through records. If the click record with matching IP is found, an action will be counted for the relevant advertisement, and the record marked as actioned. This will instantly reflect on your real time statistics report.

GAO ATS is useful for measuring the immediate responses such as click-throughs to the download confirmation page, completed signup forms or e-mail validations, and integrates this information into your GAO real-time statistics report, enabling you to compare which GAO sites have the best conversion ratios, which of your banners produce the best CPA, etc. It is important to note that if the visitor's IP changes between the click-through and the action (for example due to dial-up re-connection), GAO ATS will not be able to track the action. Another scenario of untracked action is if the visitor bookmarks the page and completes the action more than 48 hours later, which is most often the case with transactions involving money. For tracking orders, purchases or long-term revenue generated from signups, use of your own internal tracking system is required.

Setting up your internal tracking system to measure effectiveness of your GAO campaign is easy. First of all the common mistake of using http_referrer must be avoided - this parameter is optionally handled by the visitor's web browser and is therefore unreliable for tracking. The reliable method relies on custom landing URL/s - visitors from GAO can be sent to a specific page of your web site (ex: www.site.com/index.php?ref=gao), so that your scripts can easily recognize that every visitor who lands on that page comes from the GAO campaign. To make your internal tracking more detailed, we can assign a unique landing URL to each banner in your account, and even to any specific banner/site combination. To set this up just e-mail us the list of landing URLs and the list of banners/sites they should be assigned to.

For the technically minded, here's the GAO ATS logic when same advertiser's multiple banners are clicked by same IP within 48 hours. If an IP triggers an action after having clicked through two or more of your advertiser account's ads in the last 48 hours, the action will be considered to have resulted from the the most recent of those clicks. If the visitor then triggers your action tracking code again, either by reloading the page or by completing the action for your other advertisement, the action will be recorded for next most recent click by that IP, etc, until all clicks on your GAO ads by that IP in the last 48 hours have been marked as actioned. This logic is designed to simplify integration and minimize tracking discrepancies, but may result in a small percentage of action attribution error when running multiple ad campaigns on the same web sites at the same time.

Note: GAO ATS attributes each action to the day when its parent click was made. For example: click was made yesterday, action from it occurred today - action will be added to yesterday's actions total.

How does the bidding system work?

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When launched on a new ad zone, a banner will be marked as "new" and needs to run through 10,000 views before being assigned a display chance. Display chance represents the chance that this banner has of being displayed on this ad zone. For example: display chance of 25% means that this banner will be displayed approximately 25 times out of every 100 banner views on this ad zone, with approximately 75 views out of every 100 allocated to all other banners currently running on this ad zone.

Banners in each ad zone are ranked in real time according to their eCPM. eCPM = Click-Through Rate * Cost Per Click Bid. Banner with the highest eCPM will have the highest display chance, followed by the banner with next highest eCPM, etc, with lowest eCPM banner having the lowest display chance. Display chance is therefore relative to other ads currently in rotation on a specific ad zone, and may fluctuate according to "market forces".

To increase your banner's display chance you can increase its CPC bid. Green color in the display chance column indicates that your display chance is already the best or very good and therefore you don't need to bid higher. Yellow indicates that your display chance is average. Red indicates that your display chance is low and you can probably get a lot more traffic by bidding one, two or three cents higher.

Remember that with attractive banner design your banner will get a high Click-Through Rate and you will not need to bid as much to get high display chances. This way designing good banners pays off in the long run. Not sure what makes banners attractive? Visit the web sites that you wish to advertise on and look at the ads that display most often on their pages for inspiration.

What kind of banners can GAO run?

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Dimensions: 728x90, 468x60, 120x600, 160x600, 300x250, 125x125.
File Types: GIF, JPG, PNG, SWF. Size limit is 60,000 bytes, except for 125x125 limited to 40,000 bytes.
Content: Game/entertainment related. No pimping games. No MMO gold/item/leveling services. No gambling.
Restrictions: No extreme animation / strong flashing / visual irritation. No vulgarity / nudity / graphic violence.
Rich Media: Streaming video banners and rich media banners are accepted, subject to approval.

SWF banners must have the below action script assigned to the button object/overlay clicking which must send the visitor to advertiser's site. No changes must be made to this code. The banner must contain no click-through URLs.

on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
getURL(clickTAG,"_blank"); } }

Step-by-step clickTAG guide: http://www.adobe.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/designers_guide/
Another clickTAG tutorial (use the clickTAG code above): http://www.nytimes.com/ads/onclick.html

Can skill-based gaming services be advertised on GAO?

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If your gaming service takes money bets or bids from players in order to provide prize/s to the winner/s, and the distribution of the prize/s depends purely on game skill of player/s involved and not in any way on chance or external factors, then your gaming service is purely skill-based and can be advertised on GAO.

If there's chance or factors external to the game involved in distribution of prize/s accumulated from player bets or bids, then your gaming service is most likely classified as gambling and cannot be advertised on GAO.

Why does my advertiser balance drop slightly below 0?

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As your account balance approaches zero, GAO will gradually reduce the frequency of your banners displaying on their respective web sites. Once your account balance reaches zero, no more of your ads will be served to site visitors. However, visitors who loaded the page with your advertisement on it before your balance hit zero may still click your ad. The cost of these valid clicks will be deducted and your account balance may go slightly below zero. This negative balance (typically less than 50 cents for small ad runs) will be taken out of your next payment.

My ad is ranked 'new' and has 0 views, why is it not running?

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If your ad doesn't seem to be displaying on a specific web site - 0 views and ranked as 'new' - this means that the ad zone is not currently running. There maybe be few reasons for this: publisher hasn't placed the GAO ad code on their web site yet, the zone may be temporarily on hold, or the publisher may have removed the GAO ad code without notifying us. You are always welcome to contact us about it and we'll tell you when/whether the ad zone is likely to be running again. Most zones in the GAO system are active and should begin displaying your ad immediately.

How is each site's min CPC bid decided? Can it be changed?

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The minimum bid price for every web site is set by the network according to the following factors: site type, popularity, profile, type of traffic and banner placement. Global factors include network's current and projected ad sales and pricing on other similar web sites in the network. The minimum bid price on a given site or category of sites may be changed by the network if there is a long-term change in these conditions, but generally will not be changed when publisher's request does not involve consideration for the bigger picture. In other words, our aim is to collectively remain sustainable and profitable in the long run as a network of sites.

The common misunderstanding is that increasing the minimum bid price is certain to increase the income. Often it is not the case because increased price leads to reduced number of advertisements, which means reduced CTR and often even lower eCPM than before. Being in the low price bracket has the advantage of having the most banners in rotation (maximum CTR and good eCPM) even in periods when the advertising market is quiet.

GAO system is dynamic - given high demand for a specific website, advertisers will be faced with the decision either to suffer reduced exposure on this website or to increase their CPC bid. This allows the CPC price on every web site in the network to grow naturally according to demand.