The (Minor) Problem with Social Spark CPC Links – Transparency for Bloggers

I’ve previously written up some extensive initial impressions on the SocialSpark CPC system.  I think this has enormous potential both on blogs as well as used on social networks from Twitter to Facebook to Utterli and beyond.  However, it is brand spanking new and needs to grow just a bit.

The problem here with CPC links in Izea is a lack of transparency.  If you think back to what made PayPerPost work in the early days it was the simplicity of the value proposition.  Whether you agreed with that proposition or not it was understandable. 

The advertiser knew exactly what they got and the blogger received immediate gratification for the work (within 30 days).  Things have gotten a lot more complicated on that front over the years, but it has grown on the foundation of that simple business plan.

With CPC there is a lack of transparency for the blogger or social media user that pushes out the link.  If they can not see a report showing why a link is invalid, then they will always question the results.  I hold the suspicion that many of the clicks reported as invalid are invalid. 

ClickForensics, a company that provides the engine behind the SocialSpark system to protect advertisers against click fraud.

However, if the users can not see that they are invalid, they will grumble over the lack of transparency (as they do already in the Izea forums) and that will eventually grow into doubt about the accuracy of the results and then whether or not they are getting ‘ripped off’ somehow. 

I currently do not feel that bloggers or social media users are getting ripped off, but the lack of transparency will foster rumors and complaints in any human based system.

What we need to see in this system is more detail pushed out to the users showing ‘why’ the clicks are invalid.  In general that information would be very valuable to many many users and would help them evolve their blogging and social media practices and that would be very good for business indeed!

ClickForensics must have some data that validates why a click is invalid.  This information needs to be shared with SocialSpark, which needs to add it to the reporting vehicle so that bloggers can drill down and learn why a click did not pay.

You will notice if you dig into the code of this post which includes a real CPC ad from socialspark, that these links DO have rel=”nofollow” tags and there are disclosure requirements that go with these advertising campaigns. (The disclosure badge below is a real example of the disclosure required for a CPC ad offered up in an article like this article).

These campaigns also tend to live by the same rules that applies to all internet advertising.  This is not contextual by default.  So if a blogger includes a link or banner they need to either provide it in a contextual setting that makes sense for their readers, or they need to set up the ad with text or something to explain its presence.  That could be something of a landing page like blog article or even a little snippet of text.

This banner is a real cpc ad for direct advertising.  The banner itself doesn’t exactly set itself up.  So if a blogger provides this link in the vacuum of any other context most readers will have no idea what it is about and probably won’t click on it.  However, if the ad is setup with some information that indicates that this company Martin Worldwide works in Direct Marketing and can provide access to many different types of contacts or lists, the ad makes more sense.