#323: The lasting scars of edutainment

For what they're worth, here are the advertising numbers for the seven-day period July 19 through 25: T.A. Vision, 49 clicks, cost per click 2.15 cents; OnlineComics.net, 153 clicks, cost per click 5.32 cents; Google AdWords, 20 clicks, cost per click 7.85 cents excluding the $10 setup fee; but I think at least 10 of the Google clicks were fraudulent, so that doubles the cost per real click to 15.7 cents. AdWords is supposedly cost-per-click but at a floating rate that means it really behaves more like cost-per-impression; the other two are static ads, i.e. I pay for the amount of time they appear regardless of how many people see the ads or click on them, and I'm calculating cost-per-click for comparison purposes. My current plans are to leave the AdWords campaign in place, but with bids commensurate with what clicks from the others cost, and targeting to avoid the click-fraud hot spots. Under those conditions, and with Google systematically raising their minimum bid demands for all the keywords that have any chance of actually getting impressions, I expect to pay little or nothing to AdWords in the future. I also probably won't renew OnlineComics.net when the ads I've paid for expire, but I might buy sponsorships on there occasionally in the future. The placement on TAV is already paid up for a year.