Review:

ValueClick

by Joshua Reimer

September 06, 1999

ValueClick has been a pioneer in the pay per click advertising industry. They currently are displaying over 90 million ads a month across their network! There is no doubt they are a very popular network.

But do the websites on their network make money?

That's what I decided to find out. I was a host for ValueClick way back when it first started (in fact, my account ID is 0000028, which shows you that I was one of the first to register!). However, after accumulating $20 worth in click throughs, I quit the network. It had taken a very long time to build that up! I never did receive that money. At the time, they had a payout minimum of $50, which is quite high for a network only paying $.05 per click. I guess they were trying to attract the really big sites who have lots of available inventory.

So, a few weeks ago when I received an email from them saying that they had increased the payout rate to $.12 per click through and had also lowered the minimum payout rate to $30, I decided to try them out again.

Unfortunately, I found that despite the fact that the payment per click through had gone up, the click through rate (CTR) had gone way down. Instead of the nice and high 4% CTR it had dropped to about a .5% CTR.

Also, even though I referred almost 100 sites to ValueClick via their new referral program, only one website was signed up. I am now receiving about a penny a day from his advertising.

Needless to say, I reached the $30 minimum and quit the network again. And unless they come up with some new features that somehow manage to lure me back, it will probably be for good.

However, who knows. My experience may have just been one bad one out of many good ones. But I doubt it. Even well chosen associate programs pay better.

There is no doubt that advertisers do well at ValueClick. As they say, they have more advertisers than they know what to do with! Of course... it is such a cheap way to get visitors to their site!

For webmasters with many thousands of banner impressions lying around gathering dust (wouldn't that be nice?!), this could be a good program. It would be better to earn the little that ValueClick pays rather than let it go to waste. However, if you look hard enough you would probably be able to find a better paying network.