The Ugly Truth About Pixel Ads -
Is Pixel Advertising Worth It or Worthless?

You’ve probably seen them on websites…those grids crammed with tiny icons that are too tiny for most of us to see. Did you wonder, “What’s that?” and “Why would someone pay anything for such a little ad?” Maybe you even read about the genius twenty-one year old who first came up with the idea as a way to raise moneyfor his college education…sell a million pixels on his website for a dollar/pixel. Why not? Why not, exactly! He did and the rest, they say, is history (for details, http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com).

Why do People Buy Pixel Ads?

Today, people are trying all kinds of innovative ways to drive traffic to their website. Unfortunately, the majority of us do not have large advertising budgets and, therefore, cannot afford huge pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Similarly, it is not an easy task to appear on the first or second page of the search engine result pages (SERPs). In fact, it’s a lot of work…work that takes time, patience, and a lot of know-how. So when another method of traffic-building pops up, is reasonably priced, has buzz behind it, and seems effective (at least on the surface), people rush to take advantage of it.

So why exactly are people buying pixel ads?

• The ads are reasonably priced. You might expect to pay $100 - $300 for the life of the ad which typically ranges 3-5 years. You could easily lose that much in a day with a poorly managed Adwords PPC (pay-per-click) campaign.
• You want to draw incremental traffic from the advertising site. The advertiser will impress you with existing traffic numbers or the possibility of future traffic. Actually getting incremental traffic from these sites is a long shot in my opinion. In order to have people click on (or even see) your ad, you must distinguish yourself from the other thousands of ads, either in size, appearance or both. And if you're going to accomplish that, figure on spending more money for a bigger, more distinctive ad.
• You want your new site spidered by Google and other major search engines. Experienced internet marketers know that the most effective way to get your new site spidered by the search engines is to find a link to your site from a site that the search engines already routinely spider. This would be a good reason to buy the pixel ad…if it really worked that way. But, alas, it doesn’t. You see, what these advertisers won’t tell you is that their huge pixel ad sites are really big images with big image maps, neither of which is recognized by the search engine spider. So what does that mean? It means, according to the search engines, you do not have a link to your site from the advertising site. Let me say that again another way. Search engines do not spider images or image maps. The majority of pixel advertising sites that I’ve seen use images and image maps for the ads…thereby, rendering them absolutely useless as a mechanism to get your new website spidered.
• You want PageRank (PR) passed onto your site from a higher PR site. If you don’t know what PageRank is, visit http://www.google.com/technology for an explanation. According to Google, PageRank is “the heart of their [search engine] software.” Basically, the idea is that if a high PageRank site links to your site, Google considers that good and rewards your site with a potential boost in rankings. There are other factors that Google takes into account when determining your ranking (e.g., theme, reputation, etc.), but that’s another article. In terms of passing along PageRank though, the problem is the same as above. Google does not even see your link from the advertising site so no PageRank is passed on (and as you learned above, no spidering occurs).

Pixel Advertising – Worth It or Worthless

So how do you determine whether a particular pixel advertising site is worth your hard earned money? Try the following:

Step 1: Get the Google ToolBar if you don’t have it. You can find it at http://toolbar.google.com. Install it and click on the "Options" button on the new toolbar. Click on the "More" tab and in the section entitled "Even More Buttons," click on light blue circle icon, "Page Info Menu." The "Page Info Menu" now shows as a pull-down menu on your new Google toolbar. Pull down the "Info" icon and click on "Cached Snapshot of the Page."

Red Flag #1: If you get a message from Google that says your search for that site did not match documents, that means the site is not even in Google’s index. Don’t waste your money!

Red Flag # 2: If there is a cached page, look at the top of the page for the Google verbiage that describes the page. You’ll see three or four blue underline links. Click on the link that says “cached text.” This is the information that Google actually keeps in their database. If you don’t see any links (that would normally appear on the pixel grid), Google doesn’t see them and doesn’t record them either. Don’t waste your money (btw – try this with the Million Dollar Homepage and see what you find)!

Step 2: Some later generations of the pixel advertising model do in fact provide text links that Google recognizes, however, the link they provide is not a link to your site. Instead many sites use an intermediate link that counts the clicks then redirects them to your site. Net effect: The link that is counted by Google on the pixel ad page is not your link…it’s the counter link. You get absolutely no credit for that link you have paid for.

Red Flag #3: Take a look at the source code of the pixel page and look for your link. At the top of your browser click “View”, then “Page Source.” You will see a lot of text that doesn’t make sense to you. Search for your domain name using the “Find” feature. If you can’t find your domain name, chances are they are passing it through a counter link (which is a link on the advertiser’s site, not yours). How do I know that? Well, if you can’t find your domain name, how can there be a link to your website (without your domain name)? There can’t be! But hold on. If you do find your domain name, you’re not home free yet. Make sure your domain name is included in the link tag which looks something like <a href=”yourdomain.com”>yourdomain.com</a>. If it’s in the image tag <img src=”location of your image” alt=”your domain name here”>, then you’re not getting the link you’ve paid for.

(Potential) Red Flag #4: Google, and soon the other search engines, are getting wise to advertising sites, in general. Although Google doesn’t penalize you for getting a link from an advertising site, it acknowledges it as advertising…and just that. So if you’re buying the ad to get credit for a link from that site or to hopefully get PageRank passed on, you won’t get it. But if you’re looking to just get advertising from that site, Google has no issue with that. By the way, if you want to see the links that Google gives you credit for now, just click on the Info button of your Google Toolbar, then click “Backward Links.”

So what’s your takeaway? If you paid for pixel advertising with hopes that someone would see your ad and click on it (a long shot in my opinion), then maybe it still makes sense to buy the pixel ad (as long as it’s reasonably priced). However, if you’re buying pixel advertising in order to get indexed by Google or have the advertising site pass PageRank onto your site, don’t waste your money.