NewOldPlayer

If you purchase banner spots at Juicy, do you notice that all the banners have a daily average of clicks that has very little fluctuation? And every banner has almost the same daily average of impressions, regardless of price? (ie: 1200 impressions one day, 1254 the next, 1241 the next, etc...)

When a banner gets 1000 impressions a day, you get about 1 or 2 clicks a day, which is fine, but you get that same amount every day for a month with hardly any fluctuation.

Same with a banner that gets 10,000 impressions a day. You will see about 25 hits a day (plus or minus), but the strange thing is, you get 25 hits per day almost every day, without hardly any fluctuation. Sure, one day you get 23, then one day 27, but it always levels out every day, including the daily impressions, for 30 whole days!?

The impressions have almost very little fluctuation, which tells me that the traffic is not organic and the webmaster is pumping traffic into this site daily. No way any website naturally gets 10,000 views one day, then, 10,120 another, then 10,075. Humans are all over the map and the traffic should have major swings in it, just as any public walk in store would. Some days great traffic, other days weaker, but not the same every day.

Now with the fake traffic being pumped into the site to create the impressions, he now has to program clicks on the banners so the buyers are getting what they are paying for, which is clicks. But with so many banners and click programs to set up, there is no more uniqueness to any one banner, so everybody gets about the same click ratio per impression. I think they are getting sloppy and it's easy to see the patterns now. Every spot gets about the same amount of clicks per 1K impressions regardless of price and impression volume. They only 'give you' so many clicks to value the price you are paying.

The website is also peppered with outrageously priced banner spots from other webmasters, that go untouched and unsold, forever. I never understood these sites until now. I think they are placed there to give the buyer a sense of 'market value.' While we 'bump' into those high priced patsy websites offering their banners at $ 500 for 1,500 impressions, we 'move on' and find the spots that make sense. Thus giving us the illusion there is an 'open market' and it's 'best price wins.' It's all a set up and an illusion the moment you start shopping for spots. Why would any webmaster attempt to sell a banner spot for $ 500 for 1,500 daily impressions, when other sites sell it for $ 3.00 ? But I'm drifting from the point here.

I have multiple banner spots with Juicy and I'm seeing the exact same averages with all my banners and same ratios of clicks per impressions.

I know Juicy has been around for years and has this stellar reputation, but this isn't an attack on them. I'm just questioning the constant daily averages of clicks and the constant level of daily impressions almost all banner spots seem to maintain, until of course, out of nowhere, the impressions go from 10,000 daily, down to 23 a day and then you get a refund on your spot. Strange? Why would a popular website all of a sudden lose it's traffic while it's still online? Did all the search engines block the site within a day? This also confirms that the webmaster simply 'turned off' his pre purchased flow of impressions because the banner spots weren't making him enough money to continue buying traffic for his site. He turns off the traffic impressions, and your spot goes with it. So easy to get out of a bad producing website.

If I'm wrong here, have no problem setting me straight. I'm not a pro webmaster. I'm just very skeptical about the numbers and how these webmasters are pumping up their sites with impressions that are not from real surfers, but come from where?

My guess is the impressions originate from China running thru US proxy servers to change their IP's. Something hi tech that I don't understand. I know you can buy 1K Chinese impressions for pennies so is that where all the banner traffic is really coming from?

It's not Juicy's fault, and I'm not pointing the finger at them. They are the broker. All I'm saying is the webmasters that use Juicy are manipulating their system and buyers are buying robotic clicks from professional webmasters that know how to generate the impressions and the clicks.

I like the Juicy concept, I just don't think the impressions are organic as well as what is behind the actual clicks.