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I see that he is including Amazon affiliate ads on the review pages; I assume that must not be working very well for him, which surprises me a bit, as I rent mo

I see that he is including Amazon affiliate ads on the review pages; I assume that must not be working very well for him, which surprises me a bit, as I rent movies all the time through Amazon (it's one of a very small handful of places I actually shell out money for entertainment on the web). You'd think the most famous movie reviewer of all time would have pretty good results with movie referrals... I wonder whether part of that might not be the placement and format of the ads? At least for movies with online rentals and purchases available, I'd think that a plain old hypertext "Watch [insert movie name] online at Amazon" link right at the end of the review with his affiliate code embedded would probably perform pretty well, as opposed to a clearly separated block style ad up near the top that only links to the DVD purchase page. He could at least have both...I can't for the life of me understand why you wouldn't have an ad right at the end of the review, where people are most likely to be moving on to another page rather than sticking around and reading more...

brandnewlow 17y ago
You rent movies all the time through Amazon, but do you do it from Ebert's page? No, you go straight there and do your thing. This is why CPA ads and affiliate links are a bad deal for content sites. You come there to read stuff, not buy stuff. When you want to buy something, you search for it directly.
- ewjordan 17y ago
  You're right, I never rent from Ebert's page, but that's mainly because I don't read Ebert's page. If I did, and I saw a review of something that looked like I liked it, I'd be fairly likely to click a link to the Amazon rental page if it was visible in the right place, because it would save me a few clicks and searches. Of course, that's irrelevant, because he doesn't have links to the rentals on his page, he has links to the DVDs, and they're not even in view anymore once you've read to the bottom his review. So it's almost exactly as much effort to go through his affiliate link as it would be to search for the movie myself. If I had to guess, placement alone cuts his revenue from that source by at least a factor of 2 or 3, possibly even a factor of 10 or more. And Ebert's site is not a content site, it's a review site (a highly respected one, at that). Review sites usually do very well at driving sales compared to other types of sites. That's the main reason there are review sites for all sorts of products on the web. You most certainly do not go to Ebert's site just to read articles on their own merits, you go to find out which movies are worth watching. If he thinks a movie is worth watching, I'd imagine that makes a lot of people watch that movie fairly soon after reading his review, so if that's not converting into sales he's probably got some part of his affiliate strategy wrong in a very bad way.

brandnewlow 17y ago

You rent movies all the time through Amazon, but do you do it from Ebert's page? No, you go straight there and do your thing. This is why CPA ads and affiliate links are a bad deal for content sites. You come there to read stuff, not buy stuff. When you want to buy something, you search for it directly.

ewjordan 17y ago
You're right, I never rent from Ebert's page, but that's mainly because I don't read Ebert's page. If I did, and I saw a review of something that looked like I liked it, I'd be fairly likely to click a link to the Amazon rental page if it was visible in the right place, because it would save me a few clicks and searches. Of course, that's irrelevant, because he doesn't have links to the rentals on his page, he has links to the DVDs, and they're not even in view anymore once you've read to the bottom his review. So it's almost exactly as much effort to go through his affiliate link as it would be to search for the movie myself. If I had to guess, placement alone cuts his revenue from that source by at least a factor of 2 or 3, possibly even a factor of 10 or more. And Ebert's site is not a content site, it's a review site (a highly respected one, at that). Review sites usually do very well at driving sales compared to other types of sites. That's the main reason there are review sites for all sorts of products on the web. You most certainly do not go to Ebert's site just to read articles on their own merits, you go to find out which movies are worth watching. If he thinks a movie is worth watching, I'd imagine that makes a lot of people watch that movie fairly soon after reading his review, so if that's not converting into sales he's probably got some part of his affiliate strategy wrong in a very bad way.