As the owner of a small business, I can confirm that this happens purely as the result of ignorance on the parts of business owners. I've been advertising on Ye

As the owner of a small business, I can confirm that this happens purely as the result of ignorance on the parts of business owners. I've been advertising on Yelp using their cost per click program for about a year now, and was paying about $3.50 per click up until a couple months ago. I recently got a number of sales calls from reps that attempted to sell me on their new impressions program. They wanted me to pay them $600 for 1000 monthly impressions. I quickly ran the numbers and figured that even if I assumed a generous 5% click through rate, I would still be paying nearly 3.5 times more per click than I was with their PPC program. I would need to be getting a CTR of 17% just to break even, which is highly unlikely. And that's without considering the addition of an onerous 12 month contract, which I didn't have to sign under their PPC program. Their impressions program does come with an added benefit though, which is the removal of competitors ads from your Yelp profile page. I'm sure this helps overall conversion rates somewhat, but there is no way it has enough impact to justify the massive increase in cost per click. Ultimately though, my PPC ad impressions have gradually dropped off despite maintaining the same ad budget with Yelp. This is because they give display preference to business owners who have signed up for their impression-based program. I can only assume that means they have managed to con enough ignorant business owners into signing up. I'm both vexed and pleased with this development. :)