The whole thing is as far as I can see a Win-Win-Win situation for the advertisers, the publishers, and the visitors. Let’s begin with the publishers (website owners and bloggers), and see how this can be.

For those of you who are publishers, the ads are a valuable way to earn more money without taking up more space on the page, or having a visitor leave your site if you prefer. You get paid for nearly every visitor (they need to have their JavaScript enabled), the ads take up no room on your page, you don’t have to invest any money, and the visitor doesn’t leave your page if that is how you set up the ads. You can also earn more by allowing the new Key 2 Page ads, which tell the listener to press a key to visit the advertisers’ website. The ad opens in a new window, and if the listener visits the site, you get paid again.

The program is a 3 tiered. You as a publisher can earn money by hosting the ads on your site, or you can sign up other publishers who want to host ads on their sites. Ads played on a site that signed up under you earn you money. And ads played on sites signed up by publishers you signed up, earns you more money. Everybody has been watching to see if visitors are annoyed enough by the ads to leave the site. So far there is absolutely no evidence that people are annoyed at all.

The ads only last 5 seconds, and won’t play to the listener again for at least 3 minutes. And 3 minutes after the last ad played, if the visitor refreshes the pager or goes to a new page that has the ad code installed, and then a second ad will play. It’s not like those darned flashing banners, or the music that plays the whole time your on the page. I really don’t think it will be enough to deter my visitors or send them fleeing.

So for the publisher the “win" is basically making more money and doing it without any tangible downside.

For the advertiser it’s great. Not only is it an entirely new method of reaching their audience, but it has some unique features that can’t be found anywhere else. For one, the targeting is phenomenal.

In advertising targeting is very important, and the 5 second audio ads have the customary geographical targeting capability, for instance, you can target by zip code. The ads can also target keywords, like with Adsense, a spider crawls your pages and so ads can be matched to your site content. And in addition, the ads can be targeted to certain times of day. Luigi’s Pizza could advertise a lunch special that played only between 11:00 and 12:00 each workday on sites visited by his potential customers within a certain distance from his store.

What other medium can do that? But wait…there’s more! NetAudioAds has recently added a new feature. The “Key 2 Page" ad tells the listener to press a key on the keyboard to go to the advertiser’s webpage. It’s like a click through except it’s a Key Through. The advertisers love it. With radio and TV, the listener might be in the bathroom, or in the kitchen getting a snack, or even tooling down the highway. With audio ads, the listener is right there at the keyboard paying attention. In fact, the listener has just clicked on a new page which is loading. The listener is much more likely to hear and think about the ad than with most methods of advertising.

And finally, the NetAudioAds Pay-Per-Play program is the only online advertising medium that is verified by an “independent" and unbiased third party, BPA Worldwide. With all of this in mind, I don’t see how it could be anything other than a win for the advertisers.

How about the site visitor? How is it a win for him? Well for one, more webmasters will be putting up more pages because it will earn them more money. This ends up giving the listener more opportunities to find what they are searching for on the web. If you think about it, advertising is one of the most effective ways for us as consumers to find out about new products. So finding new ways to reach us with informative new information can be viewed as a good thing. I say it’s a win for the visitor!