There's an interesting post here External Link which explores the so called transitions between web 1.0 to 2.0 to 2.5 to 3. The area that is quite interesting is a move from CPC (Cost per Click) advertising to CPA (Cost per Action), personally I don't see how this is beneficial to site owners at all and it totally fails to replicate real world models of advertising that are still really based on CPI (Cost per impression) models.

In the brave new CPA world I would only pay if my advert is clicked on and then the visitor does something, like buy a product or register for more information. Now this model can only exist becuase of the added technology involved, there's no way it could happen in the traditional advertising world. Now in theory becuase you're paying per action not just per click or view the cost per action should be substanitally higher but I bet it won't be.   What it implies is that the internet cannot be used for promotional / brand / product awareness advertising, which is in effect what all traditional print / billboard advertising is.

This idea brings the whole online advertising area into quite an interesting relief, particularly in Nigeria. Here people will think nothing of spending over a million Naira to advertise in a daily newspaper (of which no guranteed ciruclation figures are available and of which there are rarely more than 50,000 copies printed, sometimes as little as 10,000), but hardly anyone would spend even near that to advertise on a  website that had the same number of unique page views. Why not? there is probably a higher chance that the advert will be seen and properly noticed, rather than just flicked past, but non one seems to trust it. For Nigerian websites and the Internet as a medium here to take off businesses have to learn to trust a little, and have to begin to equate the virtual world with the real one.

Footnote: I have recently heard that to advertise in Next on Sunday's Elan supplement costs in excess of 2 million Naira per full page, for a newspaper whose distribution is currently tiny (about 40,000 copies an edition) and that you rarely even seem to see on the streets.