I'm really not sure which category best fits this question, so here goes. Does anyone have info on where/how to sell traffic data from sites? I'm not talking about selling traffic, as in this sub-forum: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=99 I'm talking about selling traffic data, who comes to your site, how they arrive, search words, keywords, browser, etc. I know for example that Chango does buy traffic - for those unfamiliar with them, they are an up and coming competitor to chitika, now that chitika has turned into a centipede and is busy shooting itself in the foot everyday. Here's the info from chango: Data Partners Chango is an innovative Search Marketing Platform that enables Search Marketers to effortlessly extend their existing keyword-based SEM campaigns to vast inventories of real-time display impressions. The ads we deliver are targeted at users based on their recent search history, which we believe is the best available measure of purchase intent. We construct our user search history through our data partner network. Ideal data partners are typically high volume publishers with significant SEO or SEM traffic or tool/widget providers with JavaScript installed on a large number of sites. By joining the Chango data network, you can leverage your existing search data to monetize users after they leave your site. * Simple: Even if you aren’t collecting search data today, its there and we make it simple to get started - we simply place a 1 pixel "invisible ad" on your site * Incremental Revenue: Generate revenue from your audience after they leave your site * Transparent: Will not affect your user’s experience or your on-site ad revenue * Search Data Only: We only collect search data, nothing else, ever How Does it Work? Data providers submit information into the Chango Data Network by placing 1 line of javascript in the footer of their site. Visitors arriving from a search engine trigger the collection of the search terms they used to arrive at the site. When a buyer (advertiser) uses this data to run a campaign, you receive a share of campaign gross revenue. Chango strictly adheres to our privacy policy we do not store any personally identifiable information about your audience, and we don’t resell your data – Chango is the sole user.. For more information on becoming a Chango data parnter, please Contact Us --------------------- If anyone has info on other companies that buy traffic DATA (not traffic itself!) then please let me know. Thanks!
If they are looking to cajole webmasters into sharing the search engine traffic, it means they do not have large enough network of publishers to collect that data (for free) from JS requests for their own ads. I guess, it does raise an interesting question - to justify allowing them to peek into your traffic, you need to know how much $$ (or is it more like $.$$ ? ) they are talking about. I don't know if there is a market for such data. If there were, they could have just advertised that they are buying people's log files (parsed for search terms or raw) - it would be much faster than collecting that data from 1x1 image. That said, I would also be interested to find out if such market exists and what the going rates are.