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MPFree.com - the Agony of Advertising Business Models

Here’s one that rolled across my inbox - MPFree.com. Its a pay-per-action advertising conduit where members trade accept offers and jump through advertiser hoops to earn free downloads from a claimed library of 750,000 tracks. So - MPFree is one of those weird intermediaries that tries to link a popular whatever-it-is with achieving a consumer action of some sort - another spin on the age old “free iPod” story. The cringing mascot from the MPFree front page summarizes my thinking on these types service: its well worth 99 cents to skip all of this and just get music on your own terms.

The “offers” are all action oriented, and range from the innocuous and humorous…

To the more mysterious and weird…

To the very insistent:

I didn’t get far enough into this to actually qualify to download anything. But the front page claims “Save it or Burn It” - which suggests some DRM-addled file type anyway.

Every advertiser is looking for an edge, but I just can’t imagine that conversions achieved by this method are getting advertisers “quality” customers. Who wants free music downloads anyway? Kids - that’s who. Are kids really interested in help with their sleeping disorders? What does a service like this achieve, other than temporarily inflating membership numbers for advertisers?

Anyway, its funny the regularity with which this business model shows up.

download, free, mp3, mpfree, music, p2p yarrrgh

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