Advertisers are supposed do the following 2 steps:
1) pay any amount to Anonymous Ads to bootstrap their ads (to get some impressions and to get connected to affiliates).
2) track bitcoin addresses passed as GET parameter and use those addresses to reward affiliates for successful visits (thus getting more impressions & visits from them)
Main source of income for affiliates should be step 2. But for some reason it doesn't work: most advertisers don't do step 2.
So I need to spend money received at step 1 to support affiliates for showing ads.
However (unlike advertisers) I can't detect successful visits to reward affiliates. And I don't want to pay botnets for fake clicks and impressions.
Is there some reason the links in ads can't clickthrough to your site, which would then redirect the user to the advertisers'?
Seems like you could track visits to your own pages rather easily.
I do track the visits. The list of tracked bitcoin addresses with amount of unique clicks during the last days is available in csv format, the link is on the Ad's stats page (e.g.
http://anonymousads.com/ad/1/stats).
But I can't distinguish successful visits from the ones generated by scripts or botnets. Advertisers should pay only for clicks that help them to reach their business goals. Only they know what successful visit is.
I plan to add a new feature to simplify their job. Here is a brief description:
1. advertiser accesses AA via https, enters the captcha
2. AA generates unique PHP code for advertiser
3. advertiser embeds this code into his/her goal page
4. when visitor opens the goal page, this code will sign & send info about successful visit to anonymous ads
5. advertiser can access report of successful visits and reward affiliates for them
Later support for other (non-PHP) server platforms can be added.