The bottom line - and let's face it, the bottom line is why banners are added - is that they are earning me about $2 a day. Yup, in about 200 years I'll be able to retire. This is on about 10,000 impressions (page-hits) a day (actual page impressions are about twice that) and translates as an effective $0.24 CPM. Now, like everything in the computer business, the banner-business is full of jargon. It is also complicated, and this is my best attempt to decrypt it all:

FastClick run numerous Campaigns in the banner-space, rotating the actual banners depending on which ones they have shown to you before. When they reach the end of all the new-to-you Campaigns to show you they show a default banner. This default is either one that the site-owner has chosen, or their own default if the site-owner has not chosen one. The practical limit on banners displayed has turned out to be a little over 10,000 banners a day (only 2 full days evidence so far).

The Campaigns are of 2 basic types (ignoring the defaults) in each of 2 bands:

• CPM - (Cents Per Mille [1,000 banners])
  • Band 1 - minimum $0.75, maximum: $1.95
  • Band 2 - minimum $0.34, maximum: $0.50
• CPC - (Cents Per Click)
  • Band 1 - minimum $0.18, maximum: $0.35
  • Band 2 - minimum $0.15, maximum: $0.15

Strangely, CPM & CPC are exclusive - if a Campaign is a CPM it is not a CPC. and vice-versa. Typically, the Campaign for me showing one of the highest CTR (click-through rate) is a CPM Campaign. This does also mean that a CPC Campaign does not pay unless people click on it - as an ex-media sales guy I detest this attitude!.

This info is thanks to Mike McMullan sending me news + links of how he got it up & running on his Pace 56K ISA modem - and under Windows XP at that (the Pace 2000 drivers worked for him). The miracle of this, of course, is that Microsoft's declared position is that Windows XP does not support the ISA-bus.

CLID is one of those items that are a nightmare to implement. I welcome info from anyone that has managed to achieve it on their own machine, and particularly on Cable lines in the UK.

I'd already decided on my modem & went to ask the sales-youth if my choice supported UK- CLID. I barely got the word “modem” out of my mouth when he launched into his ‘I-am-your-expert’ intensity of sales-drive & thrust my choice into my hands saying ‘this is the best’ (credit to him). “Yes,” I said, “I had already decided to get a Lucent modem”. “That is not a Lucent modem” he said. I turned the package upside-down & let him read the name on the chipset on the photo on the front. “Oh” he said (credit deducted).

The photo on the front showed 2 RJ11 sockets. When I opened it up there was only one (minus 1 credit now). However, the chipset was an Agere 1648C-TVS rather than Lucent (no change to credits). Instructions on installing were buried in a read me plus the installation failed to install any wave-device (another 2 credits lost) but it did work first time - back to even credits, I reckon. Then I used it. Wow! 50 credits added! It was excellent.

My computer system is old & under-powered - a Cyrix 233. Using a soft modem on an ISA bus on this system is foolish. The Motorola took so many CPU cycles just to keep connected that everything else moved at slug-speed. The Lucent - I think I should call it “Larry” - is only half-soft; controller functions are in software, but everything else is in silicon. This has lifted the processor load so much that suddenly my computer, during connection, seems to move like a stag across the downs. Excellent, and well recommended.