URL shortener advertising

Ok, so you’ve scanned the QR Code and that took you to a URL shortener which in turn has brought you here.

What some URL shorteners do is display some ads to you before redirecting you onwards again to the final landing page.

So imagine this is a page full of ads.

After a fixed period, the page refreshes and takes you to the landing page. In the meantime, the URL shortening services charges the advertiser(s) a small fee for the fact that you saw their ads. They then share this revenue with the user of the shortened URL.

Whilst this is an intriguing way of making money – all you have to do is generate traffic – as a business it puts you at some risk because you probably won’t know what ads will appear and some of them may harm your brand. For example, if there were lots of ads for gambling or adult sites and you sold children’s toys, it just wouldn’t be the right way to operate.

So you don’t really want to use your QR Codes to take people to your website via a URL shortener that shows ads on the way unless you are absolutely sure that:

  • The ads will be appropriate
  • You will get at least as much value from the URL shortener in terms of commissions payments as you will lose by diverting away the attention of your scanner.