What is PTR?

What is PTR? What is Paid to Read? If you're a newbie, you might be wondering what this coined up word means? Actually, this means exactly what it says. PTR or Paid to Read or Pay to read is an advertising business model where consumers are paid to read emails, site articles, documents, etc. There is a PTR site that serves as middleman between the consumers and the advertisers. And sometimes, the company itself is paying the readers.

PTR sites usually advertises by sending emails to site registered consumers only, they are forbidden to advertise beyond registered members as this is illegal under internet law. By registering on the site, consumers have given it permission to send them these emails, these emails are then read by the consumers or members. In a PTR email, there is usually a link that sends consumers back to the PTR site. This is the only way a PTR site could monitor and verify that the email containing the advertisement was read, by this, members are then credited. However, some emails have an expiration, so if it's not read before the due, the consumer won't get the credit.

This advertising model had been meet with relative success, but there are also problems arising from this type of advertising strategy. Sometimes, PTR emails are accidentally filtered by email service providers and are sent into the spam folder, some services also block emails, thus preventing it to reach the consumers. Bots are also a problem, these artificial intelligence reads emails automatically and cheats advertisers in a way.

To a consumer, PTR business can be a good source of income, although it is not as quiet as popular as PTCs. Advertisers also felt it to be less reliable as emails are most likely ignored. However, PTR is more effective in terms of finding the "right" consumer (customer) for advertisers.