Google Start Testing CPA Ads

According to Seeking Alpha, AdSense is starting to test Cost-Per-Action ads

He got an invitation to try out the new offersing

Very interesting.

 

Now THIS is interesting...They're picking up on their CPA program sort of (Adsense, adwords, firefox, Picasa2 etc)... Sounds very interesting, may be required to be a premium adwords advert. to get this special treatment?

 

CPA generally generate more revenue right?

 

Nice if it get public soon

 

That depends on a lot of things, off the top of my head:
1) what type of site you have (product oriented or informational),
2) what type of visitors you have (are they in a buying or browing mood?),
3) what type of ad (CPM vs CPC vs CPA) advertisers in that niche prefer

 

If you are picking the selection of ad's and only getting paid when someone signs up for something or buys something, then why not just use affilate programs and cut out google all together?

 

Google is testing his new CPA (Cost Per Action) toy.

The Commission Junction Empire will finish soon.

 

This is especially timely for Google as cj is alienating it's current publishers.

 

Last I knew, cj.com is also extremely expensive. Google may be able to get little guys to use CPA without the hassle of running the technology themselves(which I find publishers don't always trust; I know I don't). It may also bring back some of the CPC advertisers that left due to no conversions-- this will guarantee that they don't pay unless they convert...


--
Derek

 

I wonder if Google will provide this to publishers on a contextual/performance basis. I've long said that someone needs to apply some computerized smarts to the affiliate game. Sure "if you run a travel site try airline travel offers" sounds good but what if you run a more general interest site? There are like 2 billion different offers to choose from in CJ - who has the time or knowlege to go through them and find what works? I once even offered someone a rev split if they could select offers for me that would beat what I was currently making (which was pitiful). They couldn't do it.

No imagine a smart system that starts with a contextual baseline - your site is about music so we'll promote Rhapsody and Napster - and then adjusts based on actual performance - Napster performance sucks so lets run less of those and try some ringtone affiliates.

Done right - and with enough traffic - it could tell you all sorts of interesting things about your site's visitors. Maybe your site is about travel but you'll make more offering digital cameras than airline tickets. And if you want to risk big and scary - track a user across multiple sites and build a profile on that user that presents offers to them bases on both the site and their tastes - even though this is a music site don't show Joe a Napster ad since he hasn't responded to it the last 100 times he's seen it.

I think a well done automated CPA program with a decent audience (ie not all teens without a credit card) can generate more for the publisher than a CPM or CPC program. And imagine the joy of finding out that a bunch of the visitors to your Britney Spears fan site were actually in the market for a new Lincoln Navigator at a $6,000 per sale CPA.

 

Plagued with complaints of Adsense click fraud, Google announced a beta test of their new ad network to select publishers today. Instead of Pay-Per-Click, the Google Content Referral Network will compete with existing affiliate marketing networks by paying per lead or per sale. What does it mean for webmasters.... More money or less?

DIGG please!

http://www.digg.com/technology/Google_Releases_New_Ad_Network_--_The_End_of_ADSENSE_

 

You can't just switch your site doing well on CPC over to CPA. Affiliate sites require a different type of traffic -- traffic that is ready to purchase. As you said, your Britney site won't convert for jack because they 1) don't have a credit card and 2) weren't planning to buy anyway.

I'm glad Google is entering this market and the timing couldn't be better... will it spell the end for CJ?

DIGG it? http://www.digg.com/technology/Google_Releases_New_Ad_Network_--_The_End_of_ADSENSE_

 

The hoffer beat me to the punch again. I blogged about this earlier this AM
and also submitted a story to Digg.

http://www.digg.com/technology/Google_to_Launch_New_Affiliate_Network

Here's a couple of my thoughts so far:

Google offers a little piece of enticement to Adsense publishers by saying: "Since this is a test and these CPA ads are not regular ad units, we are giving you more flexibility in saying things like “I recommend this product” or “Try JetBlue today” next to the CPA ad unit." However Google states reports will be sent weekly by email and pro affiliates will not go for this.

So it's only a test - I repeat THIS IS ONLY A TEST. But we all know Google plans to take over the world. (sarcasm) So it will be interesting to see if they really do jump into the affiliate network game with both feet.

I think it's a little EXTREME for David Jackson to short ValueClick stock and proclaim this move as the end of Commission Junction. However, this really could shake things up - we'll see.

 

A digg for a digg, no harm there, Linda!

Shorting VC might not be smart in the short term if they suddenly announce their new traffic monitoring capabilities with LMI javascript-analytics.

 

its about time

 

This is a beta testing Phase: The beta testing phase is the very lasting phase of a project.

They already spent millions of dollars in business meetings, development and internal tests.

I think that is too late to stop: probably Google are running CPA for 1 or 2 years internally.

Commission Junction Empire is over. They will not be dead but CJ will be like chitika and adbride are today compared to AdSense.

Today CJ is practically the only option in affiliate marketing: tomorrow they will be not anymore.

 

True that sites that do well with affiliate traffic and sites that do well with CPC or CPM aren't necessarily the same but in the end isn't it all the same thing? Most of the google adsense advertisers are trying to sell you something. They work out a formula like - I'm willing to spend $5 to attract a customer, for ever 10 clicks I'll get one customer so I'm willing to pay $.50 per click.

When you're a publisher working with small numbers that $.50 per click makes a difference. When you're working with big numbers it doesn't matter at all whether you get $.50 a click or $5 a sale or $5 CPM (assuming 1% CTR). Now of course it matters when you're advertising Lincoln Navigators since the ratio of clicks to purchases is going to be huge and you'd need to be a Yahoo sized publisher to not notice the difference. But I'm speaking more for the cheaper more internet friendly type purchases that are more likely to be marketed this way.

I think the real innovation that I'm looking for is taking a particular site's performance profile into the equation that decides what ad to show a particular user. That could be applied to CPC and CPM as well as CPA. Networks do that (at least to some extent) with CPM and CPC but I've never seen anyone do it with CPA. Perhaps the numbers that you need to get things to "work out" are just to big for most sites and it really doesn't make sense. I'm not sure.

 

...and I, for one, welcome our new Affiliate Overlords.

I look forward to speedy reporting and ummm... javascript delivery of links. Oh, wait...

 

http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/12363

The orginal article right there...I saw a screen shot of some dudes earning while testing the CPA ads and it was over 8000 dollars.

 

and the 8000 dollars was on one day...not one month...but one day.