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Google Launches Cost Per Action AdSense
rustybrick writes "Google has launched an invite only test of CPA (cost per action) AdSense ads. So instead of getting paid per click or per impression, you now can get paid for an action, such as a sale or lead referral."
The point of sale or is right where the money is, so it makes sense to test the market with it. I'm sure that Google would deem a direct referal to a sale to be worth more too. It will be interesting to see how the revenue for the publisher and the costs for the marketer woulr work out.
Aww, take it easy on the poor little company with the ~$200 stock shares.
(end of post)
PM me with your offer.
;-)
(sic)
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!
I worked for a company back when no one cared about making money and we were looking at building something similar. One of the chief concerns we had at the time was how to prevent fraud on the part of the advertisers: ie, if a user clicks through and ultimately makes a purchase, did the advertiser properly track that and then report it back?
There are a couple of ways publishers can also loose out: for instance, if a user clicks through but doesn't make a purchase only to return to the advertiser's site the next day or week and make the purchase, will the publisher be compensated appropriately?
This is definitely a great opportunity for publishers and advertisers by increasing quality over quantity. However, there are a lot of potential pitfalls for the publisher.
Will google be able to properly intermediate? or will they tend to side with their big advertisers when issues/complaints arise?
Working at a company that manages pay-per-click ads, pay per action is something we've been waiting for a long time to come over the horizon. I'm so glad Google's rolling it out, even if it is only on a test basis.
"Clicks" are abstract concepts and very difficult to sell to less tech-savvy business people. They want a better measure of their return on investment for their ad campaigns. A number of companies offer call tracking, which is easier for businesses to grok . . . but a call != a sale . . . or even an actual lead.
This is a welcome step in the right direction, IMHO.
This is awesome news for me. This means I can spend more time at home without pants!
Every time Google comes out with a new way to pay people like me to do advertising, is almost an entire additional month that I can spend at home without any pants on. Who needs a recruiter, when I don't ever have to leave the house?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Say goodbye to ad revenue you guys.
How do I trust that the advertisers will accurate report sales generated by my leads?
Help kill corporate productivity!
About freaking time.
I'm sick tired of all that pay-per-click and the related frauds. I've known some webpage owners who have been accused of click fraud, and Google hasn't listened to any of their complaints.
In my opinion, this is just Google being too shy to give their users some profit. I think it is very unrealistic that mass amounts of people will sign up to whatever Google makes them sign up for, rendering this service useless.
If Google could release a new service that is as widely used as the current pay per click or pay for impression AdSense, then THAT is something that web site authors would buy into.
But, in the past, what have we learned from Google? In one or two instances, Google has showed us how a simple, but slightly farfetched idea can turn into something brilliant.
you now can get paid for an action, such as a sale or lead referral.
I'm in. How much for the names and addresses of my soon-to-be-former friends?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Now, both are doing a "Cost Per Action" pricing scheme.
I still don't get it! (and sorry for nagging about it, again) Is there a single Slashdotter here who clicks on ads? (assuming you haven't got them filtered (thank you, Firefox extensions)) I'm not sure I have even done it for experimental purposes. I _never_ do it. Not the flashy ones, not the discreet text ones. Why would anyone do it? If you're looking for something, you go get it. If not, you don't want anyone telling you to go get it. Gah, giving up control of yourself like that!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
The problem is: most people on /. either know how to use Adblock (and thus don't see this kind of bullshit), or show ads themselves (being on the webmaster's side of the deal and thus being a part of the problem themselves).
For now, the "mere mortals" cope with the problem, just like they accept Windows and spyware, but with more than 33% of all http requests being relate to adverts, the situation just goes worse and worse.
Those who win: Google and advertisers.
Those who lose: users and network providers.
The current state of net advertising is that someone else is paid for stealing your time and your bandwidth.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
There have been several ad-providers who have been using cost-per-action for some time now. An example would be available here . As I understand it, this technology is actually mature and has been put forward several times as a better way to resolve click-fraud than the "just trust us to take care of it" method used thus far by google.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
I bet if stratjakt was talking about Microsoft it would be moded insightful.
Wow, how useless can you get? People will occasionally click an ad, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps in support of the owners of a site they really like. They actually buy or otherwise follow through a lot less. In fact, I'd have to say that any site choosing these "smart" ads will find that their revenues fall quite sharply from almost nothing to absolutely nothing. Not to mention that we'll get a lot more of those stupid sites where they try to require you to sign up for some service (usually a spam service) to get to the real part of the site.
I don't filter out google text ads because they really don't bother me.
I have occassionally clicked on them, and have, even more rarely, bought things from them. Sometimes you find relative newcomers to a particular market who provide a better price than their established competitors who have the benifit of pagerank.
So how much did the sumbitter get for referring people to Google's new program??
(That is Roland's new nick btw)
Make that ~$400 stock share. They haven't seen $200 since April of 2005.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I have a few hundred Gmail invites. I wonder if it is interchangable...
"Oh, say, can you see by the dawnzer lee light," sang Miss Binney
AdWords has had the capability to track "conversions" by placing pieces of javascript on "Success!" pages for quite a long time. I've used it for years and always thought of it as very useful.
Apparently it's equally been useful to google.
Actually, for those of us who have to squeeze the best possible performance out of an inadequate advertising/marketing budget, pay for performance is long overdue. If I have 2 choices, one involving calculating cost per sale from profit per sale times sales per click minus cost per click, and the other involving profit per sale minus cost per sale, even if the two costs are identical I'm slightly ahead, because direct cost per sale doesn't fluctuate the way sales per click sometimes can.
No, I'm not an accountant, I'm proof one can be boring *without* being an accountant.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Until all those freeipod sons of bitches start using google ads and only have to pay when someone (dumbass) actually bites, heh. I've seen all kinds though.... (Hell, I got a "foe" on slashdot because of the freeipods thing. I added "Want a free ipod?" in my signature, and linked it to my journal where I basically said steal one an leave everyone else alone. Apparently [slashdot.org] doesn't give anyone a hint...)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Please, the man has no pants on. Please don't bring up "squirting" things...
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Okay, so let's say everybody's wild guesses are right, and Google will, like all good web companies, eventually come out with a full-fledged online store system (Google Video, Google Base, and AdWords already prove that they have the transaction mechanism). Then, combine that with Cost-per-Action AdWords, and you have a foolproof way of preventing fraud (you're running the ads and the stores, so you can track conversions), an awesomely-integrated store solution. Add Analytics and it will be the coolest online store system ever.
Of course, letting people run online stores has little to do with "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful".
But never mind that. The next step is to integrate Google Book Search with Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, and then integrate Google Book Search itself with Amazon, so that users can find a book on Google and buy it through Amazon. Then integrate Blogger/Pages with Book Search, and buy a bunch of printers, so people can publish their own books, advertise them on Google, and buy printed copies of them, which Google will print and mail, perhaps using Amazon's infrastructure.
If Google and Amazon teamed up, they could probably take over the world.
Pardon my insane, rambling comments. I'm bored.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Can't imagine you naps still making money on your shitloaded websites. I've heard ppl are making thousands per day(!) through some generated cut/paste pages and faked websites. They are milking that AdSense every way possible. Google should take steps toward elimination of those fraudsters as soon as possible. Best way by hand picking good websites and weeding out the nasties.
If everyone blocked ads you'd have no internet to block ads from.
I do click on ads, for some sites I like a lot I make sure to follow ads every now and again. But mostly I click on an add if I find the content interested, so very targeted ads are more likely to reach me. Interestingly I'd say the site I visit ads from most often is Penny Arcade, and not just out of support but because I am interested.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why would anyone do it?
If I scan the organic results and don't find anything there, rather than moving to the second page, on occasion I'll click on a paid link. However, I only click on links that look reputable. A text ad that makes exorbitant claims or just seems like it's hucksterism won't get a click.
The advantage of well-done paid text links for the advertiser is that they can drive potential customers - people who are looking for exactly the sort of product/service you provide - to your site.
The advantage for users when such ads are done properly is that the user is likely to be fairly certain that ads coming out at the top of the list are going to be for sites that offer what the user is trying to find. It's a means of matching a buyer and a seller, rather than a way to trick potential customers into visiting a site.
To me there is nothing distasteful about advertising per se. Companies have to let people know they exist, or they'll have no customers. The use of innocuous, targeted text ads seems to me to be a good compromise between the needs of advertisers and the needs of web users. Even if a given ad link is only folllowed a very small percentage of the time, it can be worth it for the advertiser. At the same time, if I can ignore ads except when I want to scan them, as a web user I feel like I'm not being bashed over the head the way I do when I encounter popups and other bullshit from companies that just don't get it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yeesh, run like it's the plague. I had run amazon/eb games/linkshare and various other incentive or pay per lead/purchase advertising models for several years and you know how much money I made from it? Almost nothing. The reasons mentioned above concerning you not getting properly compensated for delayed purchases puts this one in the dumpster for me. As a site hoster, I make worlds more money off pay per click.
I'm fairly certain someone already thought of this. I saw a neat flash cartoon a while back that was a history of the internet from 2005 some time in the future. It said how Amazon and Google teamed up, and eventually drove a lot of newspapers back into pure print. I was entertained.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
Ads up the grill, huh? Can you please cite an example so that Google can be arrested for kidnapping, coercion, and rape? I will file the report immediately, promise!
"Sufferin' succotash."
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Google will cannibalize their own clients and move some over to CPA. Other CPA networks like CJ & Linkshare will be fine. CJ & LS have established brands with loyal customers. Merchants pay $2-10k plus monthly fees to be part of CJ & LS. All merchants have existing relationships with their publishers at both CJ & LS. Merchants are not going to up and leave due to the work needed to migrate to a new network. Plus LinkShare merchants are contractually obligated to not leave to competing networks...Google being the 500lb Gorilla it's only a matter of time till that legal dispute comes up.
What could be interesting is if Google decides to arbitrage their CPA offers against clicks. Fastclick does this. Google could probably do a better job.
This is one of the least insightful posts I've ever read. Yes, sales make money; this is true. "It will be interesting" ok, anything else?
It already does work better than per-click for many reasons. The porn industry switched from per-click to per-sale, for the most part, about 5 years ago. Of course, as always, the porn industry online is ahead of the curve.
that's all
I beleive you are referring to EPIC http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ the history of what happens from the perspective of 2014 as Google basically takes over the world, while in the process becomes Googlezon.
Are you dumb? This HELPS advertisers. They normally have to pay for impressions or click-thrus. Paying for each sale from a clicked ad gives advertisers more confidence (don't pay for ads that don't work). This will also help combat click fraud - you can't fool something like this.
Google is the only one who stands to lose. It is up to them to fine-tune their advertisement system to lead people to want to purchase something from a shown ad.
I've seen it--it's called EPIC 2014. It's funny, but also a bit scary.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Google will eventually be selling these adds to hundreds of thousands of customers on millions of websides leading to billions in sales. To audit a statistically significant amount of transactions *per website* your anti-fraud budget would have to be positively gigantic. Any sort of "We will occasionally put orders through your system for quality monitoring purposes, you are contractually obligated to process but not ship or bill the orders" clause will be overly intrusive AND useless since people will just identify the orders coming from Google and process them properly then trim from joeblow@actuallypaysmoneyforhisproductsascanbedemo nstratedbythiscredcardreceipt.com .
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Most internet users look at different sites and compare before making a final decision to purchase something. Anyone that has a website with shopping carts that allows users to save should know this -- users come back later or don't come back at all and THEN they buy. If it's a shopping cart model, then you could store the referrer as well (google), but the question is, what else do you store? What they searched for? Does google get a flat fee if they come back to the site and buy something different? What if you don't have a shopping cart save, or they come back 10 days later for something else -- does google get the money because they ONCE visited the site via an ad???? Charging by action isn't just technically complicated in terms of integration and compliance, it's logically a fuzzy area -- between the cost of integration and the increased visibility google would have into the businesses (think wal-mart and its supply chain), many sellers may resist this model. Marketing is a process, not a one shot deal, and suggesting that a single ad is actionable is inflates the importance of a small part of the whole process of building a customer relationship and a brand and selling products.
I never understood how Google makes money at all, free email, free search, free calander, free video uploads, and the list goes on. All of this is paid for by those little text ads? I never click on any type of ad, except Google ads, but only cause I have to pay them back somehow, and I don't want Google going bye-bye.
It worries me that Google won't make the money they need from this to keep them doing great things. People like me that just click the ads to help out Google will have no effect, Google will lose money.
I would only want to do CPA for things that are remarkably likely to happen. I wouldn't want, for example, to have my income depend on someone ordering a laptop. In fact, Google already offers referral links for Firefox (w/ Google Toolbar, natch), Google Pack, and Picasa. (They offer it for adwords and adsense, but I find that a less likely action.) These links require not just a click, but a specific result, like downloading the app and installing it, or signing up for a certain advertising program. These are fairly likely actions, I think, and even that doesn't yield strong results. Even on a site where I have a feature that is legitimately non-IE friendly, and I offer the Firefox link right below, I don't get a strong result.
If the site is using an ineffective ad or has a bad product at a high price, this system means they get free advertising while they sort out their business model and the site showing the ad is screwed over as they're displaying the bad ads for free.
What's to stop someone from making the action "donate $100 to me" and offering $75 CPA so the add will show up a lot. They'll get a lot of add views and never have to pay the action fee.
CPM is the only fair way to do it.
This is nothing new. Other smaller companies have been doing the same thing for a while now. It's actually quite a lucrative business, just not as fast-growing as pay-per-click.
I'm not sure how they could do anything but; wouldn't the CPA ads require at least a few more members on the API in order to log the payable actions?
(Not to be confused with Actionable Payments...)
Pi Ran Out
This sounds interesting to me, as I've been using both Google AdSense and privately-negotiated advertising at my site. Some of the past private advertisers have decided to not renew, citing "not enough traffic".
However, the type of product (CAD and engineering-related software, usually - a very niche market) that is typically interesting to my audience often costs in the thousands of dollars per license. Tracking of clicks that lead to a sale vs. "pay-per-click" payment sounds good, as it may pay off long term if satisfied readers decide to help out the site just by buying through it.
What's big deal about it ? This has been around for so many years with even third rate web-hosting companies. So Google admits that its GENIUS ENGINEERS of the Google Caste System can't fight fraud click ? Where is all the Innovation & the big-dreams you projected about shaking the NY ad-world ? You will be no better than CJ once you adopt that model. OR Is it that the slowdown in American economy which is forcing advertisers not to pay/click and go for sales based model ?
Somehow they have an obsession with making some products invite-only, yet only a minority of them public. Brin, DiBona, Bukakke(intentional error), you might want to see that the world isnt just made of exclusive colleges. You can stop using that euphemism called "organically grown network of trusted friends" too.
Sure, you're an entity with the ability to do such, but it's not like people dont see through those euphemisms you have for elitism. Either way, it's a bit of a bad habit to have and publicly announce.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So all I need for my free marketing campaign is something catchy so people click my ads and see my site, and action that just will never happen, like selling empty Windows folders for $100.
Though, I maybe should never say never, could turn out a profitable business.
If this is where google is going my guess would be that it signals the start of a revenue slow down. There are way fewer point of sales than "value added sites" who refer traffic. This would shift traffic to those who sell, a subset of those who can refer a sale. How will this work as a business? A move like this simply squeezes out the little middle-man referrer, spliting that value to google and the point-of sale customer. What is the value proposition to the point of sale? Reduced cost of advertising, at expense of loss of new customer markets from innovating lead referrers --> probably sales growth decline for the POS (and google), thought the point of sale could be more profitable due to lower ad costs. Would reduce the click-fraud problem though, profitable as that is for google.
Google knows that they cannot thwart enough of the click frauders and therefore the collapse of AdWords is inevitable. Advertisers are slowly moving away from content AdWords campaigns due to these frauds. Of course when AdWords collapse s then AdSense will also collapse as well. This is a next generation of advertisement model that makes click frauds completely ineffective since advertisers feel that money they are spending are worth it. There is one thing that Google still doesn't have an answer for which is so called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that's nothing more than creating bunch of garbage websites with links to jack up the Google Page Ranks. Currently Google search results are slowly being erroded by these garbage sites and if Google can't find an answer for them, things are going to go south pretty quick.
Plenty of entrenched players out there are already doing this. CJ for one, plenty of others are doing it. Technology-wise, the tough part is correlating the action pixel w/ the click. You can use 3rd party cookies but good luck with that one, you end up having to jump through some hoops which I'm too familiar with.
Also, real soon Google will learn that they will have to significantly change things regarding publisher and advertiser management and how they currently don't see eachother. The days of getting a blank check and not knowing where the money came from will be gone, it's only a matter of time until they realize this. Then there's the chargebacks, returns. In the meantime google will get stuck with a huge bill, they're basically sheltering all the risk. Kiss that beautiful ad rotation bye bye. I'd give out more info but I don't wanna help an evil corporation.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Suddenly it hits me: GBuy!
This is the Swedish company http://www.tradedoubler.com/Tradedoubler's biggest business concept and they've been around since 1999...
The company is active in 18 countries (mostly European) and are expanding all the time.
This is not a Google invention.
I'll get my coat...
I guess today is a passable day to die.
It's funny how Google's search engine has discriminated against affiliate-based sites (yes, I know there's a lot of junk out there) and then they turn around and release this.
At the risk of sounding like a troll, its become increasingly clear that anything that gets posted about Google on the Internet automatically ends up on /. This is becoming a near daily event.
C'mon, there's way more interesting stuff going on in the world than hearing about yet another "brainstorm idea" at Google thats going to net them another billion.
Isn't the point of ads not just to create immediate sales, but also to expand brand recognition and "image", especially these days? That's why a lot of companies run ads about their company in general, rather than a particular product.
I imagine Google won't be dropping their current AdSense, though, so perhaps this is a good fit for actual physical product sales.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.