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."

Comments

Advertiser Fraud

[numbsafari]

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?

Re:Advertiser Fraud

[panaceaa]

If a point-of-sale site pushed their transactions through Google's new GBuy service, advertisers would have no way to hide actions resulting in revenue. Perhaps the invite-only aspect of the launch is designed to focus on businesses that are planning on using GBuy?

Re:Advertiser Fraud

[Breakfast Pants]

Other obvious though(because surveys might be a bit too intrusive, and unreliable): simulate paying customers in a statistically relevant way yourself and see if the sales are getting reported.

Re:Advertiser Fraud

[BenSnyder]

You have to think about how the whole Google ad system works. On the publisher side you have AdSense, on the advertiser side you have AdWords. To tie it all together you have Google Analytics. The goal of Google would be to sell leads or sales: the freaking holy grail if you're me and managing client accounts. If I can set a max price on what a sale is worth to me and have it delivered for that amount then the nirvana of advertising is upon us. I'd be willing to drop some Google Analytics code onto my site to track its usage. As a part of that I'd also set up goals to track sales or leads and use Google Analytics' revenue tracking tool. Many of my clients do that already and they're already tracking new vs. returning visitor CPV and revenue by search engine and search type and by dozens of other meaningful but anonymous statistics through Google Analytics. Trust me, fraud isn't going to be a drop in the bucket because if it worked you'd have every advertiser beating down a path to Google to pay up for some of that Step 3: profit!

Re:Trust issue

[grahamsz]

Well it's a switch from where it is now, where the advertisers have to trust the third party webmaster/web users to send them real clicks.

This model is much more amenable to the people spending the cash, therefore i'm sure it'll become popular.

Re:That's where the money is.

[TubeSteak]

I'm sure that Google would deem a direct referal to a sale to be worth more too.

Google would, but their valuation will be reflected in the minimum price, not the market price.

What's curious is that they're putting these ads in a separate network, such that you can put both types of Google Ads in a website.

It'll be interesting to see how the mix works out.

Re:Trust issue

[smbarbour]

The same way that you trust them when the method is CPM (Cost per mil, or per 1k impressions) or CPC (Cost per click).

They (The ad agency) trust that you (the advertised company) will provide an accurate report, just as you trust that they aren't padding their impressions/clicks with phony data.

This is generally done via tracking "pixels" on the contact and confirmation pages. I use pixels loosely as they are rarely images (albeit frequently implemented via img tags).

CPA? Only for very likely things.

[shumacher]

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.