A Review On Google’s Pay-Per-Action Advertising Program

Google recently announced beta testing of their new pay-per-action advertising program. This pricing model for AdSense ads will compete with other Cost Per Action (or CPA) affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, AzoogleAds, Primary Ads etc.

Using this new pricing model, Adwords advertisers will decide what kind of action they are willing to pay for. In the past, Adwords advertisers paid for every click on their ads, regardless if they were valid or not.

Advertisers can decide to pay for ads only if: a sale is made, a newsletter sign-up is submitted, a form is completed etc. The advertiser will set a cost for that desired action that the Adsense publishers will be paid on. Google will monitor conversions rates through tracking codes on the advertiser’s site.

Pay-per-action programs put more emphasis on the publishers, since they are not paid unless a visitor clicks and completes the pre-defined conversion. This means better relevant content based information on the publishers websites.

“Commission will on average be higher than traditional Adsense CPC pay outs”, says Rob Kniaz, product manager for Google’s ad products. “What Pay Per Action does is it shifts the burden of conversion onto the publisher, but the pay out is higher per unit,” says Rob. The publishers will also have more flexibility in encouraging their website visitors to take advantage of the offer being presented, by recommending or describing the advertiser’s service.

Google over the past year, has been testing different variations of these pay-per-action ads. U.S. based Adsense publishers are welcome to sign up to test the program.

Publishers have the option of selecting: individual ads, a “shopping cart” of ads or keyword based ads. Adsense publishers can also review the details of the offer from the advertiser before agreeing to show the ads on their sites.

Adwords advertisers can create either text or image ads, or use Google’s text link ad format to create text descriptions that appear in the style of a publisher’s page. For more information Google Pay-Per-Action.
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