Wow. 50 comments already, not sure it’s worth posting this… The text ad links will be something the advertiser chooses whether or not to support. Most of our clients wouldn’t support them for a few simple reasons. The first and most important is that they’re accountable for all messages marketing they’re products. If a publisher writes 0.0% APR, or guaranteed weight loss, it’s the advertiser that gets stung. Google doesn’t have a good way to allow advertisers to keep track of all the instances and the context surrounding them (”apply now” text ad links.) Most of the big advertisers just won’t allow it.

Umm.. with the “in text” product, Google is playing in Kontera and VibrantMedia’s space now?

It will be interesting to see if (and in case how much) it will increase the publishers incomes.

I don’t see this as a threat to CJ or other affiliate networks at all. One thing I loev about CJ is that it doesn’t rely on JavaScript. All I need is my affiliate link, and then I can customize the actual ad to my needs. That is something Google cannot do and hence I have no interest in this product.

I thought i’d give you my personal opinion, having founded the TrafficSynergy affiliate network a few years ago. This is my personal viewpoint.

Firstly, I believe that the average Internet user doesn’t know what cost per acquisition is. The small advertiser who potentially can get traffic from google on a cpa basis, will thus go through the learning curve with google.

Unless google goes the linkshare route, and requires exclusivity to work with them on cpa (which they don’t seem to have done on cpc, and i can’t see why they would do with cpa), I see this as positive for most of the affiliate networks, as google will do the education of the advertisers on our behalf.

From the affiliate side, affiliates already work with many different company’s to maximise their revenue. Although some of them work exclusively with google adsense, or a particular cpa network, most of them are constantly testing the various options available to them.

So once again, those affiliates who only work with adsense at the moment will probably just move over to google cpa as well, due to their “allegiance” to google, not realising that they should constantly be testing ALL the ways to monetize their traffic. And affiliates who understand the power of testing, will try google cpa, and see whether it generates higher cpm’s for them.

For the affiliate it all comes down to the cpm, whether they sell advertising on sponsorship, cpm, cpc or cpa - they want to be earning the maximum for every impression that is shown or every email that is sent out.

So both pro’s and con’s of google entering the cpa market.

Lastly, advertisers and affiliates are also interested in good relationships, customer service, innovation, flexibility and many more variables with their affiliate network. Making money is important, but there are other factors which advertisers and affiliates treasure.

Best Regards
Eric Edelstein
Founder
TrafficSynergy.com Affiliate Network

may be really interesting for who need contacts really strictly targetized.

Won’t affect the big advertisers much? Maybe, but I think even the huge spenders have been cowed by click fraud and *incredibly-bordering-on-insane* advice from the big agencies that are bending over backwards to maintain the pretense that offline advertising actually works well in terms of conversion.

This new action by Google (not the first to do it but the biggest action to date) will eliminate those two factors and could usher in an advertising landscape that is driven exclusively by results and not the *perception* of results. This would be revolutionary.

I might have missed someone pointing out this but it seems to me that Google is taking on the big hole that currently exists in CPA. The advertiser-Network relationship is a big hurdle right now and limits affiliate networks to big players.

I think most people that are in the affiliate market are thinking about the current market and stating that Google will not affect CJ, Linkshare etc. Which is probably true. The big advertisers might be more than happy where they are.

But the market is about to undertake a dramatic change. New ideas/markets that no one thought of (or did but couldn’t get past the affiliate hurdle) are about to open up because now, in 2 hours of work they can start a campaign.

I suspect that existing CPA networks have avoided the small market because of the action fraud issue. They want big players who they can trust and develop a relationship. But Google have essentially removed this fraud because of the auction process. And THAT is the secret ingredient that will change the landscape of CPA (or extend the landscape).

The problem with CJ.com for advertisers is their $2500+ startup fees! Hopefully the google version will allow advertisers free sign up and only charge for actual leads.

Holy crap. I’ve thought about this some more.

Think about what you can do if you replace CPC with PPA (ie an action when you visit a website). CPC you can control. I’ve written more on my link.

Mike,

Day by day you are being a pussy of Google. Come out from that darkness and see the world.

1) This isn’t a big deal until it gets on the SERPs.

2) This is looks to me more than anything like an attempt to get (much needed) traction for Google Analytics & Website Optimizer.

Hi,

how will they track and pay if a user clicks on the AD??
does this realy works????

Can anybody say how much commission google would take on CPA?

Not sure I understand the following:

“The advertiser will of course have an incentive not to confirm the action, but Google will be able to easily adjust for this. Like CPC ads, PPA ads will be ranked by profitability to Google. Google need only calculate the average value of a click to a PPA advertiser, and those ads can then be ranked by profitability.”

How does ranking by profitability help adjust for fraud?

For web publishers, this seems to be another proverbial screwing by Google. First Adsense with its “I’ll give you a share of revenue but won’t tell you how much” approach. Now we push even more risk onto the publisher with CPA.

If Google is so smart, why can’t they deliver pricing options to the advertiser and give the publishers what they really want–pricing control.

We’ve figure this one out, not sure why Google cannot. Or maybe they just don’t want to…. ;)-

I think other affiliates network would take a big hit. But as a smart marketer, never put all eggs in one basket

The future of big-time online advertising is microtargeted video advertising which is an area that Google is in but can’t seem to master. It’ll be a smaller player with a but more imagination and chutzpah who’ll take the lead here. Any takers?

@66

Right on! Why should we as publishers have to bear all the risk, with no say in the pricing.

If my community is your target audience, you ought to be paying me for access to them. Not holding me hostage once I deliver them to your site. After all, I have no control over your ability to convert qualified leads…

Mike,

Being a publisher yourself, I am not sure why you think this such a quop for Google? It is simply a way for them to pay publishers even less for their inventory. What do they care, they are a volume player, they will make money. Publishers will loose. In fact, all of the comments, but one, have talked about the advertiser / network relationship, not the advertiser publisher relationship. This is the very type of relationship that has helped you maximize revenue on TechCrunch. I imagine, since you are rep’d by Federated Media, that the majority of your revenue is coming from premuim CPM ads and thay you run relatively little CPM and no CPA. If you have played in CPA area as a publsiher for any length of time, you would realize that CPA/PPA is a loosing propostion for most publishers.

Sure, a lot of advertisers will be happy to stick with the affiliate programs, milking the shrinking cow for as long as possible. And why not? They have no incentive, everything to gain, and nothing to lose. They get free traffic, and only pay commissions when they happen to make a sale.

We need to keep in mind that it’s the advertisers who fund the affiliate programs. So it should not come as a surprise that affiliate programs are designed to short change publishers — who may not be sophisticated enough to see exactly how it’s done. But for sure, they noticed it when they started getting paid 90% less beginning in January of 2000. (And don’t give me this gunk about the Internet meltdown. Sales and ecommerce have increased steadily, I’ll bet everybody reading this is spending 10 times more money online today than in 2000)

Using the affiliate program infrastructure, advertisers can redefine what a hit is, erase cookies after the first sale, continually raise the bar, and many other things to pay less-less-less commissions. Affiliate program URLs are intentionally easy to scam, resulting in somebody else getting credit for the traffic that a publisher drives, and it’s all conveniently easy, because that’s the way it was designed. Some advertisers even run ads for other affiliate programs — on the very same landing pages that publishers drive traffic to. A disgraceful practice.

On the Amazon front, for years they displayed bad faith, by routing sales to used book sellers, for which they didn’t have to pay any commissions to publishers who drove them the traffic in the first place. This was an extreme slap in the face to publishers. Once they finally did start paying commissions on used books, they invented new ways to squeeze down payments to publishers, to about 10% of what it was previously. My worst dream would be Google ever merging with Amazon, because Amazon’s lack of integrity would infect Google. I wish Google would just bury them instead.

The good news is, since day one, customers have always received the product or service they ordered.

Advertisers made sales they wouldn’t have had otherwise, all based on free traffic. How genius is that?

Affiliate networks got a percentage of each sale, if the advertiser bothered telling them about it.

And if the affiliate program could invent a reason to deprive the publisher, they kept that part of the commission too. And it was no skin off the affiliate program’s back that their URL’s were so easy to scam by simply switching pid’s, in which case they sent credit to the wrong publisher. They knew what was going on, they made only feeble attempts to stop it, and all the while, wink-wink, they were paying the bad guys. The bottom line is, less sophisticated publishers often did not get credit for the sales they generated. If affiliate programs would have had any integrity, and if they would have exerted due diligence to protect a publishers interest against fraud, they’d have the loyalty of publishers, rather than be ducking for cover now. But in early 2000 they became corrupt. And now the chickens are coming home to roost.

I will admit, it raises my eyebrows that Google won’t tell publishers how Adsense commissions are calculated. But the bottom line is that Google pays publishers 100 times more money than the affiliate programs ever did. That’s because Google has the discipline not to screw all the money out of the system, and that’s why publishers are flocking to them.

Since 2000 I have not trusted the affiliate programs, and I’m getting extreme joy watching them squirm. Die, Commission Junction, Link Share & Amazon, Die!

Tontomania touches on the big hype, and smoke-n-Mirrors false promises, passed out like cult coolaid to affiliates since 2000. Aside from Share-a-Sale.com no affiliate network isn’t operating a monopoly commission funneling system strickly to their Super Affiiate masters and crooked 3rd party AM firms.

My Tagline for for years, with 18,000+ affiiate related posts IN AFFILIATE FORUMS, is “What have YOU done today to put REAL VALUE into a click…. from a shoppers viewpoint? Well Google staff (Adwords/Google Checkout/Froogle/Analytics) have conversed with me since I first published http://www.ecomcity.com/safehaven-network.htm the bullet proof/fraud proof solution to existing Adwhore run affiiate networks.

They are earning the real meaning and all neuances of my tagline… one new Ad related introduction at a time. They know their money making potential as the largest media venue in the world relys upon each Googler gettting perceived and real advertised value at the end of every click.

Their staff knows I run ecommerce sites for merchant clients that never game the Google system, protect all their trademarks, have ZERO Adwords click fraud, monitize Zero SERP spammers, and contantly have the highest conversion ratios of any onine product merchants … regardess of traffic source. Therefore they get straight advice, and valid warnings, from me on any phone or e-mail conversation. That goes for their PPA initiative too. You can bet they’re well aware of the existing affiliate network’s hord of referral cookie stuffers, BHO forced click cookie cannons and sleazy merchant posing middlemen. What they’ do about it remains to be seen.

Meanwhile each vetted PPA Beta merchant/advertiser has their referral G-cookie tracking script embedded into their “action compete success page” hardwired to an on/off ALERT Red alarm light monitoring system…. before their PPA offers get distributed to the dubious valued G-Adsense content network. Like in my Safe Haven network model, Google now knows the merchant’s honesty sales reporting factor can be controlled at the shopping cart for product sales. (Google Checkout is basically working and the bad actors caught and booted). Lead forms, signups or other non-product actions are rife for affiliate fraudsters. Same goes for G-cookie stuffers from both domain page script tricks to the BHO incentive pop-ups and their Zombie BOT click slave owners. PPA is directed at wiping out the MFA doorway page click traps poluting the internet, the SERPs and sponsor Ads with meaningless time wasting clicks.

It is a wonderful news!

This is my blog about Pay per action-

This is something that Amazon has been basically doing for quite some time isn’t it? Why is this even news? People are smarter than you give them credit for. I generally know when something is an ad, and can decide whether to click on the link or not.

Publishers are going to get totally fucked…. Google’s stock will plummet… suicides galore

Interactive, verifiable, direct response is the next Internet marketing. More and more, advertisers are demanding accountability. As advertisers grow weary of click-based or impression-based ads difficult to quantify with sparse conversion rates they will increasingly require ad buys that put prospective customers in direct contact with them. The ‘rate card’ for PPC, CPM and similar advertising will lose influence and eventually be replaced by market-driven pricing and rates, as offered by PPA exchanges where advertisers bid for results-oriented inventory based on consumer profiles and proven demographic information. As this trend grows, the effectiveness of every ad, listing, impression, response and _result_ will be scrutinized thoroughly. A ‘click through’ to a web site pales in comparison to the value of a purchase inquiry by a motivated prospect. Advertisers aren’t looking for ‘impressions’ or ‘clicks’, they want clients and customers. The new standard for measuring the success of interactive ad campaigns will not be “What was my CTR”, but rather, ‘How many times did I connect with a qualified prospect?”

All in all- I just want to know- should I invest in Value Click, or not?

Any suggestions on this, as this market expands and marketers “FLOCK.”

???

It will be interesting to see how this works out. Seems like there are a ton of potential issues.