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

???

Big news on the blogosphere this week: Google is testing CPA - cost-per-action - (also called PPA - pay per action) on AdWords. In case of you didn’t read anything about it yet, here is the official announcement on Google blog, and an analysis o…

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.

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!

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.

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…

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…. ;)-

“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?

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