Google Launches CPA model - beta

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Yup, here it comes. What will be really interesting is how they structure the payouts. Obviously, they're snuggling up to the agencies and advertisers directly so the capacity for the payouts to be aggressive is there. I wonder what their cut will be....
 
This has been in the works for a while.
As a CPA network owner, I'm not sure how to feel... Excited or scared shitless?

On one hand it could mean that GOOG goes on an acquisition spree and buys MillNic Media for 200 Million dollars. Or it could mean that they get aggressive with pricing and presentation and steal away our customer base. Though neither of those is very likely. What is more likely is that they draw many new people to the space, advertisers and affiliates, thus growing our reach and available market.

I'd give my left nut to have one of those beta accounts and see
A) What types of offers do they have
B) What are their price points
C) What their tracking/stats system looks like

I'll be curious to see if GOOG moves in and tries to buy one of the juggernauts in our space like Value Click (VLCK - Market Cap of about 2.5B, chump change to GOOG) or if they go after a smaller/medium player like Azoogle, Hydra or Clickbooth, private companies who I'd place around 100-250 million a year in revenues (and dropping as great companies like MillNic eat away at their market share). GOOG could pick them both up for less than 500 mill a pop.

Anyway, anyone who could share ACTUAL insight into the new system would be great. Otherwise I suppose we can all talk out of our asses and speculate like I have...
 
I do not see any reason for Google to buy any of the existing affiliate companies. They can get most of those offers without really trying. If the merchant does any paid search at all, they are likely to test this. I would suspect that the beta testers are all people who have current relationships with the big affiliate networks.
 
Gawd...I could just imagine their TOS on this. My fucking head is already hurting.
 
I wonder if they'll limit the number of CPA ads that a publisher can have in their block. The cornerstone of their contextual advertising success has been relevance, and in the CPA model they'll be limited to the number of offers they have to place 'relevant' CPA ads in the block. In the CPC model they have millions of adwords ads to choose from ensuring a high level of relevance, which translates into a win-win for users and advertisers (offer and affiliate). I could see them forcing a mix of CPC and CPA in the adsense block to ensure the "relevance" stays high.

If I was like GOOG and had eleventy-billion dollars, I'd throw everything at the wall too and see what sticks. Odds are a balance of the two payment models comes out of it if it turns out to be reasonably successful. So it's hard to say what their expectations are for this effort specifically.

If the agencies perceive them as new competition, and I think they should, they might not be able to get the offers the networks currently get limiting them to a smaller advertiser pool. I imagine publishers will just split test, find out what converts better and roll with that. If CPA wins out in content network inventory, GOOG's income from affiliates would take a definite hit....I wonder which approach will yield Google a higher return...
 
Damn skippy

ya, i see they are letting merchants create their own CPA offers in whatever weird combos they want...

We have enough trouble trying to present and organize a few hundred offers. imagine the millions goog will end up with, most of which will be, 'get your users to tell us their life story including their SSN and CC number and we'll give you a nickel!'
 
Well I signed up as a beta tester for this the second they let us know, I still haven't heard anything back but how I understand it is during this beta stage they will let you choose which offers to display in your Adsense blocks so you'll get complete control over which offers are shown.

It will be interested to see what the conversions on this will be like, I wonder if it will bring in more money for us advertisers. I also noticed that they allow the advertiser to set a base price so in essence its just another affiliate program with the only exception that all you have to do is generate clicks instead of building a complete website around the offer, there will be so many ways to work this thing but cant really say forsure until I can get some testing in.

Who knows if I get accepted into the program I'll let you all know and we'll play around with it a little bit.
 
i think that this move isn't for helping us in making more money but for helping google in saving more money. that's the dead of arbitrage and mfa site. who will never chose for their site the ad of an mfa site?
 
Just signed up and I notice that one of the big requirements is that you use conversion tracking in your adwords account. It looks like they are going to track commissions this way. Of course I'm not approved yet, but couldn't the merchants just move the adsense tracking code off and on as they choose? I think they are going to have to be really careful about what businesses they let into this program b/c I'm sure a ton of people will be out trying to game it.

You know.. pay twice as much per conversion as the other guy, but only let one out of 3 conversions actually track?
 
Im hoping if this hits, highstreet retailers signup. AND they offer some decent xml feeds for once!
 
I just might set up that reseller site I've always wanted and just drive pure paid traffic to it and not worry about SEO and the serps.

Good idea not having to pay for a click unless it converts.

But I can see their QS on this crap, instead of $5 for a conversion $100! Because they think your landing page is the Suxors!
 
Very interesting.. It's always good to have more revenue options.

Be sure to post here if any one gets in.

Regards,
 
The Bigger Picture

More worrying is that this coud be the end of MFA spam as we know it.
Google have said, in that press release, that PPA ads will be inline (like IntelliTXT or Kontera) i.e. the ads on the right of search results will continue to be PPC.

Can you think of a Google owned network of sites that
1> Is being used to Spam
2> People generally don't think highly of
3> Performs poorly in terms of conversion rate for the majority of sites

It's their Content Network of course! A huge network of increasingly MFA sites!

If these ALL became PPA spam would virtually die overnight!

MFA'ers depend on people landing on their site, believing the content is no good/not applicable to them and then using a handy Adsense Ad to go elsewhere.

If Adsense became PPA not only would MFA'ers not get paid for that exit click 99.99% of the time BUT ALSO the link itself would be buried in amongst that useless text that the user wanted to get away from.

Eek!
 
Throw customer service into the mix, i dont think that the azoogles or millnics should be worried at all, yeah its google so what. If these affiliate marketing companies handle their shit especially with customer service they should be able to own their niches and also be miles ahead. I dont think this is an overture scenario here, as i remember aojon got fucked up by cj and from what i can remember him saying is that cj gives too much fucking control to publishers and they end up fucking up affiliates.
 
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