Google’s PPA : Another option for affiliate marketers
For almost 2 years now, speculation has been rife about Google’s entry into the “affiliate marketing” arena as we commonly know it [granted Adsense is an affiliate program, which is never viewed that way]. With the latest announcement of the pay-per-action option (beta) in Adwords, Google’s arrival into this space is formally confirmed. Not unsurprisingly, there’s considerable buzz about this development on the major affiliate marketing portals / blogs.
As always, one of the first questions being asked is: does this kill affiliates? On the contrary, I think this could serve to be an opportunity for affiliates. Here’s why. Currently many professional affiliates stay away from using Google’s AdSense program, simply because the CPA programs they promote provide a much better return per conversion than what one could hope to make from AdSense [in general; i know there may be some segments where CPC revenues might be quite attractive]. With the PPA [or CPA] program from Google, these affiliates can now begin to use the AdSense program as well.
We don’t know yet what kind of criteria Google is going to set for advertisers to sign up for this program when it is made public, but I’d think it will offer a much bigger pool of advertisers/ merchants than what most affiliate networks currently provide. Therein lies another opportunity for affiliates.
Two audiences could feel the heat at some stage: a) the networks: how will this move affect the marketing strategy of their current crop of advertisers and what will their reaction be? (b) the large number of AdSense publishers who thrive on the CPC model— I’m not sure if Google will move completely with a CPA model for AdSense [as the company has quite a bit at stake], but if the CPA trial works out well, there might be changes to the way AdSense is run {of course, it is pure speculation}.
Nevertheless, we will be waiting to see the (domino) effect of this announcement.
April 16th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
[…] Just a month ago, Google had announced its plans to enter the PPA market; with the DoubleClick acquisition, Google may have made further headway into the affiliate marketing space since the former’s affiliate marketing unit “Performics” is part of the deal. What exactly Google does with Performics will be very interesting. […]