Google Pay-Per-Action Launches

Google has just launched a new service in Beta called Pay-Per-Action. Judging by the logo in the upper left, this is going to be some kind of sub-service of Google Adwords (and hence Adsense as well). The long and short of it can be gotten right off their site, namely: “Increase your advertising reach while paying only for actions that you define. First, you’ll create an ad and define the action that you want a user to perform when they visit your site, such as signing up for your newsletter or purchasing a product. Then you’ll set the amount that you’re willing to pay when this action is completed. Finally, you’ll install conversion tracking code on your website so that we can verify when an action has been completed.“

This looks like a very interesting model, allowing advertisers the ability to set up simple CPA campaigns and run them through Google’s Adwords network. As a publisher, you could then view available CPA campaigns and decide based on quality and CPA rate whether to run the ad or not on your site. I have to say, this has got to have existing CPA networks a little worried. Google is always the big elephant in the room when it gets into something, and other affiliate/CPA networks have to be a little worried about Google doing this. AzoogleAds, keep your head up.

There are other issues at play here, though, as Diorex so aptly points out. As he puts it, “would you want to share any of this data with your competitors, suppliers, partners, or anyone other than an accountant? Profit per sale, sales volume, average transaction size, conversion rate, or average lifetime value of a customer? I would consider all of these pretty darn proprietary, yet tens of thousands of publishers have handed this very data over to what could very well become your biggest competitor.” It’s a damn good point. As I mentioned above, look at Google now getting into CPA and stepping on the foot of all of those networks already doing CPA. As we all hand a bunch of our business information over to Google, what’s going to happen is someday Google decides to get into a business which competes with us?

I use Analytics on my sites. I am a user of Adsense. I use Google Docs every once in awhile. I use Gmail sometimes when I am out of town. Of all these, Analytics and Adsense is perhaps the most open in terms of handing valuable information over to Google. However, any ad network I would work with would know information about my sites’ traffic, and it really doesn’t bother me. But, Google offers a LOT for free, and it does beg the question “Why would they do that?” IT could be simply that it helps promote Google. It could be that they just love all of us like their children and like to spoil us rotten. Or, perhaps it could be that they are using all the information we all send them to make business decisions that can make them a lot of money. In other words, are we their guinea pigs?

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