Google today expanded its pay-per-action (PPA) advertising beta to
include all advertisers with more than 500 conversions from their pay-
per-click and pay-per-impression based campaigns in the past 30 days.
The search company said it would only show the pay-per-action ads
on publisher sites in the Google content network, also known as
Google AdSense for content sites. You can recognize a Google Adsense
for Content site as one with advertising on its margins brought to
you “by Gooooooogle.”
Google began more limited PPA testing in March.
Traditionally, Google charges advertisers using a pay-per-click
model, getting paid when an Internet user goes to an advertiser’s
site through a link in a Google ad. With Pay-per-action, however,
advertisers only pay when a pre-defined action is completed on their
site, such as when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a
newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action.
Google advertising customer Thomas Pitts of Flagstuff.com told internetnews.com the
PPA beta expansion is wonderful news.
Pitts is a long time Google AdWords advertiser, which means
advertisements for his site show up on Google search results pages. But so far Pitts has been reluctant to participate in Google AdSense for content.
That’s because unlike Google’s search marketing product, Google
AdWords, which only shows a link to an advertisers site when users
search for any keyword in a set selected by the advertiser, Google
AdSense for Content advertising distributes links to a participating
advertiser’s site across the Internet.
And, as much as Google tries
to place these links on sites relevant to what the advertiser is
selling — matching a sporting goods store with a golfer’s blog, for
example — the targeting can never be as exact as it is when it’s based
on user search queries. The results page for all searches on the
terms “sporting goods store,” is probably the best place to put an ad
for such a store.
That is, unless the hypothetical sporting goods store only had to pay
Google for distributing its link when a shopper clicked on it and
then bought something from the site.
That’s Pay-Per-Action advertising. And Pitts is in.
“It’s wonderful,” Pitts said. “You have control of your costs. You
know how much it will cost to get an order.”
Pitts and all other Google advertiser who qualify will have their
chance to join in starting today. Google said advertisers who have
already joined the beta will see an alert in their AdWords account
informing them that they can now create pay-per-action campaigns.
