Google to kill off PPC?
Google has recently launched a new CPA (cost per action/acquisition) bidding tool. The Conversion Optimizer follows the roll-out of the beta programme for CPA on the Adsense network, and is the strongest indicator yet that Google is looking to move wholesale from PPC to CPA.Currently, as you know Adwords runs on a pay-per-click (PPC) model. Advertisers bid in real time for their position on the page, and pay for each click that delivers traffic to their sites. The model has several drawbacks. As many advertisers will know its easy to burn cash if you don’t optimize and track your traffic like a hawk, but the real dark side of PPC is click fraud. The CPA model removes clickfraud, because you only pay for traffic that yields. This is, of course, the bedrock of affiliate marketing.Google, however, is different from affiliate marketing, which is dependent more on relationships than technology (so, I don’t see Google’s move into this space as spelling the end of Commission Junction et al). Google’s different because it knows exactly what your site’s yielding in traffic and conversion data, and it knows what your competitors are doing. Users of Googly Analytics and Adwords will have noticed that Google’s anxious to educate you in its conversion tools, especially the monetary value of each action yielded from Google search or Adwords . I like the Adwords tracking tool, but I’d never recommend a client to add the value of a conversion into the tool. Google doesn’t need to know this data. My fear is that once Google moves wholesale in the CPA model, its effective monopoly will allow it to charge as much as it thinks you can afford, it will in effect be an international levy on ecommerce activity. Let’s hope Google can ‘do no evil’. In the meantime, I’d recommend third party tracking and bid management tools (like Webreality ATM …).
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