| Home > Weblog Columns > Goyami | ||||||||||||||||||||
Google's recent announcement to offer CPA advertising has gotten a lot of attention. On my last entry on this topic. I got an interesting comment asking about accurate tracking and click fraud possibilities. Tracking: Assuming the initial deals are cost per lead, the advertiser would supposedly set an amount they are willing to pay for a lead, and when that confirmation page loads, Google will track this as a lead. Here are some potential fraud scenarios: Fake Leads / CPA Fraud: Broken Site / Leakage Issues Imagine this scenario. Someone creates a page to capture mortgage leads, and throws a lot of AdSense pay per click ads on their page, and due to some "technical glitch" the customer have difficulties completing the lead form, all they can do is click on the AdSense ads or leave the site. The site owner would then be able to get clicks for free because they would have little to no conversion rates. An advertiser might be willing to pay a lot per conversion if only 1-2% of the clicks actually convert on the page, but the non-converters drive revenues. This might not be done intentional; there are a lot of sites out there with horrible shopping cards and conversion flows. Additionally many site have multiple revenue sources, and there will be a lot of scenarios that the CPA deal that is tracked is just one of the ways the site is making money, Google and their publishers might not share in a lot of the revenues, and thus allow advertisers to pay less per click for their traffic. By moving into the CPA deals, Google will be taking on more risk in the transactions. There PPC model is a lot simpler to operate and administer from Google's end, because there is no transaction risk. In this type of free market, advertisers are willing to pay to the point of not being profitable, and in a perfect world, Google should be maximizing the return in the PPC model. I guess my point for Google is, if it isn’t broken, don't fix it. This transaction risk is what the advertisers and affiliates have been arbitraging on Google for some time using their PPC advertising model. When ads don't work, we bid less or turn them off, as more and more bidders come into the market, Google's PPC model seems like the best and simplest way for them to make money. My guess is that Google will find the CPA world offers more headaches than it's worth. But you never know, if they ad a lot of intelligence behind the CPA model like they did with the PPC model, then only the best converting and most money generating ads (for Google) will display throughout the network, and the could open up a whole lot of new revenue sources and put some of these fly by night “CPA networks” out of business. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics June 23, 2006Chad Darling - Missing in Action
 Chad Darling Missing in Action Last Seen at Affiliate Summit 2005 Previous Job: CJ Publisher Acocunt Manager May be in hiding from Triple Jangro incident. Whereabouts Unknown Please comment below if there have been any sightings... Comments (3) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Misc / Funny June 21, 2006Google's CPA Announcement
Google's latest announcement that they will start testing cost per acquisition (CPA) advertisements has perked up the ears of the affiliate community. David Jackson appears to be the first to layout the Google CPA plan by which Google will start testing some CPA ads on publisher's sites, thereby paying the publisher not for the click, but only if the desired action takes place once the ad is clicked. This could be a sale or a lead form fill in. David Jackson has labeled this as a ValueWeb killer. Sam Harrelson on ReveNews doubts this will mean the end of ValueWeb's CJ unit. He thinks this is just another indicator that the lead generation business is "red hot". Jeff Doak, also on ReveNews concurs with Mr. Harrelson, and thinks this is far from the beginning of the end for CJ. "Affiliate marketing isn't about dynamically generated text links on content sites, it's about clever publishers who figure out new ways to drive converting traffic." says Mr. Doak. "Affiliate marketing is about relationships, and there is simply no relationship here." He thinks Google makes too much on PPC to risk it on CPA deals. Scott Jangro writes, "The smaller CPA networks also have to be concerned, though they can surely compete on price. Google, like any large company, will be bogged down in policies and accounting that will probably make it difficult for them to compete with the creative and nimble CPA networks at a pricing and service level." Personally, I see it as an interesting development in the ever changing landscape of search marketing. Google has constantly gone after new ways to make more revenues. Surely that see their PPC ads being used to generate large volumes of CPA deals, and they have raised the advertising rates under the guise of "page value rankings". This is just one more step in the direction of opening up the lucrative CPA money to Google. Another thing to note is that Google has probably woken up to the fact that their contextual advertising model is a little broken. By opting advertisers into contextual advertising as a default option, they have exposed their advertisers to click fraud, and non performing traffic. In this industry Google only wins if the publishers who host their ads and the advertisers who pay for those ads make money. For some time we have seen publishers happy with AdSense ads that pay them for each click, but more and more advertisers are waking up and seeing that these ads just don't convert and are not worth the money they are paying for them. Perhaps a move towards CPA is a move towards helping to make these advertisers a bit more open to considering these networks since it would reduce the risk of paying for non-converting traffic or worse, fraud. Right now it is a limited test, I think the interesting part will come when they start showing how they will be allowing advertisers to purchase these ads and how they will track those conversions. That might open up some interesting opportunities for smart affiliates who are able to create deals with their merchants to host the Google tracking codes on their conversion pages or allow their affiliates to capture the leads on the affiliate sites and then pass the leads. Additionally, publishers may now have another revenue making option to test on their sites. AdSense has proven to be a money maker for many sites, and these CPA deals from Google might make sense too if they are simple to implement and auto-optimizing to maximize your revenues. Keeping up with the changes is part of the challenge, and part of the fun! Comments (4) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics | Affiliate Marketing | PPC Search Engine Marketing | SEM Company & Industry News June 17, 2006Google Launches Scheduling / Day Parting Features
Google has launched ad scheduling features for Adwords. Advertisers can now schedule when they want the ads in their campaigns to run, and apply bid multipliers during certain times of the day. Clearly this new feature is in response to similar features launched by MSN AdCenter. Yahoo is also set to roll out advanced features in their new ad bidding platform later this year. Competition on the PPC ad space is quickly turning into new features for advertisers. Let the PPC Adwars begin! Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing June 15, 2006Enjoy the Summer!
I came across the following picture and it made me laugh. I thought I would share it with you with a message to get out from behind your desk and enjoy the summer!
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Misc / Funny June 3, 2006Affiliate Publishers Unite Against CJs Forced JavaScript Plans
CJs announcement about moving to JavaScript links has caused quite a stir. Scott Jangro, an x-CJ emplpyee turned super affiliate, has created a petition that he plans to present in person to the CJ office. By the time you read this message, the petition should have more than 100 signers. If you want to encourage CJ to re-consider their forced change to JavaScript, I encourage you to electronically sign the petition and add your own comments. The general feeling from the comments is that JavaScript links are ok, so long as they are presented as a CHOICE, and not forced. As I pointed out in an earlier message, JavaScript just won't work in many cases. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics June 1, 2006Affiliate JavaScript Links, What are the Problems?
Commission Junction's recent announcement about the upcoming change from standard text links to JavaScript links for all of their affiliate links has caused quite a bit of uproar in the affiliate community. For those of you who haven't heard here are the basics, as I understand them:
Commission Junction has provided FAQs (cj login required) to help advertisers and publishers better understand the upcoming change. Personally, I like the idea of having the option of using JavaScript links for certain links of my sites, and understand that these links can provide enhanced functionality like rotating offers, keeping the latest offers up to date, etc... I have used these types of links on occasion successfully with other advertisers on other networks. I have also run into some problems with JavaScript links. Here are just a few of them: Search Engines This argument is really short sited. When the largest affiliate network switches link types, you can bet that the search engines will recognize them in the near future. This isn't going to help publishers search rankings. Blogs and Web Builder Tools Form Links Redirect Links I personally manage the affiliate relationships for a consulting client, where they have a lot of content and I have taken on the role of monetizing their site. In order to avoid having to go through all their content over and over again when a merchant switches programs, I registered a new domain and have setup 301 redirects in the htaccess file for each vendor's link. This way I can just reference www.domain.com/afflink.html and automatically redirect to the url of the site. This setup simply won't support JavaScript. AdBlocking Yes, it's true that many other affiliate networks offer JavaScript links and that there are some advantages to these links in certain situations. But there is no other network out there, that i know of, that is forcing JavaScript links as the only option. Even when it is the default option, html, iframe, and other types of links are provided. Conclusion Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics | Affiliate Marketing Buying and Selling Established Websites
Having recently purchased a set of established websites from Todd, my Goyami cohort, I decided to explore the sites online where you can buy and sell established websites. I would caution you, that if you plan on buying an established website, be sure to do some research on the site. There are a lot of people selling "turnkey" sites that they quickly build, sell and build again. You can actually buy turnkey sites from companies like DotComBuilder, you wouldn't want to pay for one of those from an online auction when you can build it yourself cheaply. Business 2.0 recently had an article entitled "Flipping Web Fixer-Uppers - The latest rage: Buying cheap Internet sites, building tem out, and reselling them". In this article they highlighted SitePoint's Marketplace as a good place to buy and sell established sites. SitePoint charges $9.95 to list a website for sale in their forums. I actually decided to list one of the sites that I had acquired from Todd in their forums as a test. Check out my listing for Save-on-Guitars-Drums-and-Music-Gear.com. Even though the site is profitable, I decided to list it for sale because it uses a datafeed from Befree which will need to be updated and I don't see myself having the time to get to this one quick enough. Also, I thought it would be good experience testing out selling a site this way. I might sell more. I also have bid on a few; there are some interesting finds in these forums. Here is a good list of sites where you can buy and sell established web-sites:
Finding a good site to acquire in these forums is like looking for a needle in the haystack, but every once in a while you can find a good one and pick it up at a decent price. With a little bid of updating, monetization work, and some paid and organic search work, you could turn a fair site into a great site and either continue earning money from it, or turn around and sell it for a profit. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Websites and Domain Names
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||
Adam Viener
