Google PPA, Good News or Bad News?

[KenLehmann]

Now, web publishing world is waiting the giant step that would be taken by Google as they announced the testing of a new pay-per-action (PPA) advertising service yesterday.

Ahh, it's not so long ago I've been surprised, Google changed its Terms Of Service to allow other contextualized ad systems on the same pages as AdSense, sure it makes many AdSense Publishers busy taking another look to its competitors, try to make a smart decisions about what ads system is to run alongside their AdSense on the same page, and so, me and some friends also have a long discussion on it, that finally lead us to one conclusion .. to choose Kontera !!

We have at least three reasons why we put Kontera as the best candidates to become AdSense sidekick, first, They're showing different ads, highlighting different terms and they work in completely different ways. Second, Kontera has made a whole bunch of good changes, for one, great improvement on its contextualization engine -- which might explain the name change (adlink -> contentlink). Third, their ads look a lot better, they're a bit like small TV screens now instead of flying boxes.

And then we found it as a very good decision, till now we found that the Kontera clicks do NOT canibalize our AdSense clicks at all! our AdSense CTR remains the same, with and without Kontera.

But now, along with other kinds of ads formats, Google also announced a new text link format for PPA ads, it seem it will utilize the same area as Kontera, within the content of our site!!, and work in completely same ways, and sure Google will not allow us to put similar ads to run alongside their new text link ads (sigh..). What's behind this surprising step? why google put all sort of ads formats (text ads, image ads / banner, and text link ads)? how about AdSense?

For years, we have some affiliate marketing product from several networks on our sites, these networks also operate on a cost-per-action basis, mostly with online retailers, it sure they will not have the ability to compete with Google on sheer size of network, so finally, do we have to pull about our long time cooperation with these networks? that a question.

For most advertisers, it's really a very good news, it will be more profitable and secure for online advertisers. now, they only pay for visitors that coming through the advertising links which actually perform some sort of actions, no more click frauds (IS IT?)

Since this new and will become an option for AdSense publishers, I doubt many would go for it. They'll likely benefit more from CPC or CPM pricing, if there no chages on AdSense afterward, who knows?

Just wait and see, where it will lead us to.