PPC Tips - Google's PPA

Google's PPA

The holiday season is a competitive one for search marketing, as you all no doubt are aware. But there's still time to get a Something to watch: Google recently opened up a public beta of a program that has been rumored within the search community for some time: the new PPA, or pay-per-action, program (as opposed to, or in addition to, already-established pay-per-click programs).

Google claims that .02% of click fraud gets through — but that statistic showed up in a self-referential study, so one has to wonder exactly how much click fraud is going on out there. This new program eliminates that possibility by providing advertisers with the ability to bid not on "clicks" but on “actions” — in other words, views will be replaced with actual sales and leads.

For the online provider of goods and services, the CPA is the optimal route to take: you're paying, not just for a visitor to come to your site, but for that visitor to do something while there. So it makes sense to spend some time defining what you want your "action" to be — what is it that constitutes an action? Filling out a form? Making a purchase? Signing up for a newsletter?

Your work then is far from finished. The frequency with which Google will display your ad will depend on how effective it is in attaining the selected action. Since it is also running other paid search programs, the server will determine which ad is likely to bring in the most revenue on a given page: it will be calculating predicted click-through rates along with predicted conversion rates when deciding on a placement for your ad. So it’s still up to you to provide a web page that is going to get conversions: at this point, it's all about the content.

So our tip this month is to look into this new model and consider adding it to your search program. A limited number of advertisers are being accepted into the beta program: check it out on Google's AdSense blog and think about whether the new CPA paid-search model is something you’d like to add to your paid search repertoire. It's an excellent opportunity to get ahead of your competitors' learning curve and see if it's right for you!

With myriad choices and opportunities becoming available in search, it’s more important than ever for you to partner with experts who will monitor and develop programs that deliver results and keep your ads running.