Google AdSense to add Affiliate Marketing Option - CPA

Saw this post today that some AdSense advertisers have received information about a new alternative to AdSense that is based on cost per action (CPA). This essentially turns AdSense into an affiliate program, where the publisher gets paid on a per lead basis. Some observations:

1. This has to be a response to the major click fraud problems that advertisers experience in AdSense and contextual advertising in general;

2. Google should do affiliate programs MUCH BETTER than CJ, etc. in terms of payments, reporting, policing the network, etc. so I would agree with the original poster that this is big trouble foor CJ and the other affiliate program providers;

3. We always think in terms of optimization, and given that an advertiser can eventually pay for ads through CPM, CPC or CPA, there are that many more opportunities for testing to find the optimal ad, bid and method, so analytics tools will be that much more important.

Of course if Google expands the lead generation market even more with this, lead quality measurement will become that much more important, because all the click fraud guys will move to "lead fraud"....

Update: Help-U-Sell and Yahoo! Panama

Long time since my last post, reflecting many changes at BetterPPC. The highlights:

We are now managing over $2.5M in monthly spend, some of the largest PPC advertisers have become customers!

We have developed a "packaged click" product that allows small businesses and franchise organization to programatically buy PPC advertising and create coordinated campaigns between the parent company and individual offices. Our first customer in this business is Help-U-Sell(R), a national real estate franchisee with over 800 offices across the country.

Yahoo! is now testing their new platform, code name "Panama" and will finally allow multiple ads to be run automatically. We intend to take full advantage of this new functionality and bring the power of BetterPPC to Yahoo!

Google AdWords Desktop Manager

The new desktop manager Google has released (beta) is pretty amazing. Combines many of the features of the web interface with the bulk change/uploading features of the API (without having to program to work with the API).

If your company is doing basic keyword bid management - this is going to be a serious alternative for the customer.