Google Plans to Launch New Affiliate Marketing Network that Might Eliminate ValueClick

It's always exciting when a company that is on the cutting-edge of technology brings website owners a great new way to increase their revenues in any way possible, and now Google is doing just that. Although still in it's Beta phase of testing, Google's new CPA or "Cost-Per-Action" program looks extremely promising for website owners who need another way to generate real income to their site. Google has sent out some information regarding this Beta test to various site owners over the last week which describes in fuller detail about how to implement the test on their perspective site. Here is some of the content sent out by Google to their prospective Beta testers describing the type of ads that Google wants website owners to display on their pages that will work best for this new Google ad program:

"1) Ads that blend in with the site and are placed prominently tend to perform better. Look to integrate the ad within the page.
2) Ads that are relevant to the interest of your site visitor also tend to perform better. For example, if you have a travel site, having ads relevant to airline travel would generate higher interest. For more tips on increasing revenue, please see our optimization tips page."

This content tells me two things: 1- These ads will not be just contextual-only ads like Adsense currently uses. 2- The site owners are responsible for putting the relevant ad content on the best page possible to generate the highest amount of ad revenue. This will require more work from the site owners than they have to do to generate good ad revenue from Adsense overall, but it sounds like the web owners will be able to make more cash per action than with Adsense. At least I hope that's the case, otherwise why go to all of this effort to add even more ads to your site in which the site visitor will actually have to take action in order for the site owner to get paid?

Speaking of getting paid, Google also has this to say about what needs to take place before you as a site owner can get paid:

"You get paid whenever a site visitor clicks on the ad on your site AND performs a specified action, such as generating a lead or purchasing a product."
This seems to be the main reason Google wants the webmaster to be very specific when it comes to placing a new ad on their site. If you have an article on a web page that pertains to "Home Rentals in Florida", you do NOT want to put a new Google ad from Blockbuster Video that requires the web viewer to click on the ad and then rent "The 40-Year Old Virgin" because there is not a shred of relevance to that combination. But if you have a web page that reviews movies of any type, then the Blockbuster Video ad would be a perfect match.

Again, the action does not require the web visitor to your page to actually buy or rent a movie, Google will also pay you if he signs himself up to their rental service or gets somebody else to sign up. Sounds like a good revenue system so far, right? It even gets better than this. Google has specified that the new affiliate network will not interfere with any ads you already are using through AdSense, so you will able to really add to your overall revenue stream exponentially. The following text was also sent out to Beta testers from Google regarding this issue:

"These ads will not compete with contextually targeted ads. Instead, they will show across a separate network, the Content Referral network. To place one of these ads on your site, you can set up a new ad unit that supports any of our current ad unit sizes."
This really shows that Google is on the right path in helping site owners cross-reference their ads they already have in place by linking them to the new Content Referral network ads.

Google goes on to state that "The CPA ads come from a limited group of high quality advertisers that are interested in displaying ads on a CPA basis". I take this to mean that Google will be very strict on their advertising standards when it comes to picking all of the advertisers that are looking to join this exciting new program, which is more good news for site owners, as the webmasters will be able to pick from a wide variety of the best performing advertisers on the internet.

They conclude this Beta test by describing how the new report will be generated to you on a weekly basis: "When the test begins, you will receive weekly email reports of conversions you have accrued and your total revenue within the CPA test."

Hopefully, Google will blend in the weekly report of your conversions with your AdSense reports if you do actually already have an AdSense account. With that feature, you will be able to see which ads are working best for you, thus allowing you to either increase the number of non-textual ads available from this new ad revenue program, or increasing the AdSense ads for a better overall conversion rate of this new combination of textual and non-textual advertising. This is extremely encouraging news for webmasters who love Google's AdSense ad revenue business model, but also would like to see Google move into the ad affiliate business as well. It looks like everybody will get what they wished for.