Pay Per Action/Lead Advertising  

Pay per action advertising is very similar to affiliate marketing, in that, you get paid, not for clicks (as in Google Adsense), but for actions.

Usually this action is that the visitor fills out a form providing his contact details, which makes the action a lead, hence the other term Pay Per Lead.

Since it is much more difficult to get someone to part with his contact details pay per lead pays more than pay per click.

However it is easier to get someone to part with his contact details than his credit card details.

Hence PPL/PPA promotions/ads have a much higher conversion rate than standard PPS (pay Per Sale) affiliate programs. They can be though of as a halfway house between standard PPC and PPS. As they pay more than PPC but less than PPS.

The companies buying leads are usually big companies like banks selling high ticket items. They pass the job of getting leads to CPA networks who in turn recruit advertisers (you/your website).

You place adverts advertising the company on your site just like you would with an affiliate program. The problem is that you have to take the trouble to select the programs you wish to promote just like affiliate programs. Hence they are just as time consuming as affiliate programs.

When I first examined this area about 6 months ago I was put off because of this and decided it would be better to stay with Google Adsense and standard affiliate networks.

However it seems that Google will offer PPA adverts that work similar to Adsense. Google will server PPA ads that match the page topic just as they server PPC ads. As the Google PPA is currently in Beta (march 21 2007) I will need to wait for a while before I can confirm this.

Why don't Companies use Paid Advertising to Attract Leads?

Many companies do. The problem with it is that it can be expensive. If you say that an ad on Google Adwords costs 20cents when clicked, then 100 clicks will cost $20. Now if they get 5% to fill out the form they have paid $4 per lead.

But to do this the company has to write the ads and manage the campaigns.

This means that if they pass on the lead generation to a network they can afford to pay that network up to $4 per lead and it would still be cheaper than doing it themselves.

The Future

PPA/PPL is not new, but up until now it hasn't been the most popular model. However with click fraud continuing to be a problem the PPL/PPA option gets more attractive, and now with Google entering the market it seems destined to increase quite dramatically. [1-ga-hor-480.htm]