Google PPA, the holy grail?

Well, this is not new Google launched a beta version of its Pay per Action model in March this year and extended it globally in June still as a beta, but in a recent speech Marissa Mayer called it the holy grail.

Why? Well anybody involves in emarketing knows that CPA (cost per action) or PPA is good for an awful lot of reasons: it reduces your cost of acquisition, helps you get a better grip on your budget and your spend, drives your ROI up, increases transparency…BUT in the case of Google, I would not call it the Holy Grail yet.

Looking at the model I would like to share my pros and cons with you so you can have an idea of what we are dealing with
Google PPA is only available as a beta for Adsense customers (so using the Google content network not the Google search network). To be able to participate you need to have Google tracking in place so Google can track the conversion themselves (to that extend it does not differ much with other PPA model providers).
Pros
- Pay per action model so you only pay for conversion
- You set your own conversion price so if you decide to pay $1 per conversion it is up to you (only thing will be that your ads will not be ranked as high)
- You can select the categories of sites you can work with
- Choice of format PPA works with text links, banners and ad copy format
- Reduces click fraud on Adsense (not that it does not exist anymore but since you only pay for conversion and not for click, you do not really worry how many clicks it will take to generate a sale)
- Acquisition costs are easier to control (as you set up your own conversion price)

Cons
- Available to Content Targeting only. PPA works only with Adsense (content network), not with Adwords, so volume is low and Adsense is known for low conversion level (traffic is not qualified so more difficult to convert into sales).
- Low click volume, so far Google is allowing less than 10% of its adsense traffic to go to PPA ads so it can take a while before seeing any conversion and even more difficult to optimise fully
- Purchase Fraud, Google is not building an affiliate platform so they do not have the tools to differentiate a valid order from a bogus one. Also no process is in place for order reconciliation. Meaning that whatever your conversion price is you will have to pay it even if the order is not genuine.
- Limited to a few players so far: to participate in the program, your site must be tagged for Google conversion tracking and you need to meet the requirement of high number of total conversions (500 conversions in the last 30 days).
- Some content sites are reluctant to switch to PPA.
- No de-duplication with your other marketing initiatives so you will end up over counting conversions on Google especially if you also have an affiliate campaign in place where affiliate use the content network as well as the search network.
- Google conversion tracking is not 100% accurate and depends on how the tracking is implemented on your site.

I guess by now, you know where I stand, Google PPA model is a nice gadget but is far from being what Google claims it is. And to those who predicted the end of affiliate networks because of Googliath, I would answer, see you in 10 years