Google PPA Update

In my last post about Google's PPA program I presented some metrics I found highly disappointing. Even while writing that post I realized the landing pages I am using will most likely have to undergo some changes to play nicely in the Google's PPA program. I'm ok with that, but wanted to see what I could do without tweaking the landing pages in order to increase valid conversions and filter out the junk.

Here are a few tips for using Google's PPA program...without touching anything on the landing page/site. I'd say these tips apply more to lead gen/e-mail capture type conversions that actual product sales.

1. If you're willing to pay 2 - 3 X what everyone else in a certain segment is paying the publishers looking for a quick buck will fill your forms with junk in order to get paid. Advice - don't start with bids that are much, much higher than the rest of the advertisers in that space even if you can afford it.

2. I personally haven't seen text link ads perform that well...in terms of impressions, clicks and conversions. The "classic" style AdWords ads tend to work the best. Image ads seem to be working well too. Test a bunch of them.

3. Site filtering is your friend. Watch your campaign like a hawk and filter out the low performing sites.

4. Don't count on the geo targeting settings you specify in your AdWords campaign to do much at all.

5. Load up your keyword list (the keywords publishers can use to find your offer) with the max. I think it's 50 at this time.

6 Send your feedback to the Google team. They are listening. (when logged into your AdWords account use the send feedback link at the top of the PPA section on the campaign summary screen)

7. Read the whole Google PPA FAQ/Help section.

8. Look at some of the top performing ads in your vertical and copy them.

9. If you think you deserve it, ask for a refund.

10. Your tip here.


Hopefully you'll find 1 or 2 of those to be helpful.

Have any more Google PPA tips that don't involve changing the landing page? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

Google PPA...Not So Great

I spent some time over the weekend evaluating a Google PPA campaign I've been running for a few weeks. I knew the potential for fraud, especially with high payouts available, would be an issue with Google PPA but honestly never expected to see results this poor.

I have a lead generation form I've used with various affiliate networks and other programs over the past 24 months. It's always worked well - i.e., generated a profit. I set this form up for a Google PPA campaign and am honestly shocked with how poor the results are. According to my AdWords account I've received 124 conversions. The reality is only 4 of those conversions are actually valid - the other 120 have fake information.

I'm seeing this same trend across a number of PPA campaigns. Pretty disappointing to say the least. At this point It look like I have two choices - drastically cut back what I'm willing to pay per conversion, or, add a lot of extra validation to the form. Alternately I may just pull the plug on PPA for awhile until some of these issues get worked out.

Is anyone seeing decent results with Google PPA yet?

Google PPA Payout %

Was just messing around in a few AdSense accounts and realized that Google shows AdSense publishers what they receive when an "action" is completed in their PPA program.

Based on what I pay as an advertiser and what I'm told I would be paid as a publisher for my own PPA ad Google is paying 77% (rounded up) to the publisher.

Anyone else seeing similar numbers?

Another interesting thing is that none of the text link ads I created a few few weeks back when I set up my first PPA campaign seem to be available to AdSense publishers. I was wondering why they were not getting any impressions...now I see why. I'll have to do some digging and see if I can figure out why those text link ads are not showing to publishers.

Google Pay Per Action (PPA)

I've been testing Google Pay Per Action ads for a little over a week and wanted to report on my early experiences and opinions of the PPA service.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. If you're already comfortable with AdWords and conversion tracking you can get your first ad setup in a few minutes. I setup "regular" ads as well as 6 or 7 text link ads. To date, I've only seen impressions on the "regular" ads which at least to me is a little surprising. I thought the text link ads, which I designed so they could fit nicely into almost any content on the subject, would see at least some action early on.

Anyway, here's how my impressions have trended since I launched the campaigns:
I've yet to see any clicks or conversions but assume as more and more publishers are invited to the beta all the important metrics will increase. At this point I'm sure the number of approved publishers, especially in certain verticals, is still relatively small.