Google Continues Foray into Replacing Ad Networks, Banner Buys, and Affiliate Marketing

Posted: March 21, 2007

Google has made three changes recently that continues their push into replacing traditional banner buys, ad networks, and affiliate marketing channels.

With the recent launches of:

Reach and Frequency Reporting
Cost per action beta program
Cost per click on site-targeting beta program

Google has moved past traditional text ads into being a one-stop shop for internet marketing ads.

Google’s site-targeting program allows one to target individual sites for ad serving. Google will show if that site allows text ads, image ads, or video ads. This is essentially an open marketplace for replacing traditional banner ads. This is paid for on a CPM (cost per thousand impression) basis, the traditional method of paying for banner ads.

A couple weeks ago, AdWords quietly launched a new report: Reach and Frequency. These numbers are generally only reported by banner networks.

Google defines Reach as: The total number of unique users who will be served your ad over a specific period of time. Reach is often expressed as a percent of the universe for the demographic category. Also known as an unduplicated audience.

Google defines Frequency as: The average number of times a unique user saw your ad over a given time period.

With the reach and frequency reports, one can see how many people saw one’s ad; how often someone saw an advertiser’s ad within a time period, and Google’s conversion tracking script works as well for site-targeting campaigns, so an advertiser can track conversions by even new forms of data.

Secondly, Google launched the ability to pay for site-targeted ads on a CPC basis. This now allows advertisers to try out site targeting, but not worry quite as much about the ad placement on a site. The biggest issue with site-targeting is that since one pays for ads on an impression basis, advertisers want to know where the ad is being shown.

With traditional banner buys, often the ad location is built into the contract, so one knows exactly where the ads will show on the website. Since with site-targeting, this visibility wasn’t often easy to determine, the CPC beta allows one to specifically target websites that an advertiser will feel is valuable, while still only paying on the traditional cost-per-click model.

Lastly, Google just launched a beta CPA program. To join this beta one must:

Be using Google’s conversion tracking script
Create ads that publishers can view and choose to use
Create ads in text link, image, or traditional text ads
Set a price per conversion
Be in the United States

With the beta CPA, advertisers don’t choose publishers. Advertiser’s create their offer, set the price they are willing to pay per action, and then create ad formats that publishers can choose.

Sound like affiliate advertising?

Google is making some huge strides into the traditional banner buys where millions are spent every month (especially for product launches and branding), allowing advertisers to choose payment methods for these traditional banner buys, and then create an affiliate-like ad program.

If one were to combine this with Google print, radio, and tv ad programs - Google is moving towards being a complete advertising solution.

Technorati Tags: google, adwords, affiliate

Related Information:

« Joining Search Engine Land as a Paid Search Columnist

The Guide to Creating AdWords Pay Per Action Campaigns »

Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Blog, Google AdWords

Comments

One Response to “Google Continues Foray into Replacing Ad Networks, Banner Buys, and Affiliate Marketing”

The Guide to Creating AdWords Pay Per Action Campaigns » bgtheory.com on March 25th, 2007 1:01 pm

[...] Home Archives Subscribe Projects About Contact Navigation: Home / Blog, PPC Info, Google AdWords / Article: The Guide to Creating AdWords Pay Per Action Campaigns « Google Continues Foray into Replacing Ad Networks, Banner Buys, and Affiliate Marketing [...]