Google Affiliate Network kills PPA Campaigns

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July 2nd, 2008 by Geoff

PPA campaigns will stop running in the last week in August. The PPA campaigns will be removed from the account in the last week in October, therefore any data that you have built up will also be removed.

The whole purpose of the PPA is to drive conversions at the right price. CPA is becoming more prevalent because people seek sales at the right price for their business models. PPA, which was always in a beta testing stage, has two possible alternatives although whether these fit into best practice or not is at the user’s discretion. The alternatives are called the Conversion Optimiser and the Google Affiliate Network.

Conversion Optimiser:
Advertisers are able to set a CPA target for their campaigns and the Google algorithm will work to achieve this target. There are a number of flaws in this model.
1. Volume – you are able to achieve your target but you lose the volume
2. Value – you lose the volume of conversions that you wanted in your high Return areas.
3. In order to make the most of this you need to recategorise your campaigns into campaigns that have similar CPA targets. Your campaigns at present will probably have ad groups will varying CPA targets, however if you recategorise you will start from scratch where quality score is concerned. Therefore your CPCs will go up and CPA targets are unrealistic.
I have used this tool on two accounts in the passed and the CPA went up as opposed to down. I have also used external bid management tools to set CPA targets and whilst this achieved the target CPA you lose the volume. My recommendation – manual optimisation of the statistics. The statistics can tell you more than positions need decreasing. The statistics can show that further keyword research needs doing, both negative and regular. It can also show that there are issues with landing pages which is why CPA targets aren’t being met. Volume of conversions can also be directly linked with the ad texts which could be optimised to yield better response and higher enquiries levels. The CPA tool believes that the issue lies solely with the PPC positions where it is so much more than that. Be warned – if you implement now you run the risk of ruining the bid strategy that has been worked up manually and the CPA.

Google Affiliate Network:
Whilst the conversion optimiser runs on CPC bids to achieve CPA targets, the Google Affiliate Network does not charge a CPC and only charges for a sale (CPA).

Google Affiliate Network:
Whilst the conversion optimiser runs on CPC bids to achieve CPA targets, the Google Affiliate Network does not charge a CPC and only charges for a sale (CPA). The Google Affiliate Network has been born out of the recent deal with DoubleClick. DoubleClick own and run the Performics Affiliate Network which has been running since 1998. Now this is the solution that will put Google into the next generation. Affiliate networks are successful and for the clients that we run Affiliate for they have worked well. The Google PPA campaigns did work well for all the clients we had them set up for, the only problem was there was near to no volume! This deal with DoubleClick will be amazing for all parties, Google, Advertising, Agencies and DoubleClick.

No dates have been released for when the Affiliate Network will be integrated into Adwords, but the sooner the better I reckon. I have scoured sources for dates, but nothing yet. Does anyone have any? Watch this space…

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