DISQUS

Marketing Pilgrim: Could Cost Per Action Overtake Cost Per Click?

  • bill s · 1 year ago
    only if people like Google want to lose money.
    money dictates and while CPA may help the marketer the search engines [ Google] lose money and i don't think they will allow that.
    yes i said allow - after all, google has every one by the ..... excuse me.
  • Evan · 1 year ago
    That would be great if CPA took over, but not likely.
  • Erica Forrette · 1 year ago
    I read that article on Wed. with hope and optimism also thinking it might spur some more dialogue among the community. It was a great article, and I agree with Aaron's points. But one of the challenges, believe it or not, is that many marketers don't know the CPA value of their goal action (if the goal is a conversion). That is one thing we at Adapt have been trying to educate our PPC management tool customers about (because one of the tool's optimization strategies is based on target cost-per-acquisition.)

    With that in mind, I liked particularly that Aaron highlighted that the "A" could be any Action - from video view to newsletter signup to the most-commonly-used current definition of "sale." If a broader definition is used (e.g. for many types of actions) then it might be easier for advertisers to truly follow that model & only pay for the actions they define.
  • Wooden Pete · 1 year ago
    It's very interesting, but i don't honestly see the search engines moving to a CPA model. It would certainly benefit users of the service, but anything that results in any kind of loss in revenue for the engines is very unlikely to see the light of day.
  • william · 1 year ago
    The problem with the cost per action model is that a publisher does not get paid even though it is contributing value to a particular brand. Although a person may not take action on a particular click, brand awareness is being created. This in itself is value to a company. Traditional media create only brand awareness and is compensated accordingly. I am not for monopolies but I do not see how a publisher can operate on a CPA basis only without being compensated even minimaly.