I saw this over on Search Engine Land, and thought it was pretty interesting. I don’t plan on being an early adopter of pay per action ads as either an advertiser or a publisher, but I do like that they’re having the option now available.

You can read all about this on Google’s AdWords blog. It’s in beta at the moment, but that is of course the Google routine. You have to be in the United States to participate, and advertisers must have conversion tracking in place, so that Google knows when to pay on conversions.

Payments are flat fees, not percentage based at this time. That’s certainly easier to handle for right now.

On the publisher side of things, you also have to sign up to be a part of the beta. You get to choose the pay per action ads you show, so you may have more luck finding relevant products or services to advertise on your site.

So why am I not interested?

I may be, eventually. But for right now I would like to see how it works for others. I am concerned about conversion rates first and foremost. While it is certainly in an advertiser’s best interest to have a high conversion rate, I want to see if they are overall going well.

Of course, conversion rates can depend on the referring site as well. The wrong product listed on a site won’t convert at all. And I suspect the same disadvantage that AdSense has - that of no control over the text of the ads - will be present here. When it comes to pay per action, I really like to have more control over the appearance of the ad. That’s my earnings at stake, after all.

I’m sure the people accepted to the beta test will have plenty to say. I look forward to hearing the discussions on all of this.

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