Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale, or a pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher's site. You'll define an action, set up conversion tracking, and create ads that publishers in the Google content network can then choose to place in new ad units on their site. Let's run through the details:
Ad placement: Pay-per-action ads are only shown on sites in the Google content network. Publishers choose specific pay-per-action ads that are relevant to their site and can place them in a new ad unit on their page.
Ad formats: You can create text ads, image ads, or our new text link ad format in your pay-per-action campaign. Text link ads are brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher's page. These Javascript-based ads will display like regular hyperlinks and allow publishers to embed these links inline with other text to promote your product or service.
Pricing: You define a fixed amount that you'd like to pay for a completed action based on the value of that action to your business. You'll only pay when that action is completed, not for a click or impression. For example, you may wish to pay $1 every time a user fills out a lead form on your site and $5 when a purchase is made.
Tracking: Google conversion tracking allows us to determine when an action that you've specified has been completed on your site. If you're already using conversion tracking, you'll be able to quickly enable existing actions for your pay-per-action campaign by adding the amount that you're willing to pay. For new conversion tracking users, you'll need to add a small amount of code to your website after you define your actions.
Beta Test Requirements: At this time, the pay-per-action beta test is only available to advertisers in the United States. In addition, you must already be using conversion tracking or be able to implement conversion tracking code on your website so that we can track your completed actions.
Over the next few weeks, we'll begin adding advertisers to our beta test. If you're an AdWords advertiser located in the US and are interested in participating in this beta, please fill out this short web form. We'll let you know as soon as you've been added to the test and will continue to add advertisers on a rolling basis.
We hope you're as excited about this beta test as we are! Please let us know if you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on the blog. You can also read up on pay-per-action here.
