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June 21, 2007 11:43 AM PDT

Google's pay-per-action ads now available worldwide

by Elinor Mills
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Google's pay-per-action ad pricing beta test is now available to advertisers around the world, the company announced on Thursday.

The AdWords Pay-Per-Action beta, launched in March, allows advertisers to set the price they want to pay and they are only charged when someone makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter or takes some other action as a result of seeing the ad. The ads show up on Google's AdSense publisher network of Web sites.

Pay-per-action is heralded by some as an answer to click fraud with the currently common pay-per-click system in which advertisers complain they end up paying for ads that were not legitimately clicked on by potential customers. Fraudulent clicks can be generated by people paid to click ads over and over or through automated software programs.

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.
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Now, into our site also.
by karthickdoss June 24, 2007 12:30 AM PDT
Now, Google, not only knows who visits a site but also what he does in a site. Though, Google will not get into our mind, he sure does know what we think.
Don't know whether it will help them give "personlized results" but this makes me totally uncomfortable.
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Pay-Per-Action does not solve click fraud
by ClickForensics June 24, 2007 9:02 AM PDT
Online advertisers should understand that pay-per-action is not a solution to the click fraud issue pay-per-action will pay fraudsters significantly more than pay-per-click. Fraudsters can and will easily script the "action" or conversion in order to increase their ROI, even if they have to commit identity fraud and use a stolen credit card. Online merchants and retailers need to carefully watch their pay-per-action conversions and closely monitor chargeback levels associated with this new pay-per-action(PPA) model. There is no simple solution to solve the click fraud issue. As it requires sophisticated detection heuristics and diligent mitigation each week to minimize wasted ad spend due to malicious, unwanted, invalid, and fraudulent ad clicks, online advertisers should consider the use of a 3rd party search engine auditing (SEA) firm to monitor and mitigate their ad click traffic.
~ Kevin Embree, SVP Product Strategy, Click Forensics
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