New Google Adwords CPA Beta Program

Google is beta testing a new CPA (Cost per action) model for Adword advertisers. This is great news (in my opinion) for Google Adsense publishers. From what I read on the Adsense site, it appears publishers will have complete control over whether they want to use the program at all or continue to use the CPC (Cost per click) model.

The CPA model allows publishers to specify the particular site/products they want to promote OR they can simply specify the keywords they want to target, and Google will show the top performing CPA programs for those keywords. This rocks in my opinion. It takes all the maintenance problems out of dealing with affiliate programs like CJ and Azoogle, and pretty much makes it maintenance free.

I can simply specify the keywords "ring tones" and not have to worry ever again about staying on top of which new programs are better than others, which payouts are increasing, etc. Google will worry about all that for me.

It is ideally what all publishers have been asking for all along... the ability to specify their own keywords for the ads. Only this format is the CPA model, which has huge potential for payouts if you have good targeted traffic.

For folks with non-targeted traffic sources (ie -Digg, etc) you may not benefit much from this model, but I'm banking that the existing CPC model will remain around for a long time to come.