Kodak - 5:37 pm on Oct 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

If Inktomi was smart they would price inclusion on a CPA basis. Paid inclusion is just another form of online advertising. The trend in online advertising is moving towards CPA based pricing (branding campaign withstanding). If I as an Advertiser am paying $0.25 per click each time one of my included URL's is clicked on and after a 100,000 clicks (i.e. $25,000) only generated $50,000 in sales from those clicks, then my CPA rate is 50%. If the 50% CPA is within my ROAS goals then I should continue to leverage paid inclusion, however, if it is not then I should consider allocating my budget elsewhere.

Here is what I would like to see happen.

Every Advertiser opens up a Commission Junction affiliate program and establishes a target CPA rate. Inktomi joins every Advertiser affiliate program at an agreed upon CPA rate. Inktomi then takes all of the Advertisers URLs which include CJ tracking and submits them to the search engines. Whenever an included URL via a natural search is clicked on it can then be tracked to conversion via CJ. If and when sales/leads takes place Inktomi is then paid a commission. Inktomi optimizes included URLs based on conversion which implies a high level of relevency. Net results is search engine get high relevent URLs, Inktomi gets $, and Advertisers get advertising on a CPA basis.

Am I off base here or does this make some sense? I am not sure and I would like to know what other people think.