Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I see they are now ranking PPA ads based on performance, even if it's only stars.
The improvements are nice, but PPA is still not there yet in my opinion. I think Google still has a bit of work to do and the advertisers have a lot of work to do.
FarmBoy
You still cannot say "click on this and download it in order to support this site" or language to that effect.
I wonder if it's still mostly USA-centric though, ie. no credit from Europe visitors.
The only way I seem to be able to do this is to start from scratch and regenerate the code.
The only way I seem to be able to do this is to start from scratch and regenerate the code.
I was wondering the same. I've only had it up for 3 days (made $12 by the way) but heck, everytime I want to modify something, I have to start from scratch.
I made a page around a product, started ranking for it and then found the offer had been taken off
This is a serious problem. Google MUST clearly indicate the life-time of the referral ads to us and taking an ad off the network before the predetermined date on the contract must not be allowed.
If the advertiser is just testing out the conversion rate, they can go for a week but still we must know if its so.
I'll have another look in a couple of months.
For example, lets say we were running a top site for performance cars, and Ford was running a PPA ad for Mustang enthusiasts. We'd get something like (made up)
---------
Vehicles
The Ford Motor Company Store
Maybe You'd Like A Fast New Car
---------
It's not that some big advertisers are running branding ads, they're just running BAD ads, and they don't offer multiple ads to select from. It's like the people running the ad campaigns figure, "It's not costing us anything, so why bother?"
I made a page around a product, started ranking for it and then found the offer had been taken off. This is a major company worth several billion dollars, not some mom-and-pop store.
I had a similar problem. Google will need to find a solution to this.
If you require advertisers to a "contract" for a period of time, that will discourage advertisers.
If ads can disappear without notice, that will discourage publishers.
FarmBoy
What is not clear to me is, if there is no conversion the click does not earn anything, that is I just lose the visitor and that's the end of the story?
Yes.
This is another reason I'll probably take off PPA ads from my sites after this weekend. With PPC I'm being paid to lose the visitor, with PPA we must have the option of opening the ads in a new window.
Edit: Changed "CPA" and "CPC" to "PPA" and "PPC"
What is not clear to me is, if there is no conversion the click does not earn anything, that is I just lose the visitor and that's the end of the story?
The idea is a high enough percentage of those who click will convert and the reward for generating a conversion is sufficient that you, as a publisher, want to keep sending traffic to the advertiser, even though not all of the traffic converts.
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Someone previously mentioned the poor content of some of the ads. If you look at this like an affiliate program, it would be better if there were no text in an ad and instead just a clickable link. That way the publisher could do the very important pre-sell, which is important in creating conversions.
For this system to work, IMO, the advertisers will need to create better converting landing pages and Google will need to notify publishers when an ad is no longer active.
FarmBoy
Seems like they have no idea what they are doing with this program, first they say it will not compete with cpc/cpm units, now they do compete which really makes Google a arbitrager which is fine but show us transparency on which cpa adverts you are running on our inventory with conversion tracking. There can be only one reason why they would run cpa through regular inventory with no conversion tracking.
Throw in a horrible backend interface, really poorly written campaigns, a lack of tools that have been around since 2001 for setting up affiliate stuff. I just cant believe that this program is being ran by a multi billion dollar company. We have been testing it since it started but my patience is wearing thin, I probably should just shut it off and come back to it in 6 months to a year when they have it actually working.
<self-edit snip> : edited after taking a deep breath and counting to ten
If it is not back by the end of the day I am going to drop my CPC code back in and forget about it.
Whatup G?
I bookmarked one page that has a white background, I will restore the top ad when it comes back on but never will go back and give CPA the space it had.
ASA is currently away from the office, and not able to post to this forum. However, a product manager for referrals has asked me to post following message, so that you will know that we are aware of the issue some of you are experiencing, and are working to resolve it.
Quoting that product manager:
As you have reported in this thread, we are in fact experiencing some technical difficulties with our AdSense referrals ads. If you are currently serving referrals on your site, your ads might not be displaying as normal. We are aware of the issue and are working to remedy it as quickly as possible. We will update this thread when the issue has been resolved.Please note that this issue only affects referrals ad units and will not affect your AdSense for content or AdSense for search ads.
We apologize for any inconvenience this problem has caused, and thank you for your patience.
AdWordsAdvisor
If there was some kind of communication that the techs was on the case we wouldn't be flipping out so much. Looking at blank adblocks for a whole day is quite the ordeal.
The ads are back now and I have restored the main PPA ad and now I have it on every page.
Also, while I have the floor. There needs to be an area where the "new" offerings are placed and renewed once per week besides the regular categories. I don't want to have to wade through thousands of ads looking for matching offerings that I have already seen. I am constantly looking for something new and compatible for my audience and love using PPC & PPA together.
Just trying to help you out here folks.
[edited by: Khensu at 5:20 am (utc) on Aug. 4, 2007]
It has been quite disconcerting over the last two days that chosen ads have been MIA.
The technical issues that had been affecting some of your referrals ad units have been resolved. As of this morning all referrals ad units should be performing normally. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience that this outage may have caused you.
AWA
Everyone, thanks for your patience and your additional suggestions for improving the referrals system.
FYI - I'll be traveling again tomorrow (fingers crossed that there are no more outages while I'm away), then back in the office and able to respond to any further issues right away.
-ASA
