Forum Moderators: martinibuster
2- Branding Scam
Why do I see a 728x90 CPA image with nothing but a one word obscure company name, and no details on what they offer, how in the world can my visitors convert, this is an obvious advertiser branding scam, switch the sucker to CPM is they are so keen on exposure.
3- The interface
Need I say more?
4- Add your own
Publishers should be able to click on their own Referral links since they are not CPC. Google Support confirmed with me that Publishers are not allowed to click on their Referral links.
7- Would also be nice to know which advertisers are using images/banners by some sort of marker. Right now, you have to click on each advertiser and scroll through that lovely IFRAME to check for them.
9. Websites generally have a userbase that covers several countries - how does google assure that incorrect referrals are not showing to people who don't qualify due to their country. Perhaps enabling an alternate url (so that adsense for content will show if using it as a standard banner ad rather than highlighting the referral).
10. A currency conversion to USD equivalent (or currency of choice so accurate comparisons of potential commission can be made).
11. Possibly an email alert system that can notify publishers when specified referrals are no longer available (as some may need to change options for their site if they chose only a set amount of referrals).
12. A few referral products are showing payment as TRY0.01 (is that $0.01 USD for downloading software? - setting some minimum for specific actions - or letting publishers remove those referrals that are not going to help monetize the site unless 1000 or so people download that bit of software per day - and then it is only $10). (MFAR advertiser = Made for adsense referrals)
13. When ad format is chosen the filter will only display referral ads that can be selected - will save publishers loads of time when trying to select ads.
14. Advising advertisers to get all ad-units covered in the PPA + setting up some demographic targetting as websites may appeal to male 18-30 demographic that covers various categories - but category targetting is poor at the minute.
15. Referral Ad shopping carts can be saved - a set number perhaps... then as new referral ads appear they can be put into the selection instead of having to create a new cart.
17. Enable publishers to choose an option to evenly rotate referral ads when the same visitor is on the site (session rotations) - as it stands, the same referral ad could show 20+ times to one person and it doesn't seem to teach google anything. Enabling rotation option would give other referral ads the chance to appeal to such visitors.
I had suggested several other features/improvements but not got the notes now.
[edited by: Ganceann at 8:14 pm (utc) on July 14, 2007]
Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming!
-ASA
There are a small handful of CPA advertisers that look promising, that I think might actually generate a decent CTR. But I am concerned that if I specify individual advertisers, they might drop out of the Referral program at any moment. I might not notice this for days, leaving--what?--a blank ad space? PSAs? RON ads? Ugh.
If there were a way that Google could auto-notify us (via e-mail?) when our individually selected CPA advertisers leave the program, then I might be tempted to run Referral ads. Until then, it all seems like too much micromanagement with (on my part) too little expected ROI.
19. If we choose the text link we must have facility to customise the link colors and background etc or add our own color scheme the way we do for adsense ads.
20. I mostly see the ads available in the form of 468 X 60 banners. There has to be all standard sizes available with catchy words.
21. I found rare advertisements that is properly designed and decorated with attractive colors. I always find this problems with google ads.
22. Please do not confuse simple with DRY. simple is beautiful but these ads are DRY.
23. Why for the sake of god people do not use the word downloads if there is a download available in the ad?
13. When ad format is chosen the filter will only display referral ads that can be selected - will save publishers loads of time when trying to select ads.
Exactly, too much of a pain to scroll through, finally find something that is half interesting, and then have the ad format not available.
2- Branding Scam
Why do I see a 728x90 CPA image with nothing but a one word obscure company name, and no details on what they offer, how in the world can my visitors convert, this is an obvious advertiser branding scam, switch the sucker to CPM is they are so keen on exposure.
My thoughts also. They need to editorially review these ads as many are nothing more than a branding with no call for action. If the ads don’t convert, they need to flag them for review as the lack of conversions is probably being blamed on the sites showing them instead of the poorly written ads. If you think about it, Google should have tighter restrictions/rules on CPA over PPC as there is no way many of the current ones will convert.
The interface of choosing ads is simply terrible and is quirky with different browsers to say the least…c’mon…frames? Try to navigate with a wheel mouse …hehe
I have to say I have not implemented them at this time as I see nothing worth implementing as far as ad copy or $ paid. I have no doubt they will get this working properly…it will just take time/effort.
edited Oh, of course we need a way to see the landing page to judge if it would convert if someone was to actually click on it.
[edited by: The_Contractor at 11:10 am (utc) on July 17, 2007]
24. Enforce the categories
25. Enforce the categories
In "Recreation" I see Embroidered Handkerchiefs, Semi-Trailers, Office Missile Launcher, Office Beverage Warmer, Online Postage, Baby Booties, Blood Pressure meds ...... The category system as it currently exists is worthless.
They might as well just dump all the ads into a big long undifferentiated list.
The keyword search isn't any better.
28- please please please add the ability to make up a code with some campaigns and be able to insert the code into your site and save it in your backend and simply be able to add remove products from that saved cart so we do not have to rebuild millions of pages of html when the products go dead.
29- stop companies who are continually editting there campign so they have a new tag and are not getting a star rating attached to them since they are most likely one star this is one way to hide this fact.
30- if you are going to rate products conversion history then let in many thousands of times more products, as the best products move to the top they dont last long and most are turned off before 10am est due to there budgets being drilled out. This is putting tons of bad word of mouth out there about the program with the folks in my circles.
WE NEED MORE ADVERTISERS.....
WE NEED MORE ADVERTISERS.....
WE NEED MORE ADVERTISERS.....
I normally get lots of Google Pack / Picasa conversions this time of year. I had to take the buttons off my site, because when I placed the code, they looked nothing like they do in the console (I have screenshots) the buttons themselves were much lower res and you could take a bus from one pixel to the next. Plus there's an added teal bar along the bottom with "ads by goooogle" on it - that never used to be there before, nor is it in the sample that displays when we're selecting the ad. I wanted one particular button that displayed one particular message in one particular color, but when I placed it, I would get random buttons with all the colors and all the messages instead.
Then when I chose text ads instead, I consistently got ads in German and other languages, despite the fact that my site is targeted entirely to people in MICHIGAN.
I emailed Support on this repeatedly, sent them screen shots, (I have an incident number) and they kept mailing back that they were escalating it, and the last response I got was that they were forwarding my information to engineering, and they were not able to determine when the issue would be resolved.
That was June 20, 2007 and I've not heard a thing since.
So I gave up.
2- Branding Scam
This is a major concern with CPA. Google need to convince publishers they are taking this as seriously as they take CPC click fraud.
6- Would be nice of those "{Keyword here}: Pay Your Bills" ads would go away.
I fully agree with this. Mostly the ads are so dry and plain that I wonder how can anybody want to click them at the first place. Sometimes I feel that we are tied with huge weights on the legs and asked to run in the marathon.
FarmBoy
Categories are totally wrong and advertiser putting (for example webhosting product) under other categories.
-ASA
The question I need answered is:
- Is Google right now collecting data on what pages convert best for which CPA advertisers, because I've given them weeks and tons of impressions so far with no noticeable change in advertisers or the few cent earnings. Or is it their official recommendation that we take matters into our own hands and start the tedious time consuming A/B..Z testing to find who converts best for us? Just need an official word.
I placed two ads on my homepage, left the check in the box for "best performing ads" and got that "free dating site" which looked totally out of place. Unchecked the box and voila! Made a couple of bucks. I think I'm going to like the referrals 2.0.
I just won't let Google's "best performing ads" screw me.
It looked really nice to have big grey holes in my copy.
No algorithm is perfect and small targetting errors could cost publishers a lot of potential income. I can't afford to be at the mercy of the algorithm whilst it learns to optimise for my site.
For now I'll stick with choosing specific ads for specific pages. It's more work for me, but that's what I expect from CPA: harder work, greater reward.
We did a massive amount of testing with the system trying to determine what works and what doesnt with horrible results ever since the alpha, so far nothing seems even remotely better with this part of things.
The bottomline for us is to manually select each campaign after careful review of the landing page and then include this selection into relevant areas of our websites. We have insane yyyy.yy cpms when we do this and the inventory is available.
