I reported earlier this week that Adwords was extending their PPA (Pay Per Action) beta program for advertisers. The AdSense team announced yesterday morning the rollout of what’s being called Referrals 2 for publishers - it seems CPA offers have now arrived on Google in force.

Under the original AdSense referrals program, publishers could generate revenue through promoting a very limited range of Google or Firefox products, e.g. be paid a fixed amount for FireFox downloads or Adwords advertiser signups. Referrals 2 will involve thousands of products and services from a multitude of AdWords advertisers.

AdSense Referrals 2 will pay out on cost-per-action (CPA) basis also, meaning that publishers won’t be paid on a click, rather a completed action such as a signup or purchase - so the payout rates for a successful action will be higher than for a click. As such, unlike with the PPC AdSense ads, publishers can encourage their visitors to click on a Referrals 2 offer by using an endorsement of a Referrals 2 product or service and have a greater degree of control over what offers they choose to run.

The introduction of CPA offers is the feature that many affiliate networks did not want Google to introduce as it will likely pose substantial competition. If Google plays their cards right with publishers and merchants by providing easy and economical implementation for merchants, good reporting and decent payouts for publishers; it won’t just be substantial competition, it will see some smaller affiliate networks calling it quits and some of the larger ones needing to merge to survive.

The AdSense team state that the Referrals 2 feature will be rolled out to publishers over the next couple of weeks. To see if it’s been activated for your account, click the AdSense Setup tab in your account, then click Referrals. If you don’t see an extensive category listing, check back in a couple of days.

I imagine some get-rich-quick authors are already feverishly working on their “How to make a million dollars with AdSense Referrals” info products. :)

Learn more on Inside AdSense

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