Google “hides” PPA Ads

Implementation problems in PPA ads notification

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 19 Sep 2007

Google's Adword's PPA (Pay-Per-Action) campaign was released in beta form worldwide on June 21st and has had many positive things said about it. The basic idea of PPA is that every time a user clicks an Adwords link to your site and then proceeds to complete an action such as sign up for a newsletter or make a purchase on your site you pay for that referral. This method seems a lot 'fairer' than PPC which charges the company regardless of whether any business is made by that link or not, the new PPA system means that a company need only pay for real custom.

However there are still a few bugs in what is an interesting approach, for instance when a user hovers over a PPA link Google says that the mouse-over text should come up with the words 'Ads by Google' to allow you to know its an ad, but it doesn't do so even on their own explanation page - What is the text link format for pay-per-action ads? despite having the comment “(Note that mousing over the link displays "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads.)” immediately underneath.

If this is widespread it could prove a nuisance as a user may confuse it with a navigation link on a site if placed wrongly. Reports coming out suggest that this has been seen on a live site but personally I haven't seen that many examples of PPA advertising and I probably won't if I cant tell they’re ads in the first place! This new advertisement system will most probably be a huge benefit to many companies if the problems are sorted out. However as it stands Google may find themselves accused of hiding ads if they don’t attend to it promptly. Given their recent campaign against paid text links they might be seen as employing double standards.