Google CPA to crush affiliate marketing

It’s another cry of doom - Google’s trying out a cost-per-action scheme, and everyone’s debating whether this will destroy affiliate marketing or what. Decide for yourself.

Jangro asks Will Google CPA Eat CJ and Linkshare Alive? and concludes “Will this cut into some of the publishers that currently operate in affiliate networks? Definitely, but one could argue that Adsense already did that damage. There’s a 95-5 rule that’s talked about in Affiliate Marketing. 95% of the revenues are driven by 5% of the affiliates. This 5% of affiliates cannot be serviced by an “advertising” model.”

Kieron asks the same question and concludes: “But what about affiliate networks? Should they be worried? Well if you are Tradedoubler, Buy.at, CJ etc. then I doubt it. These big networks offer a really valuable service to advertisers and you can’t compare them to the new Google proposition. But what about the smaller “self service” networks? The ones that offer little or no service to the advertiser and just charge an over-rider. Will they be under threat by Google’s new baby? Maybe; as knowing Google it will be a simple process for an advertiser to sign up, and most probably fully automated.”