Google Referals
“Don’t put all your eggs in Google’s basket” . If I had a cent for every time I had heard that I’d have roughly 20 cents (which is a lot higher than the average CPC). That frustration regarding average CPC aside which is definitely another post for another day it seems Google are trying to entice people to go no where else in there search for monetizing options and place every one of their eggs in Google’s basket.
Enter Google Referals. Now many will realise that Google have always had a referal option in there publisher setup but they have expanded it a whole heap recently. Introducing more products and a master category list they are attempting to create a CPA network from inside their adsense interface. This is where the problem lies for me.
Before Google unleashed this CPA network upon us all I would have loved the idea but in action I just find it hard to use. The interface is cumbersome and I found it a real struggle to match any of my sites with related offers.
CPA matching, monitoring and statistics are a lot more complicated than running CPC adverts that are targeted to your content without much interaction from yourself and should be given a lot more room to breathe. It still strikes me as a great idea for Google to introduce a CPA network but I simply can’t use it until it has been seperated off and delivered to us with the user interface it deserves. I fear others may struggle too.