From the inventor of pay-per-click comes a “new” model: pay-per-action.

“Bill Gross, the entrepreneur who first showed Google how to spin cyberspace searches into real-world gold, hopes his new search engine will teach Silicon Valley a new lesson in Internet advertising….the irrepressible inventor of the pay-per-click advertising model rolls out his latest take on search technology today — a relaunch of Snap.“

Advertisers pay only when a customer buys. This model will sound familiar to those who work with affiliate programs. The way it works on Snap.com is that advertisers pay a non-refundable $50 deposit, then bid for the keywords they want. They only pay if a visitor completes a desired action.

The problem is, of course, volume. How are Snap going to get a significant volume of search queries?  Gross doesn’t spell it out, but acknowledges it will be a challenge.

Hmmm….I wonder if they plan to distribute the ads, similar to Adsense or Yahoo! Publisher?

I’ve asked them that question. I’ll wait to hear back.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 5:41 pm and is filed under General Search, PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.