Pay Per Action (PPA)

SearchEngineLowDown points to a new service being developed by FindWhat and Incognito that provides temporary phone numbers for online ads - the idea is that anyone calling the phone number must have got it from the ad so it provides a way to do a pay-per-click equivalent with the telephone. Of course, you can do the same thing if you have enough phone numbers and the ability to track/count inbound calls, but if it's priced right there is no doubt that this will be an important service in the years to come. (Well not this service, but the knock-off that Google and Yahoo introduce...) Just another step in the transition of advertising into a measurable media type. With this we'll need at least two more pieces of the puzzle to make other response forms measurable: * A unique bar-code generator that can be connected to online printable coupons. The customer would get an incentivized offer online, print their coupon to take to the offline store, where the coupon would be redeemed and scanned into some cheap internet-connected bar-code reader. * A set-top-box gizmo that lets users who see a TV ad click a button on their remote to get an incentivized offer via email. So anyone watching an ad on television can 'respond' and get counted. Tivo has a feature where certain commercials display a small icon telling you to click now to have that program recorded when it is on - this would work like that except the click would trigger the email. Maybe one or both of these exist. I have no doubt both will - in some form or another - within a few years. Trackable, measurable marketing is too powerful to stop with little text ads. By the way, a measurable pay-per-click display ad system has existed for about a year already - AdMarketPlace. Not sure why I don't hear more about this. I'm sure the Adwords version is going to be a dynamo. Posted by Craig Danuloff at April 7, 2004 10:41 PM