Partners CPA Test Now Finished

The recent CPA beta test we ran across the Partners network is now over. It was a great success in terms of it’s purpose: To determine if CPA ads as backfill for unsold ad space was a viable option for publishers.

The answer is YES.

There were many lessons learned in this brief test, cheif among them being that targeting needs to be sharper, and we’re very appreciative of our publishers help in both testing the ads, and providing awesome feedback.

With that feedback, and the knowledge gained from running the test, we’ll be looking to run phase 2 shortly — it may not be what you think, but it will be interesting, and hopfully lead to a more rewarding program for publishers.

Those that have earnt money from the test will be notified on the next payment run.

Thanks again everyone, I hope to have a similarly productive conversation with the next phase of testing as we strive to make Partners work for as many publishers as possible!

3 thoughts on “Partners CPA Test Now Finished

  1. Nick, beside not having p.com ads on my German site …

    I would recommend subject channels by tag on a 1st and 2nd level for the more advanced ad users/options. I am thinking that amazon is doing that pretty well and I had some very nice results lately by playing around with ads for recommended products by keyword.

    To show you my current workflow: I have a custom field for an article specific keyword which is combined with a pre-defined amazon block (inside the article). The pre-definition is the 1st level category/tag (books, dvd, consumer electronics, …) and my article specific keyword is filled in to the amazon search link as search keyword below that 1st level category.

    To translate that to p.com CPA ads it means to have a general category as 1st level and (as you already mentioned) blog specific tags for the content. Of course this will narrow the quantity of targeted ads but the complains about ads which do not fit would stop.

    Another possibility which is up to you to realize is to put HTML comments into every article to trigger certain categories and tags.

  2. Surprised to read so much complaining especially when there is an opt-out choice. I kinda miss that singles ad. Go to any major newspaper online and count how many banners are winking and blinking at you.

    Looking forward to the next round. Keep up the great work!

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