snap.com with a new twist on PPC

[coder]

Just got this newsletter. It has some interesting ideas.

People scoffed nearly a decade ago when serial entrepreneur Bill Gross proposed an online search engine that ranked results based on how much advertisers were willing to pay to have their links tied to specific requests.

But the concept developed into a revolutionary idea that turned Internet search engines into massive moneymaking machines.

Now Gross hopes to shake things up again with Snap.com, which is providing another commercial twist on search engines while also promising to deliver more useful results than industry leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

Gross is among those who believe click fraud is a big problem. He aims to change things with a "cost per action" system that only charges ad commission when a purchase is completed.

While the idea sounds logical, is it practical? Do online users go to a search engine, click on an ad, then go purchase something?

I know when I buy something online, especially something expensive I look at a lot of sites. Usually bookmark the reasonable sites and then go back to the sites through favorites to make the purchase.

I don't know if it is practical, but it sounds great for advertisers. Does that also mean that websites that don't sell anything can advertise for free?

[ctabuk]

Ok, lets look at this logically
http://www.snap.com
Is this guy saying tht he will manage Google ads/ Yahoo ads etc, or is it purely ppc on snap? He mentions all of the SE's but I did not have time to go through the entire site. Phantom, the points you made about new posters has been delivered, and credited as your post.

[finnstyle]

Phantom- My guess would be that they use a 30-60 day cookie like you can setup with affiliate programs. So, a customer wouldn't necessarily need to immediately make a purchase.

I like this concept.

[coder]

finnstyle, that works for people who have cookies enabled, but for the rest of them? Even if they don't get credit for every sale it still sounds better then what is in place now. I would imagine a huge jump in paid advertising. Only pay if you make a sale, sounds good to me.

ctabuk, Bill Gross is only acting for snap.com, but i'm sure if it is successful the other SE's will incorporate the idea.

[brian.mark]

I talked to them about this in March at SES. They were really excited about it. This concept is only going to be applied to Snap.com and its partner sites. It doesn't necessarily take a "Sale", either. You could bid for a lead as well (thank you page for a form submission) or even just making it all the way to a selected spot (downloading a whitepaper, etc.)

As for the question as to if people actually make a purchase after searching, we have a 7% conversion rate on one of our sites same day. The other (larger dollar puchases) has about a 2.2% conversion rate same day. Those climb to 10% and 3% after 7 days. This implies that a majority of our purchases are made on initial search, or at least very close to the initial search.

Personally, I think it's a great model (my shopping engine is going to work off of a similar concept) and I can see it having the power to really make people that gave up on PPC excited about paid advertising once again.

Brian.