The New Era Of Online Advertisement: The Cost Per Action Strategy

We all want to make money and the online world is one giant pit of money that offers earning opportunities for everyone. Cost Per Action commonly referred to as the CPA is a advertisement pricing model of the World Wide Web. Here, the advertiser has to pay up for various actions such as click, form submission, an impression etc.

Direct Response advisers are of the view that CPA marketing strategy is the best and optimum method to invest in online advertising where the advertiser only has to pay when the desired action has been taken i.e. the job of the advertisement has been done. It’s like a TV advertisement only the advertising company pays the price proportional to the number of viewers who view the advertisement. In a TV or print media there is no way to acknowledge that, however the online world has required actions to show that indeed the message of the advertisement has reached the target.

CPA can also be referred as Cost Per Acquisition.  CPA is calculated by the simple formula as the total cost incurred by the number of acquisitions. PPL or Pay per lead is another form of CPA where the “Action” or the “Acquisition” is replaced by the delivery of lead. The Advertising charge is based on the number of leads that are successfully delivered according to the terms of agreement. There are different forms of such leads. It can be mails, SMS, phone calls etc. On the basis of the action performed, CPA marketing has various forms. Such as Cost per Click(CPC), Pay Per Download(PPD) etc. where the required actions are a click and a file download respectively.

Cost Per Action are also referred as “super affiliates”, who themselves are the affiliates of merchants via the conventional affiliate networks.  The payment of a cost per action is only done when the required action is completed. Thus it is of prime importance to the owners to accurately track and gauge the number of actions completed. Basically three strategies can be applied to do so:

• Cookie Tracking: When a click is made, a cookie is sent to the clicker’s computer relaying the information as to when the action was performed.
• Telephone Tracking: This is done by using unique and different telephone numbers in each instance of the advertising campaign.
• Promotional codes: The advertisement from different campaigners is given different promotional codes. These unique codes are asked to be used by the customers from which it is known as to which advertiser’s action was completed.

With the arrival of social media like twitter, facebooketc which houses millions of people in a common platform, the CPA advertising strategy is popular choice to maximize advertisement and reach the most of the population. Often you will find facebook fan pages as a part of a CPA strategy where the number of “likes” or “shares” may be the required action. The Cost Per Action strategy is efficient, direct and the best choice to make the most of online advertisement.