It appears Google’s ““ValueClick (VCLK) killer” - the Pay-Per-Action (CPA) program, is not working all that well as they are forcing the program on some Adsense Publishers in an attempt to keep CPA advertisers happy by serving more impressions. When Google launched the program, industry naysayers cried “the affiliate model will die and Commission Junction will bite the dust.” I really wasn’t too worried, but who knows. Google is such a behemoth and truly taking over the world, so she could overtake our world too, but I seriously doubted it.

Jennifer Slegg over at Jensense has the scoop on what’s happening now and shares the letter Adsense publishers have been getting that in-brief states “In the next few days we will enable cost-per-action (CPA) ads to compete in your AdSense for content ad units on a limited portion of your traffic…”

Some publishers forced to display CPA referrals ads
“The variety of current CPA offerings is pretty slim, and when the program launched, it seemed to be filled with mainly lower quality affiliate ads. And many publishers just aren’t getting enough revenue from CPA for those who are giving them ad space, raising concerns if the tracking is working as well as it should, or if advertisers are skimming both Google and the publishers. However, this problem is certainly not unique to Google, it is a problem that is a big concern in any affiliate network. And it would seem that Google is forcing CPA ads on publishers because they haven’t been able to meet the necessary traffic for those advertisers using CPA.“