I have been running Google referral ads on a few pages of my web site. Google Referral ads for those who don’t know are very similar to regular content ads except you pick the advertiser and it is NOT pay per click. To receive payment from a Google Referral ad the person clicking through must complete a predetermined action like filling out a form or actually completing a final purchase. As you may expect the pay-out is much higher than that of a content ad click through. As it states in the referral ad set up, “Choose up to 15 products or specific ads to rotate in the referral unit. You can also choose categories and keywords to ensure you get newer ads as they become available.” There are numerous categories to choose from and overall a large number of advertisers/products available.

My site was accepted to run referral ads a few months ago. I Have enjoyed 4 conversions so far, less than one a month, after numerous impressions and very few clicks - my site averages 40,000 unique visitors a month. Like any publisher I want to increase the click thru rate (CTR), I try to place ads that are relevant to the page but don’t think I’m doing a very good job, content ads are getting 100 times the click rate on the same pages - I have swapped ad locations with similar results. Could be a few reasons for the very low CTR, one being that “Referral ads by Google” is bigger and draws more attention than “Ads by Google”, my ad picking (this is most likely) and the heading tag used by the advertiser - referral advertisers are not taking the same time in referral ad creation as with content ads. I think Google should remove “referral” from the ad and have it display as the other types of ads do.

Good luck using the advanced reports to recall referral data - I think the old TI-99 4A I owned back in the early 80’s could process the information faster. It appears the problem is the impressions, has to be as the other data you could count on your fingers. The impressions are not from each time an ad unit is displayed but from each ad that is displayed within the unit (skewing the crap out of real results, well at least what we publishers are used to), have a 3 ad unit display once it counts as 3 impressions.

As I discussed the pay out for a conversion can be much higher than a content click through. From the advertisers prospective it is a great thing - basically 100% profit without any risk. Also, I looked and cannot find the answer to this question - if I have an affiliate ad on my site and a person clicks through I will get credit for a purchase even if a person makes that purchase much later, could be months later. Both the advertiser and the publisher are aware of how much time the referred shopper has to buy. Does the person clicking through a Google referral ad have to complete the action required for publisher pay out during the first visit? Until I hear different I will think this is the case.

Google Referral ads could be a win-win-win but I am afraid it is just a win for the advertiser and Google. It goes a long way in making the advertisers happy and is a little payback I guess for all the fraudulent click throughs in the past (I mean when it was really bad). Lose for the publisher - until an advertised time span is placed on the conversion beyond initial shopper visit and advertisers get serious about writing ads which will draw more clicks (my click through to conversion rate is actually pretty good) and most important we publishers get smarter about picking the ads, don’t let the payout be your only determining factor as tempting as that is.

Even after saying all this, I will continue to run referral ads on my site because of what can happen - it really is a beautiful thing when a conversion happens on a high paying referral ad, damn near better than sex…damn near.

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