Google's referral programs have never impressed me very much. Although the commissions are now fair, they started out very low. But even at the new(ish) rates, few sites are going to benefit from them. They're only good for publishers who aim their content at other publishers.
That's always been the problem with Google's referrals: there were too few products aimed at too few topics.
But Google has been working on a whole new referral system... and it's just been launched.
Referrals 2.0 lets publishers choose referral products from right across Google's advertiser network. You can read all about it on Google's blog.
Apart from the huge choice of products to promote, it's worth noting that you can also leave it up to Google to pick the ads for you by using keywords.
You can even use different keywords in different ad units.
That sounds useful, but in general, if I'm offering a referral product, I want to pick it myself. I want to be sure that it's something I've used, enjoyed and feel confident recommending. That's always the best way get the highest referrals.
But wouldn't it be great if we could pick the keywords for AdSense units too? We could make sure that different parts of the page advertised different sorts of products. We could test to discover which products and keywords brought the most money. And we could go a long way towards choosing our own ads.
Which is why Google is unlikely to offer this system on AdSense.
Referrals, after all, are cost-per-action ads. If your user doesn't buy, you don't get paid. AdSense ads are cost-per-click. If your user clicks and doesn't buy, you get paid but the advertiser doesn't.
As long as that's true, Google will want to keep control of the cost-per-click ads it serves its publishers to prevent clicks from users who are curious but not really interested.
The cost-per-action ads though, are yours for the taking.
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