[Chameli]

Internet Advertising means advertising products, services, and business in the search engines, social media, blogs, forums, community discussion boards, and all kinds of websites. In the world of internet advertising, there are different kinds of advertising methods. Some of the popular advertising methods are:

• PPC or Pay Per Click
• PTC or Pay To Click
• PPL or Pay Per Lead (also called CPL or Cost Per Lead)
• CPI or Cost Per Impression (also called CPM or Cost Per Millie, where Millie stands for one thousand)
• CPA or Cost Per Action (also called PPA or pay Per Action)

In this article, we will discuss about CPA in Internet Advertising

What is Cost Per Action

Cost Per Action or CPA in short is an internet advertising method where the advertiser will pay the publisher for the ad conversion. In other words, advertiser will pay the publisher for specified actions. The actions could be clicks on ads, signing up newsletter, submitting a form, sale of products and services, or registration to a program/website.

CPA is one of the most effective internet advertising methods because the advertiser will only pay when a specified action is occurred. For example, if the advertiser has specified that people register on the website, he will pay only when the people register to the website through the ad published on the publisher’s website. If the advertiser has specified product sale, the publisher will earn only when the visitor buys the advertised products on the website. Also referred as Cost Per Acquisition, CPA advertising primarily intends to generate sales of the products and services. Generally speaking, advertisers only pays when the action is completed through payment processor or credit card transaction.

How is CPA Calculated

CPA is calculated as the cost divided by number of actions. Let says the advertiser’s budget for the CPA campaign is $100. If 20 actions are performed, the CPA would be $5 per action. Let say the action is sale of the product.

Different Kinds of CPA

CPA is not one single method of advertising. There are different variations. Some CPA involves sales, some involved sign ups, some involves generating leads etc. When CPA involves generating leads, it is referred as Pay Per Lead.

What is Pay Per Lead

Pay Per Lead is a type of CPA advertising method where the advertisers will pay only when the advertising campaign generates leads. Leads can be registration on the website, signing up to the newsletters/programs, filling up a form etc. The advertiser only pays for the completed leads as agreed with the ad network. The leads could include but not limited to submission of phone number, email address, profile details, credit card information etc.

What is eCPA?

Advertisers begin online ad campaign through various methods such as Cost Per Click, Cost Per Impression, Cost Per Action etc. Effective Cost Per Action or eCPA is a method to determine the performance of the ad campaign based on Cost Per Click or Cost Per Impression method. In other words eCPA determines the efficacy of CPC and CPI methods and explains the spending on the ad campaign if it was on CPA model instead of CPC or CPI models.

[Fergal]

Thanks for your article Chameli, CPA is an option I would like to explore for increasing revenue. Have you used CPA yourself? If so, what was your personal experience of it?

[Rational Mind]

Affiliate marketing is also a kind of CPA advertising model. In affiliate marketing the advertiser pays commission per sale and published makes money based on the advertisers commission rate.

[Chameli]

Thanks for your article Chameli, CPA is an option I would like to explore for increasing revenue. Have you used CPA yourself? If so, what was your personal experience of it?

I have never tried CPA advertising, however, I believe CPA is the best advertising option because you pay for the sales and leads.

Affiliate marketing is also a kind of CPA advertising model. In affiliate marketing the advertiser pays commission per sale and published makes money based on the advertisers commission rate.

That's true. Since advertiser pay only for the product sold, affiliate marketing campaign is CPA advertising.

[Rational Mind]

That's true. Since advertiser pay only for the product sold, affiliate marketing campaign is CPA advertising.

When you are running CPA ad campaign, you will only be paying for the successful sale or lead, however, you also have to pay high account per action. If your campaign is t sell a $10 product, you might have to give $1 for successful action.

[Fergal]

I have never tried CPA advertising

Thanks for your reply. Is there a reason why you haven't tried it?

[Chameli]

I have never tried CPA advertising

Thanks for your reply. Is there a reason why you haven't tried it?

I have not tried CPA advertising because I do not have anything to sell. I have a blog and CPA is not the best method to advertise a blog. However, I am planning an online shop and I might use CPA for my shop.

[jobless dude]

I have never tried CPA advertising

Thanks for your reply. Is there a reason why you haven't tried it?

I have not tried CPA advertising because I do not have anything to sell. I have a blog and CPA is not the best method to advertise a blog. However, I am planning an online shop and I might use CPA for my shop.

Are you going to do drop shipping?
Which CMS are you going to use?

[johnywalker]

My knowledge about online advertising is limited and this article enriched my knowledge. I have plans to launch my own business and I will be using CPA advertising.

[Chameli]

Are you going to do drop shipping?
Which CMS are you going to use?

since you do not have to spend money for products, I might get started with dropshipping. I am on limited budget therefore I will not attempt shopify. I will use wordpress and woocommerce and a couple of premium plugins.

[Rational Mind]

CPA is a good advertising model for advertisers who have something to sell. For example, of you are selling products and services, you can try CPA advertising. CPA can also be a good advertising model for publishers who receive a lot of traffic.

[Chameli]

CPA is a good advertising model for advertisers who have something to sell. For example, of you are selling products and services, you can try CPA advertising. CPA can also be a good advertising model for publishers who receive a lot of traffic.

If you are a publisher and using CPA ads, you will have to get traffic from search engines, Since search engine traffic is a voluntary traffic (people check your site because they are interested on your topics), you can expect a good conversion.

[johnywalker]

Whether it is a CPA ads, PPC ads or even CPI ads, you need a lot of traffic, possibly organic traffic to earn from ads.

[Rational Mind]

Whether it is a CPA ads, PPC ads or even CPI ads, you need a lot of traffic, possibly organic traffic to earn from ads.

As a publisher you need a lot of traffic in order to earn from ads. Rational Mind has a small traffic, therefore, we have not used CPA ads. We did try CPA ads in the beginning, however, later removed the ads because there was zero conversion.

[Chameli]

Whether it is a CPA ads, PPC ads or even CPI ads, you need a lot of traffic, possibly organic traffic to earn from ads.

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I tried Amazon, Commission Junction and Linkshare CPA ads. I earned nothing on Amazon and LinkShare. I earned few dollars on Commission Junction, however, I never reached the payment threshold of $50.

[Rational Mind]

When I launched my blog, I monetized my blog with Amazon ads as this was the only ad network that I found was available for a site with no traffic. However, I did not earn anything as I did not have traffic. Later, when the site stated receiving traffic, I saw some clicks on the amazon products but there was no sales. I was promoting hand picked products, yet I was not generating sales.

[Chameli]

have also monetized my site with CPM ads and the conversion was almost zero. Therefore, I have stopped using CPM ads on my site. However, I still believe that you have a better chances of earning with CPM ads For instance, if you get a single click, you might earn 8 cents in average, however, a single product sale can earn you $1 in average.

[Rational Mind]

In my experience, PPC advertising is the best option for a publisher, however, earning very high from PPC ads is almost impossible for small publishers. CPA is good because you can earn really well from the ad conversion, however, you need a lot of traffic for CPA conversion.

[johnywalker]

If you are an advertiser, CPA ads can be very beneficial. You will spend money only when your ads are converted, for instance, you will pay only when product is sold, leads generated signups done etc.

[Chameli]

If you are an advertiser, CPA ads can be very beneficial. You will spend money only when your ads are converted, for instance, you will pay only when product is sold, leads generated signups done etc.

That's right, however, CPA ads are also very good for publishers as you have an option to make a lot of revenue from the product sales or leads generated.