I did it this morning Tom. Liked the “we hope to respond to you in about three days”.
My guess is ‘Not sure’. It looks like it is primarily based in the US at the moment with mainly US campaigns on it. Being based in the UK, I think it could have serious repurcussions in other sectors though.
Google have enough weight to take a significant market share from other Aff networks (mainly through affiliates signing up with the Google network and directing their traffic), resulting in a drop in profits and share prices at other Networks, and subsequently allowing Google to pick up the likes of TD, CJ, Awin and Affilinet up at a cheaper price and at the same time creaming off the most lucrative merchant accounts. Although we know there are 1000’s of affiliates in the market, only 20% will be bringing in the revenues on the whole, and if Google can sway this 20% to join Google exclusively (with higher CPA’s, better customer services, weekly payments etc) then a lot of Networks will be in trouble. It’ll be the equivalent of a big supermarket setting up in a town and driving the corner shops out of business.
Armed with the knowledge of CPAs being paid, they could undercut the override charged so that the merchant still pays the same amount to Google, but Google passes more on to the affiliates, further driving out the smaller Networks who wont have the cash reserves to compete.
They will also already have an idea of clickthrough rates on merchants, and also the pcc rates that are being paid by affiliates of those merchants. This puts Google in a unique position of knowing all their potential business targets’ strengths and weaknesses.
Having said that, Googles approach to gaming may mean that casinos pass them by, however, as you can now ppc on Bingo, that may cause a problem later down the line – and even if thats all said and done, there is *nothing* to stop Google changing their rules and allowing Casino ppc etc again, and then absorbing that into it too is there….
Just my 2p!