Google’s highly anticipated payment gateway wasn’t exactly the Paypal killer everyone thought was coming, but it’s still an interesting opportunity for search marketers. The question USWeb clients will have is whether or not the new gateway will increase their success in search engine marketing. [more…]

Yahoo’s settlement offer in their click fraud lawsuit was approved yesterday by a U. S. District judge. Yahoo has agreed to pay back advertisers for fraudulent clicks dating back as far as January 2004. Yahoo also agreed to cover the nearly $5 million in legal expenses for the action against them. [more…]

In recognition of USWeb’s powerful on-line community and consumer expertise, VRGateway is exploring strategic opportunities to work with USWeb. Furthermore, USWeb has surfaced short-term tactical opportunities that will help VRGateway position their brand as a leader in the online vacation rental space.

VRGateway is the largest central source for vacation rental homes and condo’s in North America. With over 190,000 units and an ever expanding inventory, you can search vacation rental properties by their current availability, pricing, amenities, or property information and then browse the largest selection of vacation rental properties anywhere.

USWeb is a leading strategic Internet services firm helping clients achieve revenue, profit, market share, and customer loyalty objectives through Internet strategies and systems. USWeb partners with a diverse and prominent portfolio of clients, from medium-size organizations to Fortune 100 corporations.

In an attempt to counter click fraud, and keep up with eBay, Google today launched their own CPA (cost per acquisition) network. 

This is a good sign that Google will also be going heads up against major affiliate players like Commission Junction, and Link Share.   And with Google’s incredibly large network of contextual marketing partner sites, it’s possible that many companies will find this an interesting proposal. 

Contextually relevant CPA deals just makes sense.  When a news site has an article on mortgage rates, why wouldn’t a publisher want to take advantage of a bounty on people willing to fill out a mortgage form.  The value of a filled out form is much more than a simple click.  But in the end it comes down to a CPM for major publishers.  They will weigh out which form (CPC or CPA) of advertising makes them the most money and head in that direction.

technorati tags:google, cpa, affiliate, marketing, contextual