CPA Ad Networks: Online Ad Campaigns For Limited Budgets

Online display advertising through static or animated banner ad campaigns has not been very accessible for businesses with small advertising budgets and limited ad creation capabilities. The high profile ad networks, brand-name portals and specialty web sites typically require a high monthly minimum spend ranging from $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 a month and long term commitments.

Online display advertising through CPA ad networks can be a cost effective alternative for businesses that want to expand their online marketing efforts beyond paid search, search engine optimization and email marketing.

CPA ad networks act as brokers between web publishers or affiliates and advertisers. They typically provide turnkey instant access to a large number of lower profile web sites, which are effectively affiliates of the CPA ad network, capable of generating millions of impressions in a matter of days. CPA ad networks also eliminate buying and managing direct ad placements across multiple sites and dealing with various specifications, fees and vendor relationships.

CPA networks primarily work according to the cost per action model in which affiliates get paid when someone clicks on an ad or performs another pre-determined action e.g. completes a lead form or buys a product. Advertisers benefit from the CPA network model because they only pay when traffic is delivered, a lead is generated or sale is made.

Most CPA networks focus on lead generation and they make money by taking a cut from the affiliate commission. In return the CPA network takes responsibility for the daily routine of record keeping, communicating with the affiliates and cutting affiliate commission checks once or twice a month. Good CPA networks pay their affiliates well to keep them loyal and working.

To be successful CPA ad networks insist advertisers provide good offers they can sell to their affiliate to promote, attractive creative that generates action and solid landing pages that persuade visitors to take action.

In the CPA model, the advertiser does not have a relationship with the web publishers or affiliate. This means that the advertisers do not know who is promoting their business online and where the ads are placed, which may be a negative when branding is the objective. However, it is important to only deal with those CPA ad networks that have a good reputation and tight control over their affiliates to avoid poor affiliate tactics such as search engine spamming, blog spamming, content scraping and other dishonest practices that can damage your reputation.

For local retailers, start-up companies and other small businesses with limited advertising budgets the CPA ad networks can be a viable option for an online display advertising campaign and definitely worth a try.