Revenews: Commission Junction does CPC - Again

Wayne Porter reports that Commission Junction is supporting cost-per-click deal structures again, after shunning them for years during the downturn. The pendulum has swung back to a more balanced situation between advertisers and publishers. Alternatives such as Google AdSense now provide less risky revenue sources for publishers than pure cost-per-action deals, never mind the healthy demand for per-impression inventory.

Publishers certainly want to avoid situations where they provide free branding to merchants who might then fail to convert perfectly qualified traffic. On the other hand, Porter is right to note that CPC deals require strong click fraud prevention. CPA deals still make sense in some cases, for instance for commerce-oriented properties, but they often proved unprofitable for more content-focused publishers, whose job is not to close the sale.