In what is an interesting time in the financial price comparison sector, the big news this week is that the big G are entering the ballpark and lining up for a big hit. The story was featured today in NMA, although since they’ve hidden archived content behind a paywall you may not be able to see it.
This positions Google right up there against the likes of MoneySupermarket and Confused.com, in itself an interesting strategy as you would have thought that these guys spend a lot of money with Google on paid search.
From my point of view, the most interesting element is that Google will be charging from these ads on a cost per lead basis, turning themselves into an affiliate. Strong evidence that there is a growing desire from merchants to make their advertising much more accountable and pay on results more than traffic driven. I presume that Google have done their maths and they may feel that they can make more money on a CPA basis than on cost per click. Whilst this may be the case in the credit card market, I’d be very surprised if that was the case in many more markets.
So will Google roll this out to more markets? Well I think it is dependant on whether they are able to influence the issues that all other affiliates face. The credit card example involves them being paid for a lead being delivered, but moving into other markets will presumably see them being tasked with driving sales rather than leads. Will Google be prepared to rely on merchants converting sales for them? I wouldn’t have thought so.
In markets like telecoms, consumer electronics and retail which all lend themselves readily to price comparison activity, I would imagine that Google are able to make a lot more cash from charging advertisers on a standard cost per click model than they will through this model. Therefore not something I expect them to roll out across too many more markets.
