On the Google AdWords blog this past week, Google announced that it was dropping its pay per action program. If you never used pay per action, here it is in a nutshell.
With pay per action, you decide what you will pay, amount and action – you cannot do an action for a sale if you do not have access to your shopping cart code. Then publishers can pick up your code to show ads on their sites and can get paid when the action happens.
I found from using the program for a client, that pay per action was just not embraced by the publishing network. If you were only offering under 1 dollar or so for the action, publishers did not pick you up. Publisher came and went and so the ads were on and off again.
Although it sounded like a good idea, publishers really want to be paid for clicks as it simply was easier money.