What happened?

First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads.

Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or 'affiliate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-in list or use permission based email.

The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers.

Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death of Adsense".

Many affiliate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per click with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affiliate links, they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why earn pennies per click when you can earn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per click?

But the fine people at Google are catching on...

In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credit for signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.

Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and open their Adsense affiliate program up to third party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google offered some hope: "We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users," the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense." Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the click fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.

As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for such diverse services as insurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hosting, travel, mortgage loans, cable TV, banking... you name it, almost any service or product sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and lifelong clients.

Enormous sums of money will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run these leads will generate huge profits.

It can also mean huge profits for the CPA networks like Value Click's Commission Junction and Rakuten's Linkshare who supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.

Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more profitable it will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that never existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affiliate/CPA companies that connect the two

Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affiliate/CPA networks ... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.

For an online marketer when you get a phone call or email from the CEO or the affiliate manager with a company or service you're promoting with your website - you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.

Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials... they just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the affiliate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like Google Adsense... "Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."

However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual ads?

Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online; any product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.

On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you're one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the process