Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Amazon Follows Google: Launches Contextual PPA Ads

Amazon has launched public beta of its Contextual PPA ads program, called Context Links.

With Context links, all you have to do is paste a code on your website and you are done. Amazon will identify the content on the page and create links on the content matching the description of items in Amazon's inventory. You can even choose whether to display a preview of the item or not. In functionality, it is similar to Google's text-link ads which only one part of larger PPA ads program.

Amazon gets an edge over Google in PPA ads in two ways:


1. It has moved into public beta earlier than Google giving them more time to take customer feedback and make enhancements.


2. Amazon's system is more transparent as it is based on traditional affiliate systems whereas Google's PPA system lacks transparency like Adsense.

The contextual PPA market seems to be buzzing now with big companies like Google and Amazon entering it. It definitely comes as a challenge to the traditional affiliate networks like Commission Junction which have too many formalities for publishers to be an affiliate and the support is pathetic.

A competitive market is always good for consumers. Let's see what the traditional affiliate networks will do to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon and how Google will make its system more transparent for publishers.

You can read the details about Context Links at Amazon's Associate Blog.

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