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Study: CPA Marketers Could Pay Twice for One Conversion

Media Buyers who purchase network ad inventory on a cost-per-performance basis could be paying more than once for the same customer, MediaPost reports. A study by aQuantive’s Atlas of 10 campaigns, involving 49.4 million impressions, that ran last October and November found that different ad networks frequently take the credit for the same customer who converts.

 

If a customer sees two different ads, served by different ad networks, and then purchases the product advertised within, say, 24 hours of viewing the ads, each network claims responsibility for that conversion.

The study found an average duplication rate of 170 percent, with rates per campaign ranging from 26 percent to 379 percent. Atlas calculated the potential overpayment per campaign as $255,000, with a range from $15,000 to almost $1 million dollars.