Definition
Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on
qualifying sales.
Information
In a pay per sale agreement, the advertiser only pays for sales generated by
the destination site based on an agreed upon commission rate.
Paying per sale is often seen as the payment model most favorable to advertisers
and least favorable to publishers. In such an agreement, the publisher must not
only be concerned with the quality and quantity of his or her audience, but also the
quality of the advertiser's creative units and destination site.
If possible, many publishers avoid sales-based agreements, preferring to stick
to the CPM model. However, some publishers, facing weak ad sales, have little choice
but to accept sales-based agreements to utilize remnant space.
For advertisers, pay per sale has some unique advantages compared to pay per
click and pay per lead. There are fewer concerns about whether conversions are
legitimate, and whether traffic is incentivized or of low quality.