Google quietly announced the new pay per action ads. 

Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale, or a pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher’s site. You’ll define an action, set up conversion tracking, and create ads that publishers in the Google content network can then choose to place in new ad units on their site.

I’m looking forward to testing this, but I’m concerned that the minimum bids will be fairly high.  Then again, what would you pay for a qualified lead for your business?

Surprisingly, they’ve really hidden their launch of the text link feature, one that many of us, as readers, are sure to hate.  What it will do is insert links in your website to that will pop up a google ad when moused over.  You mention chevy trucks, and you end up with a mouse over pop up for the chevy dealer.  Kind of like the step child of the IntelliTEXT ads like you see here.  I’ll withhold judgement until I see more but my general inclination is to avoid them, both as a publisher and an advertiser.

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).