Theoretically, the rewards ($) paid by the advertiser to the publisher should then increase.

I feel that the difficulty comes when you start to look at the how the numbers play out.

For examples, imagine an advertiser is paying $1 for a click (not an extreme price in today’s environment). And let us assume that the advertiser converts 1% of their traffic to their website (ignoring lifetime customer value and brand building value) to immediate sales. So essentially, they’re buying a sale for $100 via CPC.

Theoretically, you should be able convince that advertiser to now pay that $100 to the publisher. But will they? My gut says that there is going to be some significant sticker shock in the transition.

Also, because the advertiser should benefit in additional ways from gaining a visitor if not a long-term customer they should actually pay more than that $100. Do you think advertisers are going to be willing to pay for the value of those additional benefits to a total of say $125?

I’m not saying that CPA is not where the market is going. I’m just saying that it’s going to be VERY bumpy and VERY slow.

I think that looking at the affiliate industry can give you some insight into the challenges of moving to a higher publisher risk, higher publisher reward model.