Snap, a search engine promising pay-per-action

May 15, 2006 | Matt Marshall

Bill Gross has re-launched Snap, the search engine company that charges advertisers in a new way: It makes them pay only when customers actually buy something from them.

The re-launch, which our colleague Elise Ackerman writes about here, is an effort to respond to drawbacks of normal search engine advertising techniques. The pay-per-click model, where advertisers are charged based on how many times people click on their ad, has become less attractive, they say: People are only buying something for every 50 clicks on an ad, down from 20 or 30.

This latest move continues Snap’s efforts to push the envelope on transparency, as we’ve mentioned before.

Snap is a long-shot, because the search market is dominated by the big guys Google and Yahoo. But this advertising feature is an idea worth exploring.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.