Snap, a search engine promising pay-per-action

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.