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.

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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.