Cost-Per-Acquisition Advertising - CPA advertising – also known as Cost-Per-Action advertising – is an online advertising process in which an advertiser only pays per conversion, whether it be a lead or a sale.

Lead generation is a cost effective, low-risk way for advertisers to find and qualify potential customers on the Internet. Unlike print and television advertising – with which advertisers promote their product or service with little guarantee of sales conversions and subsequent return on investment (ROI) – online lead generation essentially brings targeted customers to the advertiser, and does so with minimal effort or overhead.

Affiliate programs are utilized by many companies looking for a cost effective way to generate sales on the Internet. It is a direct response marketing method in which an affiliate is compensated for helping a company generate new business online. Depending on a company’s goals, the affiliate may be paid for every new person that they send to the company (i.e. the lead), but it is more common for the affiliate to be paid for every actual sale that they generate.

When some people think of email marketing, they think of the seemingly never-ending stream of spam messages that show up in their inbox every day promoting products such as male enhancement pills and cheap pirated software. But when done properly – not to mention legally – email marketing can be a very effective method of online direct response marketing, particularly in the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) space.