Announcing Product Listing Ads

Google announced product listing ads, a cost-per-action ad program that shows images in the search results.

According to google: Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include:

• Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.
• List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.

At this time, Product Listing Ads is still a beta feature and is only available to a limited number of retail advertisers. Over time, we’ll increase the number of users who see Product Listing Ads as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/11/announcing-product-listing-ads.html