Job Advertising 2.0: The Unveiling of CPC to CPA Strategies and Trends

On November 9th, the online meetup Exploring the Shift from CPC to CPA organized by College Recruiter and Jooble took place. Participants discussed and provided insights on transitioning from traditional job advertising to more innovative models.

The meeting was attended by:

• Brad Boggs, President and CEO at College Recruiter
• Yana Levchenko, Customer Success Executive B2B at Jooble
• Roy Jacques, UK & EMEA Managing Director at Appcast
• Cory Kapner, VP Global Sales & Partnerships at Recruitics
• Andy Warby, Head of Performance Marketing at SonicJobs

Jooble’s Tactics: Experience-Based Examples

Yana Levchenko, The Customer Success Executive B2B at Jooble, told what models Jooble uses.

Jooble has a performance-based business model. In this realm, options like CPC, CPA, CPAS, and CPQA abound, each with unique strategies. However, the overarching theme centres on performance and delivering final value to the customer, thinks Yana.

“The shared features of these options contribute to enhanced profitability for advertisers and yield improved results in real applications. We are steadily progressing towards higher standards in this field. Remembering and further developing these aspects is imperative”, — Yana said.

Talking about the most traditional one – a duration-based approach – they avoid labelling it as inherently good or bad. Its suitability depends on specific client profiles. Key features include fixed prices and predictability in advertiser budgeting. While you can control spending, understanding your ultimate goal is crucial.

When clients pay for each click, understanding their ultimate objectives becomes paramount.

Few market players seek empty clicks; most seek tangible outcomes such as subscriptions, applicants, or initiated applications. This understanding guides Jooble’s campaign launches, exemplifying the essence of performance-based marketing.

Is a traditional model vs CPC or CPA-based pricing better?

Roy Jacques, UK & EMEA Managing Director at Appcast, noticed that performance will work for most companies and job types, but he wouldn’t always advocate it:

“If you’ve got very small job volumes, you’re probably better with duration. You know, you’ve got five or six jobs. When performing, a setup process often requires pixels and ATS tracking. So if you’ve got no ATS, go and buy duration. If you’ve got senior roles and typically use job boards for advertising three or four senior roles, go and use duration.”

Roy added that if you’re working in a niche industry, there are niche job boards that serve small communities. You’re probably better off buying duration in those instances:

“However, on the other end of the scale, if you are hiring at volume, hiring at scale, hiring internationally, you know, hiring on an evergreen basis, you probably want to look at performance”.

CPA model: what matters

Cory Kapner, VP Global Sales & Partnerships at Recruitics, answered a question about what matters or is most important when using a CPA model, both from the advertiser and the job board perspective.

1. Quality matters and everyone has a different definition of quality. Depending on the ATS integrations, if job boards are doing click-to-insite where they’re applying on the ATS and you’re losing the traffic, quality and cost will always come into play.
2. Transparency between click cost and the actual CPA cost. So many of our clients, many of the more educated buyers, are already doing CPC or PPC. And when we want to shift to a CPA model because they’re used to working with vendors and job boards directly, they understand that companies need to make money off the spread, meaning acquiring for one and then selling for another. But they also want to know the original cost and how to gain those efficiencies.
3. Transparency about the source and the traffic coming from. Many job boards, job aggregators, and job sites talk about their publisher networks, where they’re advertising and how they’re going across thousands and thousands of job sites worldwide. The 80-20 rule is quite relevant here, where 80% of media spending typically goes to 20% of the vendors that can drive the volume and quality that people are looking for.
4. Transparency about the third party or general labor market data. In the US, a data analyst in San Francisco, California, should have a different CPA than in Miami, Florida. People want to know why and what supply and demand look like.

So to sum up, three elements of transparency and quality would be the underlying through line for sure.

Andy Warby, Head of Performance Marketing at SonicJobs, explained to participants the changes that must be implemented to buy or sell on a CPA basis specifically:

“I think Cory was bang on when he said transparency was one of the most important things because any buying relationship that moves to CPA becomes much more collaborative. After all, I have to provide you with the fairest CPA, and you have to provide me with high-quality candidates. It has to be an interchange. We need to discuss the fairness of that relationship because if I’m paying you $1 for an application, that will be a very different role than if I’m paying $250. We need to ensure that we’re being fair and transparent in pricing and agreeing with tracking and data sharing”.

The pros and cons of switching to CPA

There are pros and cons of switching from the traditional duration basis to CPA.

Pros:

• Cost Reduction: Transitioning to a results-based model, especially CPA, allows for significant cost reduction, particularly for non-target users.
• Risk Transfer: A results-based model provides greater budget predictability and client relationships, promoting less management on the advertiser’s part.
• Enhanced Transparency: Implementing tracking and transparency solutions is key to success, facilitating data exchange between advertisers and publishers.
• Improved Business Process Predictability: Advertisers can more rigidly plan their advertising campaigns, knowing specific costs per candidate and considering their objectives.

Cons:

• Technical Infrastructure Preparation: Implementing a results-based model requires technical preparation, including setting up tracking systems and ensuring transparency from both sides.
• Risk of Limited Coverage: There is a risk that publishers focusing on delivering candidates may limit traffic channels, which could negatively impact the achievement of significant traffic volume.
• Not Suitable for All: If organizational structure permits, it is recommended to use hybrid models tailored to individual client needs, as the approach may only be suitable for some scenarios.