The Asia Pacific region is where performance-based marketers have a chance to establish a new form of online marketing.

With the current economic situation, it is possible that many advertisers' online budgets will be reduced.

It is even quite possible that online advertising spend will shift from cost-per-thousand (CPM)/branding to a purely performance-based model -- cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-lead (CPL) -- in 2009.

With performance-based marketing being a top source of online customer acquisition methods in the United States, one must wonder why this form of revenue and lead generation is not as popular in the Asia Pacific region.

One reason could be a lack of ecommerce transactions in Asia, and that this is due to Asian users not being comfortable with online transactions -- they browse rather than buy online. 

This preference is evident when one takes a look at China, which has a very cash-oriented economy. Few Chinese have credit cards, which makes transactions with customers outside a particular locality quite difficult.

According to the China Business Weekly, the nation's credit card holders now number two million, a mere fraction of China's 1.3 billion people.

Another challenge that performance-based marketers face when trying to penetrate the Asia Pacific market is the lack of site-specific and demographic knowledge.

Most advertisers will have to really understand their consumers, the demographics of each site, and be able to customize offers for each type of user they reach.

With the challenges mentioned above, will CPA in Asia Pacific be comparable to what it is in the US?

Perhaps a new hybrid model will emerge -- a combination of a base set up fee plus CPA components -- as opposed to the US, where it is strictly CPA.

Much like the enormous opportunity China presents to entrepreneurs worldwide, the Asia Pacific region gives performance-based marketers a chance to establish a new form of online marketing.

With Asian online media moguls such as Rakuten (that acquired US performance-based marketing company LinkShare in 2005), paving the way for affiliate marketers, it will be certainly be interesting to see how the CPA model will develop in Asia Pacific.

The attraction of performance-based marketing for advertisers is the "only pay for results" model -- which can mean a new paying customer/user or a qualified lead.

When online advertising budgets may be lowered, this model is quite beneficial as it increases new paying customers as opposed to brand recognition.

As mentioned above, perhaps a new hybrid model will be introduced in Asia Pacific during 2009 -- one that incorporates the concepts of branding and performance.

Elizabeth Lloyd is co-founder and chief revenue officer, 9Global, Inc.