I use landing pages to presell the prospect or have them sign up to an autoresponder. This works better than directly to a website, because there are less distractions. They are restricted to two choices; buy or subscribe.

Landing page or what I like to call them squeeze pages... I will take a opt-in to my Aweber auto-responder over a sale any day of the week...

Once you have obtained a lead you can make money on them time and time again...

I don't care what the situation I always use a landing page. Building your own list is were the money is. It can be a gold mine if done right...

To Your Success,
Michael Paul

With a landing page, you have the ability to get a perfect quality score for adwords. (It does happen if you know what you're doing.) With direct linking, you won't. Therefore you will pay more per click in going direct if you can't beat the quality score of the merchants landing page on your own.

Always use a custom landing page, KISS principle applies... make sure it accurately reflects the Google ad you are using it with and you should be good to go. ;-)