Companies can lie about conversions all they want, and their affiliates will adjust their spending and promoting accordingly.
I suspect Google will be making conversion data public so that publishers can evaluate what offers to promote. The high revenue offers will saturate fast, while the bad offers will fall to the bottom.
However, there will always be companies that just want to throw money at internet marketing without really putting a solid effort into actions and conversions. These companies will either be forced to pay an obnoxious amount per lead or stick with PPC.