Ted Murphy is the CEO of PayPerPost, which most of you are probably familiar with or either using by this point. Of course PayPerPost’s business model is to allow bloggers to accept money for posts about companies. Sounds simple and innocent, until you start considering the implications (and PayPerPost’s original policy of not requiring disclosure).
Jim is responding to a video entry from Loren Feldman at 1938 Media which covers Ted’s appearance at Canada’s Mesh Conference. At the conference, Michael Arrington was the keynote and while acknowledging Murphy’s presence in the room described him as “the most evil person in the room.” At the end of the video, Loren does a quick interview with Murphy and pals it up.
Jim writes:
I agree with Loren. Ted Murphy isn’t evil as Arrington says. In fact, if you read my blog, you’ll know that I turned my opinion on Ted a long time ago and proclaimed him a fucking marketing genius.
I won’t go so far as calling Murphy evil (this is about blogging after all), but I will take the opposing side along with the likes of Jason Calacanis who wrote in June of last year…
The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust… you pay folks to blog about a product and you compromise that.
Blogging as we once knew it (citizens expressing ideas and thoughts about things they were interested in or passionate about) is long over. Blogging has become a business platform where we worry over SEO structures and linbaiting recipes. Is your blog optimized? Where is your sitemap??
It’s really a sad state of affairs.
However, I don’t think we need to return to some antediluvian state where blogs were untainted by the floods of money. Blogging, as everything, is constantly changing and evolving and making grand judgments about tactics and strategies to artificially gain more eyeballs or traffic or money from one’s blog is a part of that evolving ecosystem.
In my opinion, PayPerPost is not evil, but just silly. Why would I want to dilute my most intimate and personal online space with what equates to a BS review of something that I wouldn’t have written about otherwise? I hate reading blogs that use PayPerPost or ReviewMe or whatever the flavor of the month is ,and I unsubscribe from blogs that come across my feed reader with paid reviews. However, that’s just my own personal judgement. Do what you want with your own intimate online space.
But going back to my main point, Ted Murphy is not a marketing genius. Being a PR whore with a camera crew and master baiting A listers does not a marketing genius make. Instead, Murphy understands that for the crowd his platform appeals to, any coverage (especially underdog us-against-the-world type psychological coverage) is good coverage. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out… it’s basic human sociology.
If Murphy were a genius, he would have figured out how to bridge the gap between monetization and responsibility. Instead, he came out of the gates firing with a platform that didn’t require disclosure, appealed to the lowest common denominator and promised big money to amateurs (which is rarely the case).
Somebody finally gets it! You can do the same things you were already doing. Talk about the same stuff (and maybe find out about some other cool new things) and make money doing it. If you see something that isn’t right for you don’t blog about it.
That may have been the original intent, but that’s not how bloggers have been using the service. Cheapening the medium of blogging by introducing the ability to make money on obvious artificial posts is not a genius move.
Marketing, at its foundation, is about sharing ideas with another person or a group of people. Genius marketing is organic marketing.
I consume more online video than I probably should (but I make up for that by not watching much offline video like TV). However, one video that still ranks at the top for me is this gem from Ze Frank:
I’ve blogged about that video probably a dozen times over the past year, but it’s worth a watch every week or so just to help me realize the fascinating and revolutionary times that we live in.
While Ze makes a great point about the democratization of media creation tools, I’d also add into the mix the continuing “flatening” of the tools needed to create and sustain a respectable business. And as Ze points out, that scares the daylights out of the old guard.
ValueClick’s recent earnings call has been transcribed on Seeking Alpha and is an interesting read, even for those who don’t enjoy pouring over earnings calls.
For instance, here’s an important question on ValueClick’s role in a post-apocalyptic acquisition market in terms of its competition…
Eric Martinuzzi from Craig-Hallum
Just the competitive landscape in affiliate marketing, Rakuten bought LinkShare a while back, Google’s pending acquisition of DoubleClick may impact performance. Can you comment on both of those players as far as how they are competing in the market versus Commission Junction?
Jim Zarley of ValueClick
We have had some, as Tom mentioned earlier, some impressive wins in some businesses that are starting to work with Commission Junction so we think we are being very competitive in the market. That having been said, we still would like to expand, as we said in prior quarters, we are still interested in expanding the affiliate space, even though we know we are the number one player right now, we would like to continue to consolidate that space if the opportunity presents itself.
Tom Vadnais of ValueClick
We haven’t really seen any change in either of those companies in terms of how they operate, and we think our growth is equal to or better than what they are doing. Again, the fact that they are both private now, it is harder to learn too much, but we are seeing the industry continue to grow and continuing to be a very stable growth industry.
ValueClick is, of course, the parent company of Commission Junction as well. So, the affiliate space is always something that is relevant to conversations of quaterly earnings. However, Heath Terry raises the bar and asks how ValueClick is looking towards the future and attempting to remain relevant in the video space…
Heath Terry of Credit Suisse
To look beyond the affiliate business to the ad network side of things, can you talk to us about what you are seeing there in terms of pricing, and what kind of progress that you are making on the video front there, both from your ability to supply within the network as well as the demand you are seeing for it from advertisers?
Jim Zarley of ValueClick
Let me speak to the video side. We are on target, Heath, to where we felt we would be but as we said all along, we still think that the video business is at some point in time, going to be a very good channel. It is still growing, slow, and part of the roadblock into growing quicker is having good creative available and in getting the type of pricing that we need to get in order to drive it.
That having been said, in our budget for the year we are on track to hit the number that we have set internally, but it is still going to be an evolutionary growth – we think – into ’08 but it will continue to grow and be a good channel for us.
I urge you to read the earnings report transcript as it is an important document to judge the health of online marketing, especially in the affiliate and display space. There’s also a good deal of detail about the reasons behind ValueClick’s recent acquisition of MeziMedia.
As cliche as it is, it still rings true… “Knowledge is Power”!
Have a question about what’s going on with ReveNews and all of the big changes that I keep hinting about?
Have suggestions that you’d like to make to make ReveNews even better?
Wondering what ReveNews will look like in a few weeks?
Then head over to the ReveNews Wiki that I’ve set up in order to keep all discussions, questions and updates in one central place. By it’s nature, the wiki will be changing on a daily basis, so grab the feed there if you’d like or visit often.
Most of all, please feel free to offer suggestions, comments and questions that you might have about the site, the content and the future of ReveNews.
July 30, 2007 at 11:06 am · Filed under Affiliates
Episode 2 of the Jeff and Sam Show is now up and should be hitting your aggregators any moment (RSS feed in the sidebar or here is the iTunes subscription).
This week, Jeff Doak and I covered…
-ISP's Inserting Ads and Google’s ISP Ambitions
-Affiliate Networks Evolve, Microsoft Making Ad Inroads
ConvergeSouth is an incredibly interesting festival, workshop conference, meeting of the minds, etc that runs from October 19-20 in Greensboro, NC. I’ll be doing a workshop on Friday Oct 19 on the general topic of affiliate marketing, web2.0 and community. However, this is not an affiliate marketing, or even online marketing, conference. The general scope includes a Film Festival, music concerts, tech demos, and good food (you can’t beat Carolina BBQ). Check out the main ConvergeSouth site for more info on the specifics.
I’m encouraging everyone to come down to beautiful Greensboro, NC (in the NC piedmont) because the show is going to be a blast. The show normally attracts a good number of the A Listers such as this year’s keynote Jason Calacanis, SixApart’s Anil Dash, local hero blogger Ed Cone and video blogger Loren Feldman (if you were at my presentation at Affiliate Summit, you’ll remember the “We’re Not Your Friend” video from Loren) who is also doing a couple of workshops.
Back in June, there was a post from someone to thinking he was infected by spyware since he was getting additional ads from a company called “Fair Eagle” inserted on all the pages he visits. After a little analysis he found this happened from his home but not from his office and mentioned that his ISP is MoonOverAddison and it appeared that they were inserting the advertisements.
What’s so “bad” about this idea is that both the customers of the ISP’s and web advertisers/marketers are impacted negatively. It makes for a much worse browsing experience when you are being served ads from out of the blue and it negatively impacts the conversion metrics of web advertisers and marketers.
Hopefully, the resounding “NO” that comes out of the coverage of this will convince the larger ISP’s to not ski down this slippery slope.
DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: I’m not starting another meme (sorry for typing that, Jangro).
Nonetheless, I think there’s an interesting discussion of which podcasts that online marketers in our sphere are listening to on various blogs.
On yesterdays AffiliateThing show, hosts Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille discussed a few of the shows that Shawn keeps on his iPod and Lisa blogged about it on the Revenue Magazine blog:
I thought it would be fun (and beneficial) for all of us to share some of the shows we’re listening to on a regular basis to help people new to the industry or old shoes find podcasts that might be of benefit to them.
Another DISCLAIMER, because of my random background in places like education, science and ancient history, I listen to a wide assortment of topical podcasts. I recommend doing so, because the more you know… well, you know.
So, here are the podcasts that reside in my media player (I don’t use iTunes since it’s closed source, but instead use Banshee on Ubuntu… it’s better, anyway):
That’s about it… I listen to others on a random basis (a few NPR podcasts, indie music podcasts and occasionally Shoemoney’s show when he talks about me and calls me “Sam WhatsHisName”). I would say I listen to The Show that Jeff Doak and I do, but I hate listening to myself.
What shows are you listening to that I should be listening to? Let me know in the comments.
• TradeDoubler has acquired all shares in The IMW Group, which includes The Search Works and those companies trading as The Technology Works
• The newly combined entity will confirm TradeDoubler as one of the largest online marketing companies in Europe
• The acquisition expands TradeDoubler’s performance-based product portfolio into the search market and provides opportunities for further geographic expansion
It’s no secret that the line which once separated affiliate marketing from search marketing in terms of network specialties and publisher preferences continues to erode. If you’re an affiliate marketer but not up-to-date on your search marketing skills, you should get on the bus, and vice versa.
With the acquisition of major affiliates/publishers by Linkshare and Commission Junction over the last few months to sure up channel solvency, it’s only a matter of time before US networks start scooping up search agencies (and I’m not saying that because I work for one… it’s an inevitable market trend).
However, what do these acquisitions mean for the affiliate (and search) industries at large? Consolidation? Solvency? Dare I ask it… scalability?
Sex does sell to some segments. However, if you’re spending thousands of dollars on a booth at a conference like Affiliate Summit, AdTech or eComExpo, why would you want to appeal to the lowest common denominator with booth babes? I’ll never understand that.
Female conference attendees are clearly repelled by booth babes at conference booths.
While that may not be earth shattering, I was a bit surprised that more male respondents had a negative view of booth babes than those who had a positive view.
My conclusion: staffing a conference booth with booth babes appears to be a calculated risk. Outsource your reputation at your own peril.
Go view the graphs on AffiliateTip that break down the data into various segments as well.
And I’m sure I’ll get a “well it’s human nature, come on you prude” type comments. I’m not a prude (by any means), but I still stick by this:
My wife is pregnant and this sort of thing turns my stomach for our son or daughter (we find out the sex next week). If it’s a girl, I want the child to be able to look up to the industry and business that her dad participates in, since it provides so much for our family. However, the presence of booth babes, “so what?” attitudes and ridicule against those who speak up about how horrible sexism is for the bright and professional young women in our industry makes me filled with shame.
Ironically, it’s the men in our industry who are the biggest fools for falling for the lame marketing of booth babes and the bloggers who draw in traffic by promoting them.
So, do with Shawn’s study what you will, but keep the greater good (of the industry and your own business) in mind when you hire out a model for your booth. The costs (both economic and otherwise) associated with booth babes just don’t pay for the return of quick eyeballs and damage to brand reputation.
If you’re not out there in cyberspace interacting on the various personality platforms, you’re missing out.
For instance, there’s a growing and thriving community of affiliates, networks and merchants on Facebook. The growth of our sphere of online marketing on Facebook since the Affiliate Summit earlier this month has been fascinating to watch. I highly recommend you hop in while the community is still forming. It seems that the community is moving beyond zombie biting (although that still goes on) into something beneficial.
Then there’s the venerable Twitter community. Short messages and micro-blogs that channel what eventually gestate to become these sorts of longer form blog postings. Sure there’s some irrelevance there, but it’s a powerful place to grow your brand, learn a few things and improve yourself. Even Jeff Molander has joined.
And let’s not forget the podcasts out there. Jeff Doak and I just released our first show (below). Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille are going strong in their roles as “righteous hosts” with AffiliateThing. This week, Shawn and Lisa are interviewing Michael Cowley of the UK network buy.at. It should be an interesting conversation as they compare and contrast UK and US affiliates and networks. Since Clicks2Customers is an international company, I’ll definitely be listening in to glean some knowledge.
And launching today at 4pm is the new Video Ninjas show from Jim Kukral and Steve Rosenbaum. These guys are both incredibly charismatic and interesting figures, so the show will certainly convey their enthusiasm for the video space. I’m just wondering if Jim and Steve will wear ninja outfits for their inevitable video blog.
All that to say that it seems as if blogging in our sphere has cooled down over the last few weeks. That’s understandable as we all go on vacations or recover from Summit hangovers and continue to innovate on social networks and podcasts.
We’re all just tiny pebbles thrown into the great cosmic sea, causing ripples that occassionally bisect, intersect, amplify or dampen each other. Facebook, Twitter, blogs and podcasts are like wave tanks that help us to see how the ripples we create meet in that sea.
Jim Kukral made a post today entitled “Ted Murphy Is a Fucking Evil Marketing Genius?“. The question mark there is the best part of the post in my opinion.
