Must read on affiliate marketing’s real value in the sales chain during these tough economic times from Scott Jangro (aka Jerry Maguire).
Be warned… this is not a cheerleading piece.
The Year Affiliates Saved Christmas, Really? | Jangro.com: “As affiliate marketing gets a larger and larger percentage of retail sales, and taps more and more into ‘already had’ customers, it becomes devalued. For the health of this industry and channel, these things need to be understood and addressed.”
Ashley from CJ wrote and wanted to pass the word about some of the recent positive trends CJ is seeing this holiday shopping season as number continue to roll in:
Below is Commission Junction’s same store retail sales growth for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in comparison to comScore’s recent announcement on e-commerce spending.
Nice job to the affiliate marketers, merchants and CJ who contributed!
There has been much hand wringing in the world of affiliate marketing over the so-called New York state “affiliate tax.” However, as Trust points out on ABW, it doesn’t seem that 99% of merchants running affiliate programs care much…
How Are Merchants Finding Out About This? - ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum: “Looking at this list and I only see about 40 merchants (so far) which is maybe at most 1% - 2% of merchants with affiliate programs who have dropped NY affiliates. So was wondering if we have a whole bunch more coming and if all the merchants know about this or what. Or if it’s going to be an overall small percentage that drop affiliates.”
Is that a symptom of poor communication by New York state legal authorities, legal counsels, affiliates…or is this really not that big of deal?
There have been a plethora (literally) of blog posts in the affiliate-blog-osphere about the issue ranging from Shawn Collins and Linda Buquet’s respective reporting to ReveNews coverage to Peter Bordes at Relevantly Speaking chiming in to our discussions on GeekCast to even networks like ShareASale offering strong and well thought-out advice for merchants.
However, merchants really don’t seem to be paying too much attention to all of this.
Once again, I defer to Trust on ABW:
I guess I was expecting a whole slew of new drop notices today, haven’t seen anybody post anything new. In the end if it winds up only being about 1% - 2% then that’s really not much at all. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how this turns out but at this point not as bad as I thought it would be. Time will tell.
Is this just the latest Froogle?
I’m not so sure. I do think there is a considerable need for affiliate marketers to educate and inform merchants about the viability and importance of the performance channel in terms of their bottom line, but “affiliate marketing” as we know it is SO wide ranging and dispersed at this point that it would take Microsoft creating their own loyalty program to get us to organize… oh, wait.
In other words, our conception of “affiliate marketing” (in my opinion) is rapidly evolving away from just the network/affiliate model that has served us well (and badly) for the last decade. “We” are moving into video, lead gen, offline, mobile, widgets, social media, search and all sorts of places that we didn’t envision a decade ago. I would venture to say that at least 75% of the people doing affiliate marketing don’t even know they are doing affiliate marketing.
I’m not arguing for a name change or anything of that nature. However, I do want us to realize that while the NY affiliate tax has certainly caused its share of fear and loathing, we need to realize that this industry has fractured and continues to move away from anything resembling an industry. Coming up with an organized group to represent its needs and views may be as difficult as getting merchants to address the NY state issue.
So here’s my take: Merchants are letting legal figure this out (if they even need to). We should be proactive but realize that interstate commerce is a very complicated subject and requires highly skilled lawyers (and such) to grok. I doubt if NY state’s tax will survive the appeal process based on my understanding of what’s happening, but I’m no lawyer.
In the meantime, it looks to be business as usual.
Commission Junction is currently sending out this very legal sounding email to publishers encouraging them to perform due dilligence with a link to a PDF from NY state’s tax office…
As you may already know, the State of New York recently enacted new legislation that addresses tax registration, collection, and other time-sensitive obligations. As with all laws, this law may or may not apply to you and your business. We are actively monitoring the law and will use reasonable efforts to protect ourselves and our publishers as we deem appropriate.
The application of the law is dependent on particular business and factual circumstances, and Commission Junction is not in a position to provide legal and tax advice regarding this law. However, we encourage you to perform the appropriate due diligence as it relates to your business.
For your convenience, we have provided a link to a memo from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division that addresses the new legislation:
While certainly not as personal and emphatic as ShareASale’s response on their blog or on the ABW forum, it is a little heart warming to see CJ addressing the issue.
I was hoping for more of a “these are the steps we will take to educate merchants and protect our publishers” type email, but it looks like this is all we’re going to get from CJ at this point.
We cover the Pepperjam controversy, CJ's perspective on the current status of affiliate marketing and where she sees the industry heading in the next decade (and whether or when CJ will blog).
This morning, eBay is announcing that they are moving their affiliate program in house to the eBay Partner Network effective April 1, 2008 (no fool’s day joke). eBay is also bringing Half.com over to the new network. Affiliates and publishers need to have links changed over by May 1, 2008.
Of course, this means that eBay is leaving Commission Junction as its affiliate network platform. This is a blow against CJ in terms of a solid long lasting program with significant revenues and strong brand name in a month where CJ is already wrapped up in a PR food fight with Pepperjam Network.
With over 60,000 affiliates here in the United States and 100,000 affiliates worldwide, eBay is a significant powerhouse in the affiliate marketing world. So why the move?
I spoke to the Senior Manager of the eBay affiliate program, Will Martin-Gill, and he emphasized that the move had nothing to do with a dissatisfaction with CJ or ValueClick.
Instead, Martin-Gill said it was time to bring the affiliate program in-house the same way eBay brought their search services in-houe a couple of yeas ago. Martin-Gill told me eBay is also looking to build in more flexibility and innovation into their program to reach and sustain the more diverse crowd of affiliates and publishers on the web today and to have a direct relationship with those affiliates (key point, I believe). In short, eBay wants more control over data and wants to be able to coordinate across marketing channels.
Martin-Gill said the international factor was also a major reason for the move away from CJ to in-house managing of the affiliate program. eBay is looking to turn its program into a global platform where publishers and affiliates can sign up to all the various country-specific programs at once through the same interface.
Shopping API’s and eventually RSS will be implemented into the program as well as in-depth reporting.
I also spoke with ValueClick VP John Ardis and CJ’s Dave Osmond on Friday about eBay’s departure. They emphasized the mutual good will on both sides and said the move was not a surprise, but something that CJ had been working with eBay on for the last couple of years realizing the needs that eBay had for their affiliate program.
Ardis also pointed out that eBay is not severing all ties with ValueClick or Commission Junction since VC’s Mediaplex tracking solution is being used for the eBay Publisher Network and Tradera AB, ProStores, Reseller Marketplace, Media Marketplace, eBay Stores and StubHub will continue to be on the CJ platform.
This is certainly a major development and could signal a sea change for the place of the networks in the affiliate marketing world. We’ll have to see how affiliates and merchants respond to the news.
Every week Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and I do an episode of “GeekCast” where we discuss current trends in the geek marketing world ranging from tech to performance marketing.
The show is very free form and wide ranging, but there is a good deal of valuable discussion on affiliate marketing and related tech issues.
Here’s a brief and incomplete list of discussions this week:
-Headset Tech - Analogue or USB?
-Lisa’s Skype Troubles
-Cable is Dead?
-Super Bowl Twitter Friends
-Paying to Play in UK Affiliate Networks
-HD DVD is Dead
-Group Twitter at Affiliate Summit
-Ze Frank is the Steve Guttenberg of the Internet
-Jangro’s Approach to Affiliate Summit
-Affiliate Summit Attire
-Interesting Trends from the AffStat Report
-Aweber and Email Lists
-Gratuitous Nudity
-Gratuitous Pre-Rolls
-Gratuitous Politics
-Jim’s YouTube Porn Searches
-Jesus Horses
-Shawn Loves Metrosexual Country
In the most recent Commission Junction newsletter, there was a big announcement concerning a change to Yahoo Search Marketing policies regarding direct linking by publishers:
Shawn Collins has made the annual AffStat Report available for purchase and download. For anyone interested in the nitty gritty metrics of affiliate marketing, this is a must read.
Kerri Pollard, GM of 
This morning, eBay is announcing that they are moving their affiliate program in house to the 
