Evidently, we’re all going through an 80’s thing in affiliate marketing (see previous post):
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » ShareASale Under the Stars (Like Totally) Party
Sunday January 11th
Time: 8-12PM
Drinks (including 80s ‘spiked punch’), light appetizers, party favours, disco balls, etc…
DJ will play us our favourite 80s tunes all night.”
One can only hope this madness ends soon.
Sad. I really enjoyed the Relevantly Speaking blog. It is not common that an affiliate network is willing to blog about things besides “company news and offer promotion.”
Mediatrust Blog: “First, Relevantly Speaking as you know it today will change drastically. First, the blog portion will cease to exist. As proud as I am of the work we’ve done on it, we just don’t have the resources to continue writing two blogs for our company. That said, all of our blogging will be done here at blog.MediaTrust.com. The focus of that effort will be performance marketing, company news, and offer promotion. The goal is to really concentrate on our brand and make sure our blogging efforts really support our core business of performance based marketing.”
I really don’t see how it costs anymore to keep up a high quality blog rather than one focused on telling a (what will probably be dwindling) reader base about the HOTTEST NEW OFFERS! in a network.
And the interviews from places like the last Affiliate Summit were top-notch.
Oh well. Economy sucks.
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!
I logged into my AIM mail account today. That’s not something I do frequently. However, if these new widgets I found waiting for me are any indication of future development, I may be giving AIM (how about AOL Mail?) a second look.
AOL is famous for having been a walled-garden portal in the past. However, as I wrote last week, AOL is really on the ball with the whole spirit of the open web by introducing ways to bring in content from such places (competitors?) as Yahoo Mail, GMail, Twitter, Facebook, etc on the main AOL homepage, which does millions of impressions every month.
And the results from this newfound embracing of openness are more engagement, more pageviews and more attention. AOL is on to something.
With these new widgets in AIM mail, you can integrate Yahoo Mail, contacts, AIM, AOL Finance, Mapquest, etc within your inbox. GMail has this same feature with its Labs platform, so it’s good to see competition there. The trick with AIM is that they are bringing in properties from outside the AOL universe (unless the AIM Mail team knows something about a Yahoo/AOL deal that we don’t). Nifty.
However, my main question is if this is a sign of the future? Will you eventually be able to update Twitter or your Facebook status (or send Facebook messages) within AIM or AOL mail as you can on the AOL home page? If so, that will be very compelling. Will I ditch GMail for AIM even if that happens? Perhaps not, but I will definitely take a second look at my AOL/AIM mail.
It’s time for web-based email clients to grow up and become platforms instead of proprietary gardens of in-house developers. I’m glad to see AOL is helping to make that happen.
Comics were a huge part of my dorky teen years (but I only read the cool comics that you had to ask for from behind the counter). I still have soft spot in my heart for all things Marvel, DC, Image, Darkhorse, etc.
So, I was excited to see that Pepperjam now has the Marvel affiliate program in their network. Pepperjam also has the Star Trek affiliate program, making it a nostalgic choice for fanboi’s and geeks who, like myself, appreciate the finer things from Jim Lee or Frank Miller. Come to think of it, they also have MGM (Stargate) and Warner Bro’s (DC merchandise, Batman, Harry Potter and 300). Lots of geek cred there.
The Marvel program has 45 day cookies and starts at 7% and works up to 10% with volume. There is supposedly a datafeed on the way as well.
I’ll definitely be checking that one out for Christmas since Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk were such big hits this year and there is always a crowd hungry for X Men and Spiderman goodness (plus there’s the upcoming Wolverine and Avengers movies in the works).
Good stuff.
Marvel Launches Affiliate Program on Pepperjam Network
Amazon continues to make interesting and noteworthy improvements to its associates program. I wrote off the ability make any money with Amazon a few years back because of my own lack of success with their offerings on my affiliate sites.
However, I’ve been using Amazon more and more with great results on click-thru’s. They have so many options for affiliates and publishers (esp in niche categories that aren’t serviced well by traditional affiliate networks (which is a funny term to use since Amazon had an early affiliates program…but I digress).
If you haven’t given Amazon a shot in a while, you might want to reconsider.
Here’s an email sent out to associates/publishers this morning with details on new Deals widgets:
Dear Amazon Associate:
As you’re gearing up for the holiday season, don’t miss out on the new and improved Deals Widget. Now you can display the hottest deals from Amazon on your web page. The Deals Widget lets your users browse discounted items and ongoing promotions from the Amazon.com product category of your choice.
The new widget lets you display the deals most relevant to your website to improve customer retention and conversion.
Deals by Category
You can now configure the widget to display discounted items and promotions from any Amazon.com category of your choice! Simply use the drop down to select a specific category and we’ll keep the widget updated with the latest deals from that category. Remember that your viewers are more likely to click through a widget when the deals are relevant to the theme and topic of your site. You can now use the ‘Deals by Category’ feature to place relevant Amazon deals throughout your site.
Gold Box Deals
You can continue to display Gold Box deals using the Deals Widget. Gold Box deals are limited quantity offers that run for a specified time. The Gold Box deals widget lets your viewers browse through the latest Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and Our Best Deals.
Multiple Sizes
The Deals Widget is available in a variety of standard sizes and can be placed anywhere on your site. Available sizes include: Sidebar (120×400, 160×400), Large (250×250, 300×250, 336×280) and Banner (468×60, 728×90).
Create a Deals Widget in just a few clicks. If you want to display a list of handpicked products, be sure to try out the My Favorites, Carousel, and Slideshow widgets.
If you have any questions or feedback on this feature or the Associates Program, please contact us via the contact form. We want to hear from you!
Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program
Brian Littleton, head of ShareASale, was in NYC for Ad:Tech and sat down with Shawn Collins, Missy Ward and Connie Berg to discuss a few topics including the network’s interesting “3 Strikes” PPC policy on AffiliateThing…
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Ad-Tech NYC, the Affiliate Thing Podcast, and the PPC “3 Strikes” policy: “I was also lucky to have the opportunity to speak with Shawn Collins on his ‘Affiliate Thing’ podcast at the Affiliate Summit booth. Also on board were co-Affiliate Summitter Missy Ward, and Connie Berg. We had a good time talking about some industry news, issues, and it gave me an opportunity to talk about our PPC ‘3 Strikes’ policy as well. Since September 1st when the policy became active, we’ve received a great amount of feedback and reports. I would also like to thank all of the affiliates who have really stepped up their efforts to make sure that they are in compliance with the rules at hand. I know how difficult it is to keep up with so many policies, and your effort is very much appreciated. We know there will always be mistakes, hiccups, etc… and will continue to do our best to determine the difference between an honest mistake and a continued violation. So thank you…. “
The show really is a good listen.
Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast.fm for the streaming version.
AOL has been on the receiving end of much negative press in the tech and marketing blogosphere over the last few weeks as the worldwide economic downturn continues to have ripple effects in the first tier advetising sector. I’m not immune to putting the heat on them either.
Amidst all of these reports, however, the press and bloggers are overlooking the very important moves AOL is making on two fronts these days: a better persona with a revamped home page and Platform-A.
1) New Homepage and More “Openness” Will Spur Better Social Web
A revised portal is nothing new for any online company or property (especially one that deals with a variety of front-end services like AOL). Before this most recent update late last month, it had been 18 months since AOL’s last front page revision. The web changed a great deal in those 18 months, moving to a much more social and interactive nature. For the most part, web users have become much more savvy and demanding in terms of seeing beyond walled-gardens. Even Facebook, the most walled-off garden of web2.0, has had to open-up with its app platform in order to sustain momentum.
So, it was not a huge surprise that AOL would allow for thrid party content such as GMail or Yahoo Mail access.
However, the innovative trick in all of this is that AOL is also helping to spur access (and perhaps innovation) among its users for services such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace through a global status update manager. We haven’t seen this sort of push towards the social from the large portal sites, so I’m hopeful that more people will come to experience and love services like Twitter because of their reliance on AOL.
Not to mention there is a built-in RSS reader.
We who are well-versed in the social media space often forget there is a “great unwashed mass” of humanity out there who has no clue what to do with Twitter or RSS. AOL could help change that and in the process change Twitter (and even RSS) for the better.
Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programming, gave me an exclusive quote on the revamp of the homepage and how it relates to their vision for better marketing campaigns and metrics:
“As the Web becomes more fragmented, consumers want choice and relevance in their Web experiences. AOL.com is the first traditional big portal to offer access to popular social networking sites all in one place. Now consumers can connect with their numerous networks and information sources all from AOL.com.
We have already seen success by opening up AOL.com to other e-mail providers. We will continue to enhance the appeal of our portal with the changes we are making today by adding more relevant programming, customization opportunities, greater integration of third party content, improved design and access to social networks directly from AOL.com.”
“We are creating opportunities for advertisers to reach consumers through engaging and relevant content. As part of this redesign, there are more robust capabilities for advertisers including customized wallpapers, increased rich media capabilities, much deeper and richer content integration opportunities and more.
For example, a recent one-day advertisement for the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DVD provided a chance for the advertiser to own the AOL.com homepage wallpaper for the day to reach consumers in a highly customizable and measurable way.”
I don’t see this as a replacement for iGoogle or NetVibes (or myAOL), but I do see the new AOL frontpage helping to push people towards those types of services as they develop an appreciation for the ability of the social web to both solve problems and provide community. Fascinating times we live in, folks.
2) Advertising.com / Platform-A / buy.at
I’ve long said that I’m bullish on AOL because of Platform-A. Simply put, I think they are doing things right across the board from large media buy type marketing down to direct performance marketing.
AOL has what every advertising company should be drooling for in terms of reach. As buy.at continues to be integrated with the overall AOL advertising family, I expect them to become leaders in our space. There’s no reason for them to fail at this point.
And with Platform-A’s reach across the globe with Advertising.com, the European ad company AdTech (not the conference), Quigo, and Tacoda to go along with buy.at, I expect AOL to come out of the global recession in fine shape.
If you’re somewhat unsure of the whole Platform-A experience, take a look at this video that the Platform-A team put together (plus, the video features one of my favorite songs…”Such Great Heights” from the Postal Service as the soundtrack… so they have good music taste as well).
At the end of the day, don’t count out AOL. The company is nostalgically synonymous with the internet in my mind (having been a teen in the mid-90’s and remembering the days of the ubiquitous AOL floppy) and given their push into the new social web as well as advertising, they could do very well at rekindling the magic.
Must read from Scott on why some affiliate networks “get” social media (or just social participation on the web) and some fail every time:
Affiliate Networks and Social Media | Jangro.com: “Commission Junction is, again, the only one missing from the party. Surely if Todd Crawford, Lisa Riolo, and Brian Caldwell were still there this would be a different story. Or me, for that matter.
It seems to me that the basic pre-requisite to a company attaining a successful social media presence is that they’ve got at least one person who is (a) interested and already heavily involved in social media, and (b) in a position that the company trusts them to represent.
How does that not happen at a company like CJ? This is not to judge (though I’m sure somebody will), but to ask the purely academic question, seriously, why?”
Personality, personality, personality.
Hard to believe…
Congrats to the CJ team and here’s to the next decade of more innovation.
Google has just announced its support for OpenID across its services. Yahoo and Microsoft have also adopted the “one-sign-in” OpenID platform as well.
That’s great news and great for users and people moving to the cloud with applications like GMail or Google Docs or Google Calendar. Best of all, you can use that same ID to login into a number of web apps that aren’t owned by one company such as Google.
This is incredibly important for the growth of cloud computing as more productivity moves to the web.
However, when will publishers be able to use a platform like OpenID to login to CJ or Linkshare or Motive’s Advent or LinkConnector or Azoogle or ShareASale or even the Google Affiliate Network?
I have a myriad of ill-thought out affiliate network logins that I simply can’t remember. Being able to login to a network with something like an OpenID would make that network a favorite of mine by default!
I can haz?
