ShareASale has launched a really interesting new platform with the Gift Cards Database. Let’s face it… gift cards are the gift to give when you have no idea what to give. Plus, merchants love them given that the cards are such a money machine.
I’ll be interested to check in with the SaS team after the holidays and see how popular or successful this becomes. I have a feeling it could be a huge hit.
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Gift Cards Database: “Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from our annual ShareASale Think Tank held a few weeks ago in San Diego, we’ve created a Gift Cards Database. Merchants are able to upload specific creatives that direct consumers to specific landing pages designed to sell Gift Cards - a popular item this time of year!
In similar form to the Deals Database, Affiliates can access these creatives from inside their Affiliate Interface as well as through RSS feeds and downloadable databases. Affiliates can also search for specific types of gift cards - and find/join programs that they might not have already been a part of.”
Additionally, it’s these sorts of platforms that will continue to make affiliate marketing more “mainstream” as large publishing sites turn away from CPM ad deals towards performance marketing given the economic slowdown. In a potentially bleak holiday selling season, this could be just the thing to make things a little cheerier for publishers.
AOL and General Motors Partner on Auto Channel: “AOL has partnered with General Motors to launch a channel within AOL Money & Finance geared for small businesses who are grappling with costly auto-related expenses.
The new section, dubbed Small Business Autos (smallbusiness.aol.com/business-auto-center) features tips and tools for businesses seeking auto loans and lower cost fuel options. Among the site’s initial headlines are ‘Deducting Car Expenses’ and ‘Maximize Your Office on Wheels.’ Also included is Mapquest’s gas prices tool, which helps travelers and businesses find the best gas prices in a given geographical area.”
In many ways, this is a smart play for both companies as they look for more long term growth and results from the direct online (and pre-qualified) traffic searching for problem solving measures in an economic downturn.
The question I have is how or whether AOL will leverage its buy.at affiliate platform in conjunction with this partnership.
LinkShare is making good use of its new blog with the announcement of a series of upcoming publisher training web seminars:
Publisher Training Web Seminars | LinkShare Blog: “LinkShare now offers interactive web seminars for our Publishers. These sessions will cover Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced level training to help you make the most of your LinkShare partnership.”
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, or LinkShare, this could really be a helpful series. Or if you’re an old hack and familiar with their “1.0″ interface but still have some questions over the new interface that was implemented earlier this year (like I do), this could be a big help.
I’ll try to listen in on a few of these and report back here.
In an email to affiliates / publishers this week, LinkShare’s co-Presidents (seems to be a popular trend with affiliate networks these days) laid out their plans to address the past downtimes and what the network is doing to head off any possible troubles during the holiday rush.
Even though this holiday shopping season is not expected to set record amounts of sells by any means, the November to January time frame normally is the boom time for affiliates and online merchants (especially in terms of retail merchants).
The full email is below…
Dear Valued Partners:
At this busy time of year for all of us, we wanted to take a moment to update you with some important information on how LinkShare is prepared to handle the expected increase in transaction volume in November and December.
Over the past several months we have experienced intermittent challenges with the performance and presentation of data in our reporting systems. First, we want to say thank you for your patience and your understanding as we have worked through these issues. Second, we want to emphasize that our core capability to capture and track clicks and transactions continues to be the most robust and precise in the industry.
We are happy to report that we have made great strides in all areas. Here is a summary of our current progress:
Account Access
We recently identified and resolved a database problem that was preventing user access to our systems during peak usage times. Since implementing and monitoring this fix last week, we are confident that prolonged, unannounced downtimes are unlikely.
Data Quality
The intermittent downtime we were experiencing contributed in many cases to inconsistent data in our reporting systems. The interruption in sequence and flow of data from the main database (MainDB) to our reporting servers created a lag in the system’s ability to present the most up-to-date information. Now that data access issues have been resolved many of the reporting issues will also be resolved.
However, there are currently some infrequent, yet persistent inconsistencies in the data in SynergyAnalytics that we are investigating. We are also improving the performance of Traditional Reporting and working to resolve remaining data inconsistencies. We expect to make swift progress in these areas in the coming weeks.
Investing in the Future
Over the last 10 months, we’ve made significant investments in our systems. We have replaced our data center networks, reinforced our database systems, upgraded our ad and click servers, assigned additional servers to existing services to allow for increased capacity and automated fail-over, and installed a new software system to monitor and report on performance. These investments have prepared us to handle not only the additional load we expect in November and December, but well into the future.
In our effort to be as transparent as possible, we want to make you aware of some upcoming scheduled maintenance windows over the next few weeks:
Thursday, November 6, 2008 5:00pm - 8:00pm EST (GMT-5) - The last scheduled software release of the year.
On behalf of the entire team at LinkShare, we truly appreciate your business and your patience. We look forward to building even stronger partnerships and wish you strong sales during the 2008 holiday season.
AOL’s integration of its services into the Platform-A advertising operation continues as it is now combining the recently acquired Goowy widget application with its buy.at affiliate network (itself acquired last year).
This is a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, this opens up affiliate marketing, in earnest, to the social web. Affiliate marketing has traditionally been restricted to the realm of static sites and blogs because of limited tracking technology and creatives. However, this widget play changes the game.
For example, Ticketmaster.com is the first buy.at advertiser to work with Platform-A in developing and distributing this new affiliate feature. The widget, called “EventEngine,” can be tailored to promote specific Ticketmaster events. All ticket purchases that originate from Ticketmaster’s widget are credited to the buy.at affiliate network publisher.
Once a publisher places a widget on their website, anyone (including the publisher) can grab that widget and place it on various locations on the Web, including social networks, desktops and blogs. The original publisher earns revenue for each sale driven by the widget.
Secondly, this makes sense for advertisers. Ticketmaster’s example with EventEngine shows that widgets can and will transform the online advertising and marketing landscape in the coming years by leveraging the best of the social web and performance marketing. In many ways, this is the type of solution that many of us have been calling for, and it is great to see an ad or affiliate network finally answering the call.
Kowabunga! to Divest Several Non-Core Business Units: “The Company intends to focus its efforts on its Network and other interactive businesses which have potential for enhanced growth. The business units that are no longer considered critical to its long term strategy and identified for divestiture are: (1) Cherish Inc., which provides online personals services; (2) MarketSmart Advertising Inc., which provides traditional offline advertising services; and (3) iLead Media, LLC, which provides online lead generation and digital marketing services. Proceeds from the sales will be used to reduce indebtedness and to fund the expected continued growth of the Network segment. “
The company’s stock price has been on the slide since a high of around $6 in 2004 and around $3.50 in 2007.
Kowabunga! has a soft spot in many people’s hearts in the industry (I was a consultant there for a few months) as we remember the “good old days” so hopefully the ship will turn around with this divestment.
I saw a few tweets coming in and then Jangro posted the press release… I’m still trying to grok this (that word is acceptable here) but will share some thoughts soon.
We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.
Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.
As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.
We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.
We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great things together.
Sincerely,
Chris Henger
Group Product Manager
Google Affiliate Network
Validation? Market consolidation? Same old same old? Industry clean up due to the invisible hand of the free market?
I noticed from one of brianlittleton’s tweets that ShareASale is putting together an “open source” PPC policy creation template…
Open Source the PPC Policy Creation - ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum: “One of the things that we will be doing is providing a list of things that a Merchant should and must consider when generating a ‘good’ PPC policy. For example, some Merchants consider things like their ‘domain name’, or ‘TM’, but don’t consider that same word in conjunction with another term such as ’special’ or ‘vs. a competitor’ …
So - I am here offering and asking for a collaborative effort to generate a template/wishlist/helpsheet for Merchants who want to generate a policy.”
Lots of great stuff going on in that thread at ABW and it’s awesome to see a network reaching out to both affiliates and merchants in such a manner. Go over and participate if you have thoughts on the issue (and who doesn’t?!).
Yes, she did say it. Evidently it went over pretty flat. More people need to listen to GeekCast, dammit!
Congrats again to Lisa AND Jangro. My wife thinks Scott is my most normal “internet friend” if that means anything (which it does). We give you lots of heck on the show, Jangro… but we do love you and you’ll always be the fifth Beatle in my book.
