Todd Crawford’s New Blog
Affiliate Marketing Legend award winner and all around good guy Todd Crawford has a new blog…
Todd always has a unique perspective on things going back to his days with CJ, so definitely tune in and subscribe.
Affiliate Marketing’s RSS Problem
Amen, Linda and Ian…
12 Ways Affiliate Managers Can Use RSS for Affiliate Communication - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs: “Enter RSS. Why aren’t more affiliate programs using RSS? They really should be! There are so many things that would help affiliates generate more sales, if only they could be communicated in a timely manner. How about real-time as they happen - through RSS, instead of saving up the info for the next monthly newsletter, which no one reads anyway!”
RSS is still such an underused technology, especially here in affiliate marketing, with so much potential.
I spend a majority of my screen time in my feed reader (NetNewsWire for the Mac) and wish daily that more affiliate programs and managers would start utilizing RSS.
I can has RSS, please?
ShareASale Twitters
ShareASale has been a long time supporter of Twitter, but they are stepping it up with a new official account:
ShareASale Blog: “2. Follow us on ‘Twitter’. I have recently created a ‘ShareASale’ specific entry which is www.twitter.com/shareasale. Also, feel free to follow me personally - I talk about ShareASale stuff as well as other things going on. www.twitter.com/brianlittleton”
There’s a reason that ShareASale consistently ranks at the top of affiliates’ and publishers’ “Best Network” rankings when you consider how much they not only embrace but also take seriously mediums such as blogging or Twitter.
Other networks could learn a great deal from them or from @zappos or the growing myriad of advertisers finding a welcoming community on Twitter.’
Great job, ShareASale.
Anne Kadet’s Analysis Falls Very Short
Affiliate marketing is not about quick profits, sleazy promotions or fly-by-night operations.
Rather, affiliate marketing offers people the opportunity to make a living by producing web content. That content can be determined by a person’s passion, interest or savvy, but at the end of the day it’s a very democratic way to do marketing.
Instead of having to build a website that has the arbitrary watermark of being taken seriously (one million viewers), affiliate marketing offers anybody with enough passion and voice the opportunity to support their work and eventually grow that into a full time business.
So, I was frankly astonished when I read a piece by Anne Kadet about the last Affiliate Summit West and affiliate marketing in general in SmartMoney Magazine. It is a poorly written piece of journalism or opinion and is comparable to an 8th grade history report on the French Revoluition (having taught 8th grade, I think I can make that comparison).
Shawn Collins summed it up Kadet’s piece in video form better than I can in text:
Kadet’s surface appraisal of the entire affiliate industry falls short of many of the criticisms or questions she could have raised about affiliate marketing had she dug a little deeper.
ShareASale Goes Video
Looks like all of our wishes (well, mine at least) are coming true and Brian, Carolyn and the ShareASale gang are going to introduce affiliate marketing into the online video space.
Earlier today, this message was sent out to the ShareASale Facebook group by Carolyn Tang..
Facebook | V-Commerce Playahs: “Alrighty, we’re gettin’ with the times and exploring v-commerce. Nothing like bringing the magic of television online! Our tech team is hard at work developing a player with embedded tracking for affiliates to use on their sites.
So…open ended wishlist style question…in a perfect world, where we had boundless tech and financial resources, what features would you like to see in that player? Customizable? Size? Rating systems?”
This is every exciting indeed and the replies to Carolyn’s initial post have been beyond interesting with a number of affiliates weighing in.
It’s great to see an affiliate network using a channel such as a Facebook group to gather feedback. I only wish more networks would follow ShareASale’s lead on this sort of communication (as well as blogging) and feedback solicitation. You don’t need to control the conversation in order to produce value as Brian and team are clearly showing.
And I’m beyond excited to see an affiliate network getting into video. Take notes.
Denton Resigns from Linkshare
Big news out of Linkshare today.
LinkShare Announces Executive Management Team Changes: “NEW YORK, March 18 /PRNewswire/ — LinkShare, a leading pay-per-action
marketing network, announced the resignation of Stephen R. Denton as
President of the company and two promotions in its executive management
team.”While a search for Denton’s replacement gets underway, his duties will
be assumed by John J-H Kim, who will become Interim President in addition
to his role as CEO of LinkShare’s parent company, Rakuten USA.
(As a side note, it’s always heartening to find this sort of thing on press release outlets instead of from a phone call… don’t you hire out very expensive PR firms? Thanks, networks).
Interview with Kerri Pollard of Commission Junction
Kerri Pollard, GM of Commisson Junction, joins me in a special podcast.
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).
The podcast runs about 25 minutes and is a must-listen.
Performics Employ Submit Resumes?
Is this potentially true for Performics as well?
Google Makes DoubleClick Employees Apply To Keep Their Jobs - Silicon Alley Insider: “Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned DoubleClickers that Google still hadn’t decided how many (and which) of them to fire. Now, Google has reportedly ordered DoubleClickers to submit their resumes to a committee so Google can determine if they’re actually Google material.”
I hope not… lots of good folks over at Perfomics so hopefully there will be no blood-letting. There’s still speculation that Performics will get spun off since Google doesn’t want to double dip in the SEO space, but I don’t see that happening.
Azoogle’s Pitch
Azoogle’s Don Mathis gives their elevator pitch at AlwaysOn…
Azoogle | AlwaysOn: “AzoogleAds, founded in 2000, is an end-to-end online marketing solutions provider for advertisers, publishers and online affiliates. Initially a pioneer in performance-based marketing, AzoogleAds generates the highest volumes of quality traffic through its affiliate network, its proprietary search technologies and optimization, and its in-house CPM/CPA/CPC Media Buying.”
Head over there to watch the short video. Interesting to hear Azoogle’s take on performance advertising and how they see it as the future of all online advertising, especially CPA.
eBay Leaves Commission Junction, Starting eBay Partner Network
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.
