Google Retiring AdSense Referral Program

Sam Harrelson on June 30, 2008

Google is killing off its AdSense referral program and suggesting publishers check out the rebranded Google Affiliate Network:

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program.
We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense
Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate
your patience during this transition and here are some alternative
options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.

Referral programs remain very popular with CPA networks, so I don’t see them going the way of the dodo just yet.

It’s really not that interesting or ground-shaking that Google is finally doing away with the AdSense referral program since every publisher under the sun is probably aware of the program and Google really doesn’t have much to gain from such a program at this point with the death of Yahoo and the growing impotence of MSN search.

ShareASale Blog Updates

Sam Harrelson on June 30, 2008

The ShareASale Blog has a new look with a tag cloud, Twitter updates and easier navigation.

Looks great, but how about some Disqus comments?

Hats off to the ShareASale team for making such a commitment to blogging and open communication with the affiliate community!

Summize Expands Twitter’s TinyURL’s

Sam Harrelson on June 30, 2008

Twitter is broken.

I used Twitter primarily because of its incredible Track function which allowed me to keep tabs on my own name, brands I’m associated with and things I’m interested in through my GTalk client.

Since that feature was taken offline last month in a last-ditch effort to save Twitter, I’ve been hurting.

Summize is rapidly becoming an essential browser tab auxiliary to Twitter.

Steve Rubel is reporting that Summize is now auto-expanding TinyURL links from Twitter into its search results, which makes the service even more handy…

Summize now shows where Twitter TinyURLs go

Now, if we could only get Track back soon, I wouldn’t be so tempted to say the hell with Twitter and just move over to FriendFeed.

Affiliate Classroom Clarifies Association with PMA

Sam Harrelson on June 30, 2008

Anik from Affiliate Classroom lays out Affiliate Clasroom’s involvement with the PMA in a blog post this afternoon…

What Exactly Is Affiliate Classroom’s Role In The PMA?: “Basically AC has no special rights reserved for us in this organization. No one from Affiliate Classroom, including Rebecca, is on the Advisory Board.
…Herein began the controversy…”

Hopefully, this will dispel some of the unproductive conspiracy theories that are floating about.

This is something that needs to happen for the affiliate marketing industry with as much involvement as possible. People succumbing to bullying and peer pressure to not get involved is a sad state of affairs. Hopefully, this process will continue to involve a wide swath of people, ideologies and agendas as we move our industry forward.

Google Affiliate Network

Sam Harrelson on June 30, 2008

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.

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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?

Open Sourcing PPC Policy Creation

Sam Harrelson on June 26, 2008

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?!).

As always, nice work, Brian.

Doing My Thing

Sam Harrelson on June 26, 2008

I co-hosted AffiliateThing with Shawn Collins yesterday (in place of Lisa Picarille).

Affiliate Thing Podcast – June 25, 2008 : GeekCast.fm

“The June 25, 2008 episode of Affiliate Thing was missing Lisa, who was still celebrating her LinkShare Golden Link Award win.

Sam Harrelson filled in to chat about the LinkShare Symposium and Golden Link Awards, which just took place in New York City.

Shawn and Sam Harrelson also chatted with Jonathan Van Clute, one of the favorites for the upcoming Top Affiliate Challenge reality show.

They also talked about what’s going on with the Performance Marketing Alliance, some cool WordPress plugins, and how all your business are belong to Google.”

Even though Lisa pwns my AffiliateThingness, it was still a fun show. I think that makes for my 7th appearance, so I’m on my way to the 10 Timers club (the current 5 Timers Club consists of Jim Kukral and I… maybe Jangro?).

FeedFront 2

Sam Harrelson on June 25, 2008

Make sure you’re on the list… FeedFront is good stuff as I’ve said before:

Get Issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine | Affiliate Summit Blog: “We are closing out issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine, so if you didn’t get a copy of the first one in the mail, and you want to get issue 2, subscribe now.

Anybody based on the U.S. who attended Affiliate Summit last year in Miami or this past February in Las Vegas should have received an issue of FeedFront in the mail by now.”

Head over to the Affiliate Summit blog if you haven’t signed up yet or didn’t get the first issue and sign up.

Sorry, Jangro

Sam Harrelson on June 25, 2008

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.