Year: 2008

Google Affiliate Network

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

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

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

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

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.

Golden Twitter Links

First, congrats to my pals Lisa Picarille and the FabulousSavings team for winning Linkshare Golden Links last night. Also, a big congrats to the excellent nominees like Mike Allen, Scott Jangro and Stephanie Agresta.

Second, this year’s Linkshare awards event was made possible by the live tweeting of people like Missy Ward, Stephanie and Lisa P. That was a tremendous service and all of us following you thank you three for doing that. It’s amazing to me how events like the Linkshare awards take on more of an industry wide communal feeling because of something like Twitter. Now, just fast forward a couple of years into the future when we all have live streaming video capabilities on our phones and we’re live broadcasting from events like that (or is that even kosher?).

Nevertheless, boundaries are falling and Twitter has become a big hammer between that wall of attendees and remote viewers who wish they could be there.

Third, Shawn, Lisa, Jim and I made a friendly wager on this week’s GeekCast regarding the results of the Linkshare awards. Needless to say, I won (since I clearly know more about the industry than the others on the show):

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “Prior to the awards, Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Sam Harrelson, and I shared our predictions for each category on the weekly GeekCast show.

Below are the picks each of us made, as well as the winners (in yellow).

* Jim: 8 for 14
* Lisa: 7 for 14
* Sam: 9 for 14
* Shawn: 5 for 14 “

So, it looks like free drinks for me in Boston on behalf of the other GeekCasters. OR, if you’d like to get tons of exposure for your business, you can sponsor GeekCast for that evening and we’ll mention you a few dozen times during a live taping. Get in touch with any of us if you’re interested. Great chance to get your name out there!

And of course, thanks to the Linkshare team for putting on what sounded like another great event.

Angie Seaman Joins PMG

Just got an email from PMG saying that Angie Seaman had come on board there. Angie is a great affiliate manager and I had the pleasure of working with her for a while at Kowabunga…

Paulson Management Group would like to welcome Angela Seaman to our PMG Team of affiliate managers – Angela Seaman comes to us from Kowabunga where she was the client services director working on accounts such as several Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and CNET.

Angie is the recipient of an honorary affiliate management certification from AC Classroom in 2008. To View all of the PMG team members please visit our about us page here.

Congrats Angie and PMG… sounds like a great fit!

Changed My Mind on the PMA

Originally, I stated that I wasn’t going to get involved with the Performance Marketing Alliance on GeekCast.

I was nominated for the formation advisory board and originally thought I would probably decline as I said on GeekCast. However, I changed my mind on Thursday night after some very good conversations, including one with my very wise wife (who has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, but has been to an Affiliate Summit).

I’m working to be the change I want in the world… are you?