Category: Affiliates

Linkshare has announced new mobile and video/embed object initiatives within their affiliate interface.

It’s great to see the major affiliate networks moving into these areas!

I mentioned yesterday that Linkshare is releasing a series of interesting new platforms within the affiliate network’s interface.  Here’s the update on those: Flex Links (a video link embed platform), Mobile Links for pay-for-performance tracking in the mobile space and Link Locator 2.0 for enhanced web services.  All in all, this is a great step ahead for the affiliate network space as the performance market continues to mature and encompass other areas than traditional (or "1.0" if you will) affiliate sites.

Linkshare’s Flex Links for Video, Mobile Links and Link Locator 2.0 Roll Out

I’m heading out to catch my flight for BlogWorldExpo in Las Vegas in just a few moments, but wanted to let you know that if you’re going to be there, send me an email (sam@costpernews) or give me a call (803.413.6834) if you’d like to meet.

I’m glad CostPerNews is back (best traffic day ever yesterday, btw and FTW).

More soon…

So, I’m trying out something new for the comments called Disqus. It’s a rather neat (and easy to install) platform that allows for comments to turn into a forum and allows for you the user to keep your comments organized with other blogs using Disqus (Dave Winer, Fred Wilson and a few others are using it).

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think. If you think the old comment system is better we’ll switch back, but the forum integration is nifty.

The webwide discussion community where you carry your conversations with you.

Disqus | Welcome!

TinyURL is supporting Ron Paul (so therefore all Twitter users are as well!).

Seen on the main page of TinyURL today (look in the top right):

According to DM News, CPA network NeverblueAds has partnered with IAC CAP to provide affiliate application management on IAC products.

I’ve tried to find some usage numbers on the MyWebSearch Toolbar mentioned in the partnership, but haven’t been able to locate any hard data.

IAC CAP is a part of the larger IAC conglomerate.

IAC is the parent company of properties such as Ask.com, CollegeHumor.com, HSN, Evite, CitySearch, ServiceMagic, Ticketmaster and Bloglines (among about 60 others).  So, it will be interesting to see if this relationship leads to other opportunities for Neverblue or if this opens the doors for other large conglomerate new media companies to work with established affiliate outfits.

NeverblueAds, an affiliate network of Neverblue Media, has partnered with IAC Consumer Applications and Portals. The partnership enables the NeverblueAds network to manage new affiliate applications on behalf of IAC CAP for its MyWebSearch Toolbar, which includes products such as Zwinky, Webfetti, and Popular Screensavers.

Thanks to Jeff Molander for the tip.

DMNews – NeverblueAds partners with IAC CAP

Google’s announcement of it’s mobile advertising platform and partnerships (“Android”) yesterday raises quite a few questions about the future of mobile as a computing platform. Instead of going the route of a desktop operating system, is Google putting its eggs into the mobile basket?

Consequently, since Google is an advertising company at the end of the day, is mobile the next brave new world for contextual monetization of users now that Google has conquered the search and intention engines?

And what about the smaller companies who are making forays into the mobile world of performance advertising? Do they stand a chance once the Google mobile operating system is up and running on millions of phones and serving up highly relevant contextual advertising based on years of user data?

Shawn Collins has a post about one such company throwing their hat into the pre-Google mobile ring, Ads-Click. Will companies attempting to stake a claim in the performance marketing and advertising world such as this or AdMob be eventually stomped by the Google behemoth or are they playing their cards right for getting into the ring early?

Ads-Click, a solution for search and contextual advertising, unveiled Ads-Click Mobile today. Ads-Click Mobile is a mobile advertising platform that offers a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing option to advertisers.

CPC is made possible because the Ads-Click Mobile tool includes an easy process for any organization to quickly create its own mobile landing page, which is hosted by Ads-Click. The tool also enables the creation of multiple banner ad formats and more sophisticated targeting methods than competitive offerings.

Ads-Click Mobile Launches | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

How many links are too many links on an affiliate site?

Is there such a thing as "link saturation" (a term I’ve heard more than once at the bar during Affiliate Summit)?

While this "how-to" on effective linking doesn’t explicitly mention affiliate marketing, it’s still a good exercise in keeping things nice and neat (#10 and #11 are interesting points for affiliates).

But enough about the history of the hyperlink. How can we use them effectively in the here and now? I thoroughly enjoyed Philipp Lenssen’s recent link usability tips. I liked it so much, in fact, that I’m using it as a template for a visual compendium of link usability tips– the art of hyperlinking.

Coding Horror: Don’t Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking

The once popular R-Mail has been rebranded by its new owner (NBC Universal) as SendMeRSS.

If you’re a marketer reading blogs or if you’re a marketer interested in leveraging the power of RSS for your campaigns, the feed-to-email route may be the way for you to go since utilizing a feed reader (such as Bloglines, Google Reader, Newsgator) is not always the most popular way to consume feeds.

Send Me RSS is a a free service that lets you read your favorites RSS feeds in your email inbox just like any other email messages. Similar services are offered by FeedBlitz and FeedBurner (now part of Google).

Send Me RSS (available at sendmerss.com) is actually an upgraded version of R-Mail that was developed by Randy Morin and later acquired by NBC Universal. The domain r-mail.org now redirects to sendmerss.com.

Read RSS Feeds In Your Email Inbox with Send Me RSS | India Inc | Digital Inspiration

Hard to believe, but this little blog is a year old this week.

So, I decided to bring it back after a few weeks on hiatus.  I’ve missed blogging here and participating in some of the 50+ comment debates we got into in the past.

Starting today, I’ll be jumping back into the 3-5 post a day routine and plan to do some live blogging from this week’s BlogWorldExpo in Las Vegas.  I’m speaking with The Conversation Group‘s Stephanie Agresta on Friday afternoon on the topic of affiliate marketing and social media issues, so if you’re in Vegas come by for that… should be fun.  Or if you’re in Vegas and just want to grab a coffee, beer or something stronger you can email me (sam@costpernews.com) or give me a call (803.413.6834).

Looking forward to year two of CPN!

We’ll be back tomorrow (Tuesday November 6).

See you then.