Category: Marketing

Disqus Video Comments

Although I’m not particularly crazy about doing video comments myself, my fingers are crossed that Disqus integrates them soon:

Disqus Adding Video Comments; Will People Use Them?: “We’ve now learned that Disqus, a third-party commenting system, will be rolling out its own video commenting feature, likely later this week.”

I don’t necessarily see video comments catching on like wildfire, but they do provide an outlet for those among us who’d rather just hit record on the webcam and fire away. On my Mac, it’s incredibly easy to do quick and nice looking video and most modern computers are now shipping with high quality integrated webcams.

This isn’t a “game changer” feature, but it will be a nice addition.

BTW, if you’re not using Disqus on your blog, you’re really missing out. I’ve written about Disqus here many times and Scott Jangro has done a series of excellent posts about the comment solution as well.

WidgetBucks Teams with Blue Lithium and Marchex

TechCrunch has the news that WidgetBucks has teamed up with advertising outlets Blue Lithium and Marchex.

WidgetBucks Announces Deals with BlueLithium and Marchex: “WidgetBucks has announced the expansion of its ad widget network through agreements with BlueLithium and Marchex. The two deals touch on key growth areas for WidgetBucks: premium CPM display advertising to its publisher base and expanding distribution of CPC product ad widgets.”

WidgetBucks is a product of mPire and combines affiliate marketing techniques with blog-based sidebar widgets.

Although Newsweek and others said 2007 was the Year of the Widget, it looks as if that might have been slightly presumptive as agencies continue to discover the power of the dispersed web.

Cloud Computing IS the Future (Not the Web OS)

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I talk a good deal about cloud computing. If you listen to the GeekCast podcast, you might here me arguing with Shawn Collins over our cloud-based future and how it will be a reality as soon as variables, such as ubiquitous highspeed internet connections are available and accessible here in the US as well as the continued maturation of “cloud” based web apps such as GMail or Google Docs, are made more reliable.

I also talked with Andrew Wee about the cloud computing issue on his latest Friday Podcast and how I thought cloud computing was not only the future here in the West but also presented an amazing opportunity for more “developing” societies to leverage and improve increasingly complex web apps using cheaper and thinner computer machinery.

In other words, I’m a major proponent of cloud computing and see our futures there. However, I have to disagree strongly with this new post from Mashable…

The Web OS. It’s Coming, Just Not Too Soon.: “I’ll offer up my own prediction here that cloud-based operating systems will advance and grow to become popular, mainstream options for computer users in less than a decade’s time. Yes, 10 years from now, I imagine a portion of both the corporate and consumer populace will be logging on straight to the World Wide Web, without need for Windows Vista or Windows 7 or whathaveyou. If wireless broadband is to become a far-reaching utility and relatively inexpensive commodity – which I think it very well might, if telecoms really know what’s good for them – then there really will be no need for much of the public to continue to straddle the offline-online divide. The paradigm will shift. It is already doing so to large degree.”

My basic argument with this premise that we’ll be operating on a “Web OS” is that there’s no need for such a platform or system. In a decade’s time, the web will be omnipresent on our mobile devices, our HDTV’s, our AppleTV’s/DVR’s/TiVO’s/PS5’s as well as our more traditional web terminals that we have traditionally associated with desktops. However, we won’t need a web OS.

Web apps that work on our mobile devices, entertainment devices and more traditional computing machines will be OS agnostic and the browser will slowly but surely be the main “program” needed on a “computer.” Welcome to the fracturing.

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).

I Love Disqus

The comment solution I use here at CostPerNews is called Disqus. It’s fantastic and the best of both worlds for building a community out of your commenters.

Today, Disqus is announcing a new funding round and a slew of new (and very cool) features that enhances the platform:

Disqus Blog » Disqus releases Beta 2 – New features, lots of bug fixes, improved performance: “Bloggers are some of the most opinionated and vocal people out there. So when creating a product for bloggers, expect them to significantly shape the thing every step of the way.

Disqus is very much such a product. Late last week, we release what we dubbed Beta 2. That’s the label we’re giving to one of the biggest Disqus updates in a long time. And credit goes to you, wonderful Disqus user, for all the help in improving your favorite discussion service.”

So what’s new?

For one the forum look-and-feel is gone and replaced by very nice “Community Pages.” Everything is much more coherently organized and easier to browse. You can see the CPN Comments Page here for an example.

Disqus is also making it easier for commenters to create their own profiles and add social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to that profile fairly easily. Since the crowd here tends to be the same commenters, this could be a neat feature for this particular blog and help you get some traffic to your other social networking spaces. That profile travels with you to other blogs that use Disqus.

There’s lots of additional goodness on the backend for blog owners that I won’t bore you with, but it’s easier to configure the look and feel of the place and easier to bake in the Disqus comments into the originating blog.

For example, the biggest request I had was for a “Recent Comments” widget that would display new comments here on the blog that were reflective of the forum. That’s baked in now, thank goodness.

So, if you’re a blogger and looking for something to spice the place up and bring in extra functionality for your readers and commenters, I highly suggest Disqus.

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

ebay.pngThis 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.

I Can’t Wait for Flickr Video

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The long standing rumors that Flickr would open a video channel for users to share their uploaded video content similar to their wonderful photo sharing service looks like it will finally be validated according to TechCrunch.

So the question becomes… why? With YouTube, Viddler, Blip.tv, Revver (?), Vimeo, Metacafe, etc why would Flickr want to get into such a crowded space.

Matthew Ingram raises similar questions:

One question on Flickr Video: Why? – – mathewingram.com/work: “So Mike Arrington says in a post over at TechCrunch that Flickr is going to be adding video soon — really. This rumour has been around for awhile, as Mike himself acknowledges, and in fact Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield has been talking about adding video for at least a year. One obvious question is why it has taken so long (likely answer: Yahoo red tape), but a related question is: Why bother?”

Here’s my take: I can’t wait for video on Flickr. The community of friends and colleagues that I’ve created around my photos there is a very valuable and high quality one with which would love to share video.

nelson.jpgI can’t say the same for any other video uploading platform, especially YouTube. Have you ever posted a video on YouTube and taken the time to read the comments that follow? In other words, the “community” on YouTube is terrible and reminds me of a middle school lunch room full of Nelsons.

So, just for my own selfish sharing reasons, I am excited about Flickr Video.

Dell Looks to the Clouds

I live my online life in the cloud, so it’s great to see a major hardware manufacturer start to heavily ponder the shifting trade winds away from desktop based applications towards web based apps…

More Conversations: Dell Launches Cloud Computing Blog – Direct2Dell – The official Dell blog: “Starting today, members from our Data Center Solutions (DCS) team will support a group blog called In the Clouds. It will focus on cloud computing and the backend server, storage and architecture required to make it work. If you’re not familiar with the concept of cloud computing, think using web-based e-mail from Yahoo, Google or AOL (see link for their slick integration with Silverlight), or uploading videos to YouTube, pictures to Flickr, or microblogging with Twitter. When you do those kinds of things you aren’t storing them on your local device.. you’re storing them ‘in the clouds,’ or to a remote location in the Internet.

So, why start with Cloud Computing? The short answer is there’s a lot happening in this space right now. Take a look at what Adobe’s doing with their AIR product (go Twhirl!) that they recently brought to market. Google continues to surge forward with their Google document apps (Spreadsheet Forms and Google Calendar synch are two recent enhancements that rock), and this week at MIX08, Microsoft is rolling out some cool stuff with Silverlight 2.0 and Internet Explorer 8.

What this all means is that we’re at the beginning stages of a shift from the model of the past where applications and all the content created for them were stored locally. This shift has the potential to increase the types of Internet-connected devices we use to consume and create content (check out the good discussion Scoble has going about the battle for web-based content on mobile phones).”

Are you in the cloud or are you sticking with your desktop?

Game Changing Tech

Yesterday, BlogTalkRadio released an API structure for making basic podcasts.

Basically, you call into 646-200-0000 and record audio on your phone. Sounds simple, but the backend is where it gets fun.

Once you make your call and record your message, audio or (potentially) podcast, you can access it via RSS at a feed determined by the number from which you called.

For example, here is the feed for my “roadcasts” as I’m calling them. If you click that link, you’ll be taken to an RSS feed that will allow you to hear podcasts as I make them on the fly. I’m posting them on my “art blog”http://qual.ms, but if you use a feed reader you can just grab the feed.

This could be huge, folks. Simple. Easy. No “web2.0” interface, just RSS goodness.

And if you need A List validation, here is Scoble’s feed and here is more from the Father of RSS and one of my scripting heroes, Dave Winer.

Invalid Clicks: Whose Traffic Is It Anyway?

Adam Viener has an interesting post about CJ’s passing of expired links on to the merchant with no compensation for the affiliate, which differs from their previous practice of routing to a non-active page.

Adam raises the point that it would be nice to have a voice in this as it is “our traffic” that is being passed to the merchant through the network…

Wiseaff: Invalid Clicks – Affiliate Networks Can Do Better!: “In the past CJ used to link those bad links to a ‘No longer active page’, but appears to now pass the old expired link and traffic on to the merchant without compensation. I am not so sure how I fell about that personally. It makes it harder for me to identify bad links when I click on them, but can understand it’s a better user experience.

Honestly, I think that if they are not going to pay us for the traffic, than it should be up to the affiliate how this invalid traffic is passed, it might be nice to actually let us define a url where the traffic goes so we can track it and monetize it, after all it’s OUR TRAFFIC, not theirs.

I agree with Adam off the top of my head, but I think there are other implications for calling traffic “ours” in affiliate marketing… there’s some sort of proportional ratio behind traffic in my opinion. How much of a potential customer’s decision to follow an affiliate link comes from an affiliate’s site and how much comes from the merchant’s creative?

Nice piece, Adam. More of my thoughts soon…

Nokia’s New Mobile Ad Network Points Towards the Future

Nokia is rolling out a mobile ad network according to CenterNetworks:

Nokia Launches Mobile Ad Network | CenterNetworks: “Nokia (NOK) is announcing the launch of a mobile ad network this morning at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Named the ‘Nokia Media Network’, Nokia notes, ‘The biggest brands in the world trust us with their mobile advertising because they know the Nokia Media Network enables them to reach the largest, highest quality audience on mobile and provides the best ROI.'”

The key difference between Nokia’s potential for success and the existing mobile ad networks is the reach that Nokia has on the hardware side of the mobile phone universe.

With Google revealing its Android platform at this week’s Mobile World Conference in Spain (and it looks spiffy… can’t wait to try out an Android mobile with all of my Google cloud data) and the increasing numbers of people (primarily young people) doing things other than just talking and texting on their mobile phones using increasingly sophisticated phones like the iPhone, a well leveraged mobile ad network could payoff.

The first company to grab a leading market share will help pave the way for this avenue of monetization and be a force to reckon with as more and more of “the web” goes mobile.

A few years from now, we might look back on this launch as a very big deal.

Now, when are the affiliate networks going to start encouraging mobile ads? 🙂

AOL Buys Online Affiliate Marketing Network buy.at

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This just hit the wires… huge news in the affiliate marketing world and solidifies AOL’s place as an ad network to be reckoned with…

AOL buys online affiliate marketing network buy.at | Technology | Reuters: “NEW YORK (Reuters) – Time Warner Inc’s AOL said on Tuesday it has purchased online affiliate marketing network buy.at as part of a strategy to bolster its Internet advertising operations.

AOL did not disclose financial terms.

Buy.at is a network in which advertisers pay Web publishers that belong to the network only when a visitor to the site takes an action, such as making a purchase.”

It’s no secret that AOL has been re-aligning itself to take advantage of its stout advertising inventory within its own network. However, this acquisition points towards a possible route for AOL to also begin to provide advertising (most likely display given buy.at’s strengths) for 3rd party sites outside the AOL web family.

I’ve got calls in for a couple of interviews, so more soon…

(Via Reuters.)

Performics Network Interface Improvements and the Usability Question

Performics has released a series of upgrades and usability improvements to its reporting platform, ConnectCommerce this week.

Primarily, the updates focused on an improved links interface, advertiser profile interface, enhanced site description for publisher profiles and more accurate accounting reports.

Here’s a screen shot of the new links interface which is a drastic improvement over the old system. Instead of having to drill down layer by layer, the newest links from the network are shown by default and results can be narrowed by a series of available parameters.

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The advertisers tab and interface is also improved in this version and allows for better sorting based on user preferences and categories of offers:

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These categories act something like tags and allow for much more fluid and intuitive stat browsing:

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As the current dust-up over affiliate network user interfaces has shown, there is a market demand for easier navigation, more options and less need to needlessly drill down for stats, banners or links that should be much easier to find.

At the end of the day, this is all about efficiency. The network that can provide the best offer and the best payout was always the winner in the past. However, that paradigm is slowly changing to include the network that has the best user experience and will continue to do so as networks assert their necessity of place in the market.

Think Partnership Rebrands as “Kowabunga!”

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The circle is complete and Think Partnership (who acquired Kowabunga!) has rebranded itself as Kowabunga!.

Hi Sam,

I have some very exciting information to share with you about our Company.

We are announcing today that Think Partnership will now be doing business as Kowabunga!.

We decided that we needed a company name that more accurately reflects our leading position in the market and conveys the energy, spirit of innovation and excitement we share as an organization. We believe that Kowabunga!, which many of our participating advertisers and affiliates will also recognize as the name of our popular CPA subsidiary, is the perfect name to express our passion and conviction for performance based marketing solutions. When we say Kowabunga!, we think performance and technology, and we mean it.

Our company’s mission is to be the world’s best performance marketing solutions provider, a goal that we believe can be achieved through our strong mix of brands and innovative products and technologies, a good example of which is our recently launched ValidClick AdExchange. I encourage you to learn more about the many ways we can work with you to meet your marketing and advertising objectives.

Sincerely,

Scott P. Mitchell
President and CEO

There’s also a new website design to go along with the rebranding.

GeekCast Episode 3: Racing Stripes

Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson expound on web celebs, affiliate network interfaces, iJustine and Jim's GuyLights (about an hour)

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pce935ca9e5e04f773c5773d674d6ba6cYl9wRVREYmd9&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap28

Download the MP3 File

Show Notes

– TechCrunch Presidential Endorsements: TechCrunch
– Spammer Sam: CostPerNews
– ShowYourAdHere.com: 45n5
– Shawn in Middle of CJ/Pepperjam Spat: Pepperjam Blog
– Super Affiliates For Sale: Affiliate Summit Blog
– Zac Johnson Doing it Right: Zac Johnson’s Blog
– Jim is a Twitter Hater: Jim Kukral’s Blog
– Affiliate Summit Exhibitors Are Missing Out (By Not Doing Video)

Visit GeekCast.fm for More Great Geek Marketing Podcasts!

CPA to Eventually Beat Out CPC?

Forget the age old CPA networks vs affiliate networks argument.

What about CPA vs CPC? That argument stirs up fun fighting words.

Aaron Goldman has an interesting piece on SearchInsider about this issue and the potential for macroeconomic trends to have a very real impact on the search and direct response industries:

Will CPA Get its Day?

There are a couple macro trends that lead me to believe a move to CPA might be in the cards. The first is consolidation in the space. For the first time, each of the Big 3 owns reputable ad serving technology. Not only does this provide access to conversion activity, but it delivers more reliable data that marketers will accept for billing purposes. The second is a movement toward transparency that’s pervading all facets of the marketing landscape. The inherent conflicts within GoogleClick, MicQuantive, and YahRightMedia demand a level of transparency heretofore unseen in the search space. There is simply no more transparent pricing model than CPA.

My take is that it is clear that marketers across the board have yet to realize the impact that CPA can have on the overall market economy given the reliance of more and more web2.0, mobile, video or social platforms on response instead of click or impression.

Clearly, there’s a need for improved and evolved metrics in online marketing. I think CPA could be hinting at the possible future of all online advertising and marketing.

Thoughts?