Amazon has a nifty new video solution that allows you to embed product links based on what you’re talking about in videos you are hopefully making. At the end of the video, the featured products are then shown in a list with prices and ratings.
It’s pretty straightforward and the video demo does a good job of explaining the new feature.
Be warned that if you watch from 2:04 onwards, your eyes will bleed.
Told ya.
Kowabunga!, rebranded a few months ago from Think Partnership, is divesting itself of Cherish (dating), MarketSmart (offline) and iLeadMedia (lead gen):
Kowabunga! to Divest Several Non-Core Business Units: “The Company intends to focus its efforts on its Network and other interactive businesses which have potential for enhanced growth. The business units that are no longer considered critical to its long term strategy and identified for divestiture are: (1) Cherish Inc., which provides online personals services; (2) MarketSmart Advertising Inc., which provides traditional offline advertising services; and (3) iLead Media, LLC, which provides online lead generation and digital marketing services. Proceeds from the sales will be used to reduce indebtedness and to fund the expected continued growth of the Network segment. “
The company’s stock price has been on the slide since a high of around $6 in 2004 and around $3.50 in 2007.
Kowabunga! has a soft spot in many people’s hearts in the industry (I was a consultant there for a few months) as we remember the “good old days” so hopefully the ship will turn around with this divestment.
What does this mean for video?
Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed: “Adobe has come up with a way for the search engines to read SWF files and index all of the information they contain. That means any text or links in a Flash application can now be indexed. This is a huge step forward for Adobe and anyone who develops in Flash/Flex. Michele Turner, Adobeâs VP of marketing for its platform business, explains:
We are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of Flash files to search.
Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand. So all of those fancy interactive Flash Websites and other rich Internet applications that have been invisible to search engines, can now be seen by them. “
For sites such as Seesmic which rely heavily on a Flash interface, this is great news SEO wise. While I’m not a fan of the mostly Flash pages (like those that seemed to be the front-end of every DirectTrack CPA network in 2005), a little Flash can engage the viewer/user and turn their stay into a longer one.
Regardless, as Jim Kukral says… start doing video and tagging it properly if you want to have a future online.
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!
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.
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 Googleâs brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Googleâs 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 Performicsâ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performicsâ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clientsâ 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?
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.
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.
Pretty nifty viral marketing campaign from PalTalk. Evidently,I’m running for president. Sweet.
Interesting question…
Using Images in SU Reviews to Increase Website Traffic – Does it help?: “Does using images in StumbleUpon (and other social media tools) help you get more traffic to your site?”
Looks like the tentative answer is yes.
Something to ponder if you’re using StumbleUpon for that sort of thing.
Here’s another staff vid we did at Motive Interactive with media buyer Chris Denk:
Get in touch with Chris at cdenk@motiveinteractive.com.
I learned that Chris is a big fan of coconuts…
