Category: Marketing

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.

Looks like video platform Revver has finally be acquired after months of shopping around for a buyer…

Continue reading Revver Finally Acquired

The New York Times is reporting that Google has started testing video ads within search result pages. The ads will be displayed only after a user clicks a small “plus sign” to expand a player which shows the commerical or movie trailer.

Continue reading Google Testing Video Ads on SERPS

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Wiseaff: Invalid Clicks – Affiliate Networks Can Do Better!: “In the past CJ used to link those bad links to a ‘No longer active page’, but appears to now pass the old expired link and traffic on to the merchant without compensation.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…

I’ve seen some pretty strange ideas for catching eyeballs over the years (RIP Mr. PopUp… we hardly knew ye), but I’m not even sure how to classify this:

Continue reading Wearable Video

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? 🙂

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.)