Category: Marketing

Affiliate marketing gets a brief mention in a Wall Street Journal article on blog monetization today. We’ve really got to get out from the Amazon.com umbrella:

Many of the most widely used ad programs — such as AdSense and Amazon.com Inc.’s affiliate-marketing program, where publishers get a cut of all sales generated from ads on their site — also are trying to make ads more appealing. For instance, they have rolled out new features in recent months to give publishers more control over how the ads look and where they are placed.

Most of the article is more geared towards widgets and video advertising.  Affiliate marketing is getting left in the dust and missing out on very good exposure to new potential merchants and publishers as a result.

Pepperjam has launched a new affiliate network called the pepperjamNETWORK. I’m sure you’ll see a great deal about it on the various online marketing and affiliate blogs, but it looks like a nice new alternative for affiliates and publishers looking for something different.

I’m particularly intrigued by the “web2.0” cleanliness, the instant chat support feature and the better tracking options for search affiliates (much needed in the affiliate networking space).

Here’s are the details from an email from Pepperjam’s Kris Jones about the network:

– Pepperjam Network addresses two of the most significant shortcomings found on other existing affiliate networks: (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency.
– With Pepperjam Network, affiliates and advertisers can communicate in real-time via Pepperjam Chat™, thereby providing a reliable communication system to build stronger, more profitable partnerships.
– Pepperjam Network provides advertisers with an unprecedented measure of affiliate transparency, which helps to establish trust, protect brand integrity, and lays the groundwork for open, long-term, profitable relationships.
– Pepperjam Network uses Web 2.0 technology to provide affiliates and advertisers with an easy-to-use, clean interface.
– Pepperjam Network offers industry leading SID-level tracking and reporting (great for sophisticated search marketing affiliates)
– Pepperjam Network introduces pepperjamADS™, which is a first-ever affiliate marketing widget that affiliates can use to serve customized contextual ads from multiple Pepperjam Network advertisers at the same time.
– Pepperjam Network contains a knowledge vault, which is exclusive to Pepperjam affiliates. The vault contains exclusive access to a list of tools and educational resources used by Super Affiliates.
– Pepperjam Network represents over eight years of research and development and the combined ideas, feedback, and intelligence of hundreds of affiliate marketers and advertisers.
– Pepperjam Network launched with over 100 merchants and growing quickly, including Blockbuster, Jelly Belly, AeroGrow, Oscar de la Renta, BabyPhat, Rocawear, Ben Sherman, FlyCell, SinglesNet, SEOmoz Premium, and many more.
– Pepperjam Network has its own affiliate program that pays out up to $7 per approved publisher application
– Check out the Pepperjam Network Blog for videos, commentary and updates on Pepperjam Network and the broader affiliate marketing community.

Should be interesting to see the blogger and wider affiliate response today. I think this will be a hit for some publishers and affiliates looking outside the box.

Shawn Collins has put together a nifty video showing how to sign up for the pepperjamNETWORK as well.

As a caveat, Pepperjam is advertising here and on ReveNews to announce the launch (hence the banner in the sidebar) but this is something I would have covered regardless.

Problogger has a post on an interesting new AdSense format being tested with pictures. This definitely puts the widget marketing world in a precarious situation if a Checkout widget does roll out…

There’s been lots of testing of new ad formats going on at AdSense recently – but this one is really interesting – it’s a much more interactive looking AdSense unit that looks and functions a lot like Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks units.It seems to be called the ‘Google Checkout Gadget’.

New Interactive AdSense Unit with Pictures Spotted

Video blogging site Kyte.tv has announced a round of funding, added distribution and it looks as if they are adding more celebrities to compliment the popular 50 Cent channel.

Soon-to-announce-a-career-move Robert Scoble is a huge fan of Kyte.tv (and one has to wonder if this will lure him over to the video blog startup or if he’ll go with the rumor and sign FastCompany. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, he’ll be announcing around the 15th of January). He broke the news on his blog:

Kyte just announced a B-round of funding from Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ of $15 million, adding on to an earlier round of $2.25 million. Whew, the video space is really heating up.

But more significant than the money is the distribution. Telefonica has 230 million users. DoCoMo has 52 million. Nokia has 39% of the cell phone market share. If the Kyte player is embedded on these three it brings a HUGE audience to Kyte.

Also, they showed me a channel that rapper 50 Cent is doing. It has, within a few weeks, passed my Kyte.tv channel to gain the #1 spot on Kyte. More celebrity deals are in the offing, CEO Daniel Graf told me. They also shipped a new iPhone version and demonstrated an even more feature rich version coming in January.

Kyte is interesting in that it functions as a place to live blog, interact with commentors and aggregate content. Perhaps the most compelling feature is the emphasis on mobile blogging via video (which I still think is going to be a breakaway hit in 2008).

So, we’ll see if this news (especially the celebrity additions) add to Kyte.tv’s share in the growing micro-blogging/video/mobile space that is seeing a convergence revolution.

Matt Dickman has an excellent (and concise) post/video on MarketingProfs explaining what an API is and what it does.

Whether you’re a marketing geek or just someone interested in improving your web marketing, you need to at least have a conversational understanding of API’s in this web2.0 mashup world. Matt provides a good place to start.

Matt is doing a series of these posts on important terms or concepts that marketers need to understand or grasp in order to exist and survive in the current and emerging tech landscape, so keep an eye on the RSS feed there.

Google continues its foray into video with the announcement of sitemaps for video:

In our effort to help users search all the world’s public videos, the Google Video team joined the Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps—an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. By submitting this video-specific Sitemap in addition to your standard Sitemap, you can specify all the video files on your site, along with relevant metadata.

Here’s an example (emphasis mine):

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
     xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
   <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>
   <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
   <video:title>My funny video</video:title>
   <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
</video:video>
</url>

<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_other_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
   <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/videos/video1.mpg</video:content_loc>
   <video:description>A really awesome video</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>

This will facilitate Google’s indexing of video based around relevant data.  Of course, this also helps Google to properly categorize videos in order to display relevant contextual ads via AdSense.

For small to medium publishers, this could be a good chance to increase AdSense commissions if your videos are properly indexed early and often.  As seen in the
example above, Google’s spiders will be looking for keyword descriptions.

You can get going with video sitemaps through the Google Webmaster Tools page.

AdMob is an advertising network aimed at the mobile market. They interact with publishers and advertisers much in the same way as a Commission Junction or Linkshare or ShareASale, but focus on mobile ads, creatives and deliveries.

They have just released their November stats (report available here):

It is our pleasure to send you our third monthly AdMob Mobile Metrics with November data. We have appreciated your feedback and continue to add to the report. This month we have added month-over-month change calculations to make it easier to observe trends in geographic regions, manufacturers and individual handset models.

Some observations from the November data:

• AdMob Network impressions were up 4.5% November over October to 1,722,213,245. The growth was driven by Western Europe and North America.
• Apple iPhone share continued to grow and we saw a strong first full month of iPhone traffic in the UK.
• Nokia N Series devices showed strong growth in November.

The trends here are interesting to observe and digest considering the impact that mobile marketing is poised to make in the general marketing industry in 2008. Companies like AdMob are paving the way and will surely be either competitors or acquisitions of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.

Barron’s is reporting that Digital River, the parent company of affiliate network oneNetworkDirect, is seeing its stock price slide today in light of lower revenue from key client Symantec resulting in a lower valuation:

Zorovic says that he now expects the software-downloading service company’s revenue from key customer Symantec (SYMC) to be down 5% year-over-year in the current quarter, rather than flat as previously expected. “As Symantec continues to focus on its costs in 2008, we anticipate it continues on setting a high performance/price hurdle for Digital River, as it did with subscriptions in 2007,” he writes. Zorovic adds that he expects ongoing investment in R&D and sales and marketing as the company develops its games offerings. He now sees operating margins next year flat versus 2007, rather than the 240 basis point he had been projecting.

I’m eager to see how the gaming offerings mentioned play into oneNetworkDirect. That is a segment of consumer culture that affiliate marketing hasn’t particularly done well (or much) with in the past. Since gaming (both console and online) continue to explode in users and revenues every quarter, it’s time that a network figured out how to leverage the affiliate channel to promote games.

Performics offers affiliates a make good for downtime earlier this month in an email to network members…

As you know from previous communications, DoubleClick Performics experienced a system outage on Saturday, December 8, 2007 due to an inadvertent complete loss of power in the DoubleClick Thornton, Colorado data center.

In light of the service disruption, DoubleClick Performics decided to do something special for its Affiliate Publishers and will pay a one-time bonus of 10% based on affiliate commissions generated on Saturday, December 15, 2007. Such bonus will be equal to 10% of the commissions earned during the entire day by an Affilate Publisher and will be reflected in the January payment statement.

We are hopeful you view this as a reflection of our commitment to your success, and the success of our Affiliate Marketing business.

We appreciate your valuable contribution.

The DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Team

LinkConnector, a North Carolina based affiliate network, launched its new product feed creatives this week.  The new creatives allow affiliates to promote specific merchant products without having to download the merchant’s entire product feed.

In other words, these are dynamic ads that allow the affiliate promoting a merchant to be choosy about products withing a data feed.  Giving affiliates a choice is always a good thing and normally works out for the merchant in terms of improved conversions as well.

According to LinkConnector:

“LinkConnector’s product feed creatives pull data directly from merchant product feeds, tools which are very important to the success of many affiliate marketers. Product feeds enable affiliates to link directly to the product or landing page specifically requested by the user. They also provide merchants with a quick way to supply definitive product information directly to their affiliates. Product feeds enable affiliates to programmatically keep their websites up to date with the merchant’s latest product pricing and promotional information. Product feeds better enable affiliates to sell the products and services of merchants, translating into increased conversions.”

While nothing earth shattering, this is a positive step in the right direction for networks.  Improving on something as “old” as product or data feeds seems rather mundane in the web2.0 world where there seems to be revolutionary new platforms being created every day, but it is essential for networks to continue to make these sorts of improvements on features we’ve all been using for years.