“Throughout Mesopotamia, from the earliest times of Sumer and Akkad, all lands were owned by gods and men were their slaves. Of this, the cuneiform texts leave no doubt whatever. Each city-state had its own principal god, and the king was described in the very earliest written documents that we have as ‘the tenant farmer of the god’.”
– Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
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Sam’s Brackets – March Madness ’08
ShareASale Goes Video
Looks like all of our wishes (well, mine at least) are coming true and Brian, Carolyn and the ShareASale gang are going to introduce affiliate marketing into the online video space.
Earlier today, this message was sent out to the ShareASale Facebook group by Carolyn Tang..
Facebook | V-Commerce Playahs: “Alrighty, we’re gettin’ with the times and exploring v-commerce. Nothing like bringing the magic of television online! Our tech team is hard at work developing a player with embedded tracking for affiliates to use on their sites.
So…open ended wishlist style question…in a perfect world, where we had boundless tech and financial resources, what features would you like to see in that player? Customizable? Size? Rating systems?”
This is every exciting indeed and the replies to Carolyn’s initial post have been beyond interesting with a number of affiliates weighing in.
It’s great to see an affiliate network using a channel such as a Facebook group to gather feedback. I only wish more networks would follow ShareASale’s lead on this sort of communication (as well as blogging) and feedback solicitation. You don’t need to control the conversation in order to produce value as Brian and team are clearly showing.
And I’m beyond excited to see an affiliate network getting into video. Take notes.
n the night of 2008-03-20 (UT) we observed the optical afterglow of GRB 080319B (GCN 7427, Racusin et al.) with Gemini-South + GMOS in g, r, i, and z filters (4x180s in each filter). The source is well-detected in all bands. Magnitudes, calibrated to SDSS DR6, are: UTstart UTend t(hr) filt mag err 06:52:17 07:10:19 24.808 g 20.95 0.09 07:11:19 07:26:11 25.099 r 20.55 0.03 07:27..
sometimes i hate blogging. scoble nailed it this morning (scobleizer.com).
thinking about rolling it all up into one crispy paper ball and throwing it into the fire.
whatever it is… i guess i’m referring to the blogging aesthetic. so completely fucked up and unncessary.
didn’t we invent this blog shit to counter the stogedy crap that was flowing from the pro’s?
what happened to punk blogging?
we sold out.
for shame.
fix it?
Careful With that Twitter, Eugene
D’oh.
McCain staff person gets the boot after sending out a troublesome tweet…
McCain Staffer Out, Spread Obama Video – Politics News Story – WCVB Boston:
Republican Sen. John McCain’s campaign suspended a staff member who sent out a provocative video linking Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama to the comments of his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“The staffer, a low-level aide named Soren Dayton, sent out a link Thursday to the YouTube video, titled ‘Is Obama Wright?’ on the social messaging Web site Twitter.”
Lesson?
Don’t staff your social network duties with low level employees or temps. Take it upon yourself to make sure that your company is being represented by the best and brightest possible on these emerging social platforms. They do have sharp edges.
(Title refers to a Pink Floyd song if you are uncool and didn’t get it).
Mainstream Media Can Still Drive the Traffic
I noticed on Google Trends that one of the hottest terms this morning was “coupon mom.”
So, I dug a little deeper and it looks like the site received coverage from a local news outlet in Pittsburgh, PA…
kdka.com – ‘Coupon Mom’ Offers Tips For Shopping Online: “Searching for great bargains doesn’t have to be about spending hours hunting for the best prices in local stores. Instead, it can be done with just a few clicks of the mouse.
KDKA’s Consumer Editor Yvonne Zanos talked with ‘Coupon Mom’ Stephanie Nelson about some internet surfing secrets that can save consumers money. “
So while we continue to talk mostly about online social networks or web2.0 traffic, don’t forget to include more mainstream outlets if you’re trying to grow your brand.
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n the night of 2008-03-20 (UT) we observed the optical afterglow of GRB 080319B (GCN 7427, Racusin et al.) with Gemini-South + GMOS in g, r, i, and z filters (4x180s in each filter). The source is well-detected in all bands. Magnitudes, calibrated to SDSS DR6, are: UTstart UTend t(hr) filt mag err 06:52:17 07:10:19 24.808 g 20.95 0.09 07:11:19 07:26:11 25.099 r 20.55 0.03 07:27..
GRBlog: GRB080319B
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sometimes i hate blogging. scoble nailed it this morning (scobleizer.com).
thinking about rolling it all up into one crispy paper ball and throwing it into the fire.
whatever it is… i guess i’m referring to the blogging aesthetic. so completely fucked up and unncessary.
didn’t we invent this blog shit to counter the stogedy crap that was flowing from the pro’s?
what happened to punk blogging?
we sold out.
for shame.
fix it?
@GaryVee’s School of Marketing
Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV
is at it again… this time schooling all of us on how to market through Twitter.
Pay attention, folks. Class is in session…
Santa GaryVee: “A couple days a week (and sometimes much, much more!) the benevolent Santa GaryVee will direct you to exclusive mind-blowing deals, available only via Twitter.
Gary Vaynerchuk loves EVERYONE and wishes happiness and most importantly health to all. But once that’s granted, he wants nothing more than to put together incredible deals on wine and other merchandise.
Free shipping, discount codes, unbelievable prices… all will come as your gift from the one and only Santa GaryVee.
Friend up Santa GaryVee on Twitter today and reap the benefits of these wild, generous offers!”
Should be fun and yet another reason for you to check out Twitter. And if you’re already on Twitter, here’s your reason to join the Very Green Team.
Happy Birthday to Wayne Porter
From heaven Utu replied to him: “Young man, you are noble already in your own right — but what would you want with the mountains?”
Today is Wayne Porter‘s birthday. Everyone take a moment and wish him well and many more years of pushing the envelopes and pulling the virtual puppet strings.
The Greater the Fear, the Nearer the Consultant
If you’re in Chicago on June 9, this could be a “fun” talk to hear…
Affiliate Marketing: Far More Dangerous Than You Think: “For many years, Alan has been (and remains today) highly critical of the affiliate channel, so this promises to be a lively session!
Joining Alan on the panel will be Barbara Hurd, VP of Business Development, Harry and David; and Vicki Updike, VP of Merchandising and Marketing, Miles Kimball.
Affiliate fan or foe, come watch the fireworks!”
Or you could head over to the Oriental Institute at Univ of Chicago and ponder how, much like the consultants, false confidence in their own superiority (instead of developing better chariots) cost the Assyrian empire it’s position as a super power in the ancient near east. Both would accomplish the same thing.
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.
Yahoo Outlines Future Growth Plan, Includes Affiliate Marketing
TechCrunch has coverage of Yahoo’s 3 year revenue growth plan (slides) and it’s pretty interesting to see their take on the future of web advertising (heavy on mobile and display) and how affiliate marketing fits in…
Interview with Kerri Pollard of Commission Junction
Kerri Pollard, GM of Commisson Junction, joins me in a special podcast.
We cover the Pepperjam controversy, CJ's perspective on the current status of affiliate marketing and where she sees the industry heading in the next decade (and whether or when CJ will blog).
The podcast runs about 25 minutes and is a must-listen.
Why I’m Bullish on AOL
On last Friday’s “Paying for Performance” podcast, Jeff Molander remarked that I’m rather bullish on AOL’s position in the online advertising market. I think with new president Lynda Clarizio in place, my optimism about them be proven true…
AOL Highlights Platform-A Integration Focus With Unified Search Marketing Services | paidContent.org: “AOL announced that Platform-A has combined contextual ad targeter Quigo’s FeedPoint search marketing tool with Advertising.com’s OutSearch data analysis product.
Secondly, the combination of the OutSearch’s “bid management solutions” for buying keywords and FeedPoint’s analytic tools, also highlights another recent area AOL hopes to be more active in: ecommerce. In February, AOL acquired UK-based affiliate marketing network Buy.at, which was intended to round out Platform-A’s ad network offerings with online sales and performance-based marketing solutions.
AOL has a tremendous amount of potential due to its reach into the global performance and display ad business, which is where Google is lacking (hence the DoubleClick acquisition). Add to that the existing long-term relationships that AOL has with global brands with deep pockets looking for more responsive and performance-based advertising, and AOL’s future looks bright.
It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of AOL from darling in the 90’s to pariah in the early ’00’s into global advertising powerhouse in the late ’00’s into the ’10’s. Keep your eye on AOL and its subsidiaries.
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
This 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.
Internet Geek Guy
Let me just reiterate that I have nothing to do with the InternetGeekGuy site…
Internet Geek Guy: “Internet Geek Guy”
Personality jacking ftw.
I Can’t Wait for Flickr Video
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.
I 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.
Affiliate Panel at Web2.0 Expo
I’ll be speaking on a panel at the upcoming Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Lisa Picarille (Revenue Magazine), Stephanie Agresta (Affiliate Karma), Marc Levin (formerly of Yahoo) and Cam Blazer of DoubleClick Performics and I will be discussing responsible affiliate marketing strategies in a web2.0 world…
The Changing Landscape of Affiliate Marketing: Bloggers, Social Media and Online Merchants : Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008 — Co-produced by CMP Technology & O’Reilly Conferences, 04/22/2008 – 04/25/2008, San Francisco, CA: “Affiliate marketing is a proven way to monetize online content, and emerging publishers know it’s important to maximize relationships with merchants. Merchants also derive value from the growth of the blogosphere and social media. Experts in affiliate marketing (representing the publisher, merchant and affiliate network perspectives) will explore how these new publishing paradigms use existing affiliate models, and further enhance strategies for monetization of blog and social media content.”
Should be a blast and will be the first time I’ll have spoken at Web2.0 Expo. Let me know if you’ll be there.
BTW, where is everyone staying? I need to “get a room.”
Free Full Pass to Affiliate Summit East
The Affiliate Summit team is having a mini-contest for a free pass to the Affiliate Summit East event coming up in Boston on Aug 10-12 just announced on Twitter…
Twitter / Affiliate Summit: Share an idea for Affiliate…: “Share an idea for Affiliate Summit by midnight tonight – if we use it, you get a free full pass for Boston http://tinyurl.com/3698wl”
If you do affiliate marketing on any level, this is a must-attend event. So, hop on this if you’re looking for a way to score a full pass.