Sam Harrelson

The Google Strikes Back.

Jason Calacanis spotted this comment from Matt Cutts regarding Google’s detection and devaluation of paidperpost content in Google rankings…

“Google wants to do a good job of detecting paid links. Paid links that affect search engines (whether paid text links or a paid review) can cause a site to lose trust in Google.”

So if you want to keep your prestige (and ranking / rating) with Google, you might want to re-evaluate the use of PayPerPost and ReviewMe type offers.

Some would argue about the issue of fairness, but in the free market economy of the WWW, Google can and should be able to set whatever policies it sees fit being in the dominant share of the market for user trustworthiness.

I suspect Yahoo and MSN do the same with regards to paid content such as PaidPerPost but have been waiting on word from Google to make their own declarations about these emerging platforms.

Video has matured from a realm of amateur user generated content into a platform for compelling online media according to a new whitepaper from Universal McCan and KnowledgeStorm.  Of the 5,300 technology and B2B buyers surveyed in the study, over 60% said that they accessed video on a daily basis for the purpose of business and not entertainment.

“The takeaway of all of these surveys is that we are really in stage two of the opportunity for online marketing and advertising,” said Matt Lohman, KnowledgeStorm’s director of market research. “There is a whole wave of opportunity to extend marketing campaigns and programs via things like blogs, podcasts and various video formats. The sky’s the limit in terms of the ways to be effective on the Internet and really measure results. This stuff is not a fad that’s going away.”

Of the three topics explored in the latest survey, video is making the broadest impact today. More than 63% of respondents access video at least weekly, while the same percentage said they access video primarily for business and technology information?not entertainment. Webcasting was the most commonly accessed form of Web video at 70%, but all sorts of types scored well. Overall, 78.1% of respondents said video “makes online content more compelling,” while 57% said video content had influenced a b-to-b technology buying decision.

I found it interesting that video had such a high rate of adoption in the B2B community already.  In this case, it seems that the B2C community may be behind the B2B crowd in terms of adoption of video as a viable and valuable platform because B2C still seems to be sorting out the evolving and rapidly growing space and trying to determine a proper metric and even place for advertisements on the platform.

Nevertheless, expect for video to blossom in 2007.

Wired News has a full length feature on the rising prominence of RSS and feed subscriptions within the platforms of shopping aggregations sites such as Mpire, Offertrax and StyleFeeder.

The extensive use of RSS technology shows that these shopping sites are consciously moving away from traditional methods of communication like e-mail, which has become less reliable for alerting users to money-saving deals.

As Offertrax’s Carcio points out, e-mail has been so badly abused by spammers that RSS, blogs, opt-in offers and other “user-controlled technologies” will soon become the most effective way for sellers to reach out to interested buyers.

With the continued devaluation of email’s effectiveness in the face of growing consumer mobile texting and instant message usage and the Hobbesian state of most people’s inboxes due to spam and spoofs, it is little wonder that these major shopping portals are turning to subscription feeds such as RSS and Atom. Such feeds are easily transportable in an offline environment and allow consumers the chance to receive the information they are seeking in a quick, clean and pain-free environment. Placing your latest coupon or product discount in a user’s email inbox alongside the deluge of spam and garbage does harm to your own brand as well.

With the implementation of RSS in IE7 and Vista, will the scale finally tip towards a feed based nature of online conversation? Has your program taken steps to make this transition an easy and profitable one?

I’m excited to announce that CostPerJobs is launching tonight.

CostPerJobs is in a very scaled down mode until this Friday when the full GUI will be available after more testing, but the basic nuts and bolts are up and available for your use.

Best of all, listings are only $25 per month until the end of December. After the beginning of the New Year the rates will go higher. Also, the most recent job listings will be featured on a widget here on the front page of CostPerNews. So you’re getting exposure to the thousands of online marketing and affiliate marketing professionals who visit CostPerNews each day.

So, give it a spin and see what you think. Let me know if you have any ideas or things that you’d like to see in the full GUI release on Friday as it’s not to late to make a few changes there.

Oh, and the first company to make a listing gets a free 125×125 banner spot here on the main page for a week (valued at $125).

From the Google Checkout blog…

Starting today, merchants will be able to use existing affiliate tracking and analytics tools for sales through Google Checkout. You can now include a pixel URL with parameters in the cart post and it will be included on the Checkout Thank You page. You’ll also be able to include placeholders for dynamic variables that will be populated before calling the URL. For more details, refer to third-party conversion tracking in the Google Checkout API documentation.

And here are more technical details on Google’s support for third party conversion tracking.

Quick fix or long term solution?

Tag Bulb is a new search engine which allows you to search for specific tags across various platforms such as Flickr, Riya, YouTube, Webshots, Google, Technorati, Ma.gnolia, Amazon and a host of other social media sites which rely on tags for organization.

Tags are increasingly becoming a hot topic in the world of online marketing. The first company to realize a meaningful way to monetize a user’s input or preferences based on a tagging scheme and apply that (in a meaningful and non-scum fashion) will endear themselves to many of the Fortune 500 who are scratching their heads over this whole web2.0 thing.

The world of online marketing is slowly shifting away from a links based hierarchy to a tag based attention economy (see TechMeme and Tailrank). Understanding tags and how they can impact your program will definitely place you a notch above your competitors.

As a reminder, if you see an interesting story, blog post or article that you’d like to discuss further here on CostPerNews, simply tag it with “costpernews” on either the del.icio.us or ma.gnolia.com social bookmarking services. Quite a few of you have already taken advantage of that, and I hope more of you will!

On a side note, I’ve switched feeds back to full text from partial text.

I know this is not popular with many of my fellow bloggers in the online marketing space, but I’m can’t justify restricting access to content either on the site or on the feed.

Personally, I hate partial feeds and rarely, if ever, follow the jump from my Google Reader. So I’m making this change for my own tastes. I hope you as readers have similar tastes. I have a feeling most of you do, and I don’t want to punish those of you who have taken the time to subscribe to the feed just to stem the tide of the splogs and aggregators who scrape content.

Here is the CostPerNews feed if you haven’t subscribed yet:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CostPerNews

Thanks for your attention, readership, comments, emails and well-wishes that have help to make CostPerNews such a success so soon. Here’s to a great Holiday season for all of us!

The widget over to the right which displays some of the faces of visitors to this site is powered by MyBlogLog. That widget has helped me to realize some new things about the future of online marketing and the growing power that community has in ad expenditures. Viewers are able to make their presence known by a simple sign up and pic upload process, and then see who else is reading and interacting with a blog such as this.

If you click on the “View Reader Community” text at the bottom of the widget, you are taken to the Cost Per News Reader Community where (at the moment 19) readers have added themselves as a part of the community. These are the dedicated and loyal readers of the site that have also added the most comments, sent the most emails and have genuinely made this a valuable community to be a part of. Size matters not in such a community, as quality is the main metric which should be achieved. This is exactly the type of tool I was looking to find and make an active part of CostPerNews since the site was created.

For example, viewership of the site has skyrocketed since I installed the widget in early October. My analytics have also shown me that since that time the number of page views, time spent on the site, links in from other blogs and the general word of mouth about CostPerNews have all grown exponentially. Not all of the credit can be given to the MyBlogLog widget of course, but my stats point to a good correlation between implementation and site growth, activity and value to both myself and the readers.

The MyBlogLog widget has caught on in our sector of online marketing and in the online world in general. Blogs such as ReveNews and TechCrunch have implemented the widget, allowing you a brief mugshot on sites such as this which serves as a positive for both the reader and the site owner… you are given brief exposure as a reader of a similar blog to other potential business partners, and the site owner is able to qualify and quantify their readership. I’d be interested in hearing how the widget has affected those sites in terms of metrics such as page viewership and time spent on the site.

Even the folks at MyBlogLog seemed surprised at the growth of their site due to the widget…

On 30-Oct, I was surprised and happy with our widget stats. How little I knew. Now there’s 2,398 Recent Readers widgets installed (vs. 1,325 then). And, yesterday was our first million widget day. i.e. a million of our widgets were loaded into web pages. That’s a bit over 9% of the 10.2 million pages (also a record!) that we tracked through the system yesterday. It’s somewhat under 10% as a few pages have both widgets. Thank you all!

What does this have to do with affiliate marketing and online marketing? Everything. A month ago (today) I made a post titled Widgets and the Future of Affiliate Marketing in which I spelled out many of the sentiments that are resurfacing in this post:

Similarly, affiliate marketing in general (from the mom-and-pop sites up to the large loyalty sites) could see such a transformation if a 3rd party platform was made available to the industry. What would spur this metamorphosis? Limitations of scaling.

Providing a platform for delivering personalized data based on registrations in exchange for a piece of generated advertising revenue sounds very much like the model which most affiliate and CPA networks already operate under. That is no accident, because serving widgets and serving ads (particularly customized ads based on user choices and user registrations) have more in common than anyone in the affiliate marketing world has taken time to notice.

However, let’s move beyond those models which still enforce that top-down dictation model and focus on models (like widgets) that produce a back and forth between user and affiliate site. That’s where affiliate marketing shines, and that’s the promise that widgets specifically have for pushing certain parts of the industry in the right direction.

The link is dead. Content customization based on a relationship (even as simple as user registration or co-registration) and micro-systems of delivery of that content is the new black. Affiliate marketing, with its ability to make relationships, has a great opportunity to make use of widgets and widget delivery to set the larger industry standard.

In this mode of widget usage, scalability is not a detriment to affiliate marketing. Rather than adhering to that long held belief that the non-scalability of affiliate marketing is what’s holding the industry back from the major leagues, realizing that new platforms (such as widgets) provide a way for affiliates and networks to utilize the relationship factor as a positive… an incredibly profitable and long-term solution positive.

This silent revolution has already begun. It is spreading on the medium of widgets like tiny pieces of energy combining to form a tidal wave in the medium of water. Don’t discount the ability of widgets and user interaction in your affiliate and online marketing program.

Keeping with the fashion analogy, relationship is the new color for 2007. Widgets, such as the MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget, function as a platform and sounding board for realizing the increasing power of voice in the online world. Has your program, site, network or even arbitrage site (joke) tapped into the value of community empowerment?

Lorelle VanFossen has compiled a list of posts on other blogs which describe some of these quiet changes which are slowly spreading across the landscape of online marketing which serve as a great resource for further reading…

• Micro Persuasion – The Imminent Demise of the Page View
• Marketing VOX – Ajax May Undermine Web Advertising Analytics Models
• TechWeb – Ajax Challenges Web Development Leaders — And Web Publishers And Advertisers
• Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik – Five Ecosystem Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors
• Emergence Media – The Future of Analytics and the Fate of Page Centricity
• Weekly Weblog – Page View, Useless?
• The Blog Herald – Where is Online Advertising Heading?
• Cost Per News – Transcending Links in Affiliate Marketing
• ProBlogger – The Death of the Page View and the Ongoing Challenge of Monetizing Websites

What do you think?

Dave at the Affiliate Programs Blog made an interesting post about reaching terminal velocity with social networks…

“I love social networks, I truly do. I use nearly all of the top services on a regular basis, from Digg, Delicious, Newsvine, Myspace, LinkedIn, and others. I’m actively participating in over 10 social networks in one way or another (and I’m not counting forums that I participate on or email lists I belong to). But in all reality, I’m reaching a social networking terminal velocity.”

The phenomenon of social networking has certainly spread into the everyday existence of affiliate and online marketers.  Rarely are contacts or potential partners not available for linking on a platform such as LinkedIn or MySpace.  Many marketers are also pointing to RepVine as a potential place for finding contacts and keeping in touch.

However, in reality what sort of business or potential business deals are done on these networking sites?  Are they worth the time invested in terms of realized actions that result from participating?  How has your program or site benefited from participating on LinkedIn or MySpace or RepVine?

TechCrunch and others are reporting that

Metacafe, the video sharing site, is reportedly being sold for between $200-300 million. The buyer is currently unknown but there is speculation that it may be Yahoo.

This makes good sense for Yahoo as a compliment to their other social web sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr. Metacafe blends the ease of YouTube with the social strategy of Fark, enabling contributors and visitors to sort through videos made popular by users.

Yahoo would also be able to utilize the service in its advertising platform as well. Many of the business-centric viral videos that don’t find success on YouTube are spread through Metacafe. Video is an area that Yahoo is lagging behind in, and a purchase of a platform such as Metacafe would help Yahoo in its catch-up play to Google.

2007 continues to shape up as the year of the acquisition.

Reuters is reporting that Time Warner is seeking to purchase an online ad unit to bolster their new emphasis on advertising rather than the subscription model of revenue for their AOL division.

“We are looking for horizontal opportunities to strengthen our position in the advertising space,” Parsons said at the Credit Suisse media and telecom conference in New York.

Who fits the bill for this?   First, the size requirement.  Is AOL thinking a Madison Ave sized online ad company, a ValueClick sized company or something along the lines of ShareASale or Azoogle?

Asked by the moderator if there were any “size limitations” to its potential acquisition targets, Parsons said, “No. Almost anything you could think of other than the really big, established portals is within striking distance for us.”

To me, this signals AOL is looking at properties outside their normal range.  However, the network AOL would acquire would have to be broad enough to supply enough reach and impressions, without much increased funding, to fit the market need.

It still seems early in the process, but this snippet also gives more clues…

He declined to specify which companies it will consider. But he told Reuters in an interview last week that Time Warner is looking at so-called ad insertion technology that lets companies place ads that are relevant to a particular viewer’s tastes.

This sounds more along the lines of a rich media entity rather than a pay per performance or affiliate network, or at least a network or media company with the ability to provide both horizontal reach and multimedia tracking such as by a video unit.

Maybe it is ValueClick?

What about Advertising.com?

I just did a post over on ReveNews about an infection on a laptop running Ubuntu (a Linux OS) that I’ve suffered tonight, potentially via following links from a CPA Network.

Head over there to read and see screen pics.

1. Monetized the eyeball and provided the foundation for the translation of the CPM metric from an offline entity to an online model. That eventually evolved into a CPC then CPA as performance crept into the metric, thereby transforming advertising both online and eventually offline in a reciprocal fashion.

2. Provided the basis of the social web and web2.0 as we know it by helping companies and marketers understand the need for fluid interaction with individuals and potential consumers.

Jim Kukral has launched a unique tool to promote Forge Corporation’s BlogKits platform. BlogKits, an AdSense rival, is being promoted as a more efficient and easier way for bloggers to earn money compared to AdSense.

From the site:

Adsense doesn’t work for bloggers, yes, we know, such a bold statement… But it’s true!

1. Low-traffic blogs will never make more than pennies per day
2. One sale from BlogKits could bring you a week’s worth of click $$$ from Adsense

The tool is an AdSense comparison engine based on the amount of traffic a blog receives. The information shown is calculated based upon research and polls, taken from a sample of web users anonymously over a period of two years. The comparison engine is an interesting facilitation of a call-to-action sign up process for bloggers.

Will this have widespread adoption or offer bloggers a better chance to monetize their content compared to AdSense, Performancing’s platform or a pay per post model?

Cable and blogs are reporting that James Kim’s body has been found in the Oregon wilderness after he set out to find help for his stranded family on Saturday.

James was an editor at CNet and widely known and respected in the tech industry.

Our thoughts certainly go out to his family and the CNet family as well.

Spyware, malware, social memetic and all around universal researcher Wayne Porter was intrigued by attacks by the Second Life Liberation Army on advertising entities within Second Life such as the new Reebok Store.

Believe it or not, this mini-microcosm of over a million early adoption, hi-tech and attentive users does have implications for online marketing. The struggles, issues and situations being worked out on platforms such as Second Life or Digg will ripple out and help determine the shape of user interaction on the web as the online world (including the marketing part) continues to evolve.

The group’s site includes the following statement:

The SLLA’s demands are simple:

“The establishement of basic ‘rights’ for Second Life Players. Having consulted widely we now believe the best vehicle for this is for Linden Labs to offer public shares in the company. We propose that each player is able to buy one share for a set-price. This would serve both the development of the world and provide the beginnings of representation for avatars in Second Life.”

Porter actually found the leader of the clandestine and secretive group and interviewed them on their motives, intentions and general philosophy. They admit to attacks and defending avatar rights by claim not responsible for grey goo attacks which have led to a crippling of some parts of the Second Life economy, and given skeptics of the platform ample fodder for ridicule.

Interesting questions are asked at the end of the interview which do have some connection to the
“cost per” economy that online marketing has created such as: “Even in this new and incredible terrain are we destined to walk down the very same paths we have for centuries?”

Interview on Digg

Interview on ReveNews

Interview on wayneporter.com

Thomas from eBags sent this over to me by email earlier. Thoughts?…

eBags & Google Checkout

“The current eBags promotion with Google Checkout has proven to be a huge success. Although Google Checkout orders are not currently being properly reflected in CJ, please rest assured we are tracking each and every sale internally and can attribute these sales to all of our publishers.

We will be crediting every affiliate with the commission due to them from Google Checkout orders so no-one should think they are not getting proper credit for any referrals that use Google Checkout.

Our Account Managers at CJ are aware that we are tracking these orders and we are working out a means to reflect in the CJ system.

Our affiliates are on track to have record months of sales and commissions. We are one of only a small handful of merchants that Google has chosen to offer a $20 off $50 incentive that can be combined with other discounts and our affiliates have the ability to leverage and be fully compensated. We are confident that the affiliates that promote eBags during this holiday season will be pleasantly rewarded and taken care of by our team.

If anyone has any further questions or concerns regarding the eBags affiliate program, and Google Checkout orders please feel free to e-mail me at Thomas@ebags.com.

We look forward to finishing a strong holiday with our partners.”

If any other merchants, networks or affiliates would like to have their positions posted, email me your responses and I’ll post them.

PrimeQ has expanded its geography of business to include the Russian market with the announcement that it had opened an office in St. Petersburg, Russia to augment its growing European branch headquartered in London. PrimeQ is mostly known in online marketing for its registration path offers and technology services.

Jason McClain, PrimeQ’s founder and CEO, writes:

“After years of studying and preparing for the Russian market, we are proud to spearhead a drive into a largely untapped online environment that will grow leaps and bounds over the next decade,” said McClain. “The number of Russian internet users is currently the same as the UK, approximately 28 million people and, in a few years, will be double that of Britain.”

Today at Search Engine Strategies in chilly Chicago WebTrends, a web analytics and marketing performance management solution provider, announced its acquisition of ClickShift, who specializes in search engine optimization.

Monetary value of the deal was not disclosed.

Insiders are saying that WebTrends is planning on offering a more detailed and robust SEO engine for its clients as more advertisers continue to demand the use of search in their media buys.

1.  Help bring about the CPA revolution.

2.  Create a sustainable market for RSS use and integration.

More on this soon…

Another week, another ValueClick buy. European shopping portal Shopping.net has been acquired for 13.3 million dollars by ValueClick.

The buy adds more punch to VC’s European B2C endeavors and allows the company more of a footing to compete with European competitors TradeDoubler and Zanox.

Perhaps just as interesting for ValueClick are some of the other properties Shopping.net owns and operates outside the shopping specturm (million.com, mortgages.net searchengine.net, etc).

“Shopping.net is a great fit for ValueClick Europe,” said Carl White, chief executive officer of ValueClick Europe. “This acquisition expands our online shopping destination site presence in the marketplace, and is another significant step in our European expansion. Shopping.net will complement our other businesses, including PriceRunner, Commission Junction and vcmedia.”

“Europe is an important growth area for ValueClick, and we’re excited to add Shopping.net to our European operations,” said James Zarley, chairman and chief executive officer of ValueClick. “Shopping.net gives Carl’s team greater opportunities to leverage their expertise in monetizing online traffic and expands ValueClick’s overall presence in Europe.”

As we enter 2007 will the European advertising networks begin buying up American properties (some are still at a good bargain price) to compete with ValueClick?

How does this acquisition affect ValueClick’s other B2C shopping portal, PriceRunner?

Just got through reading this piece by David Berlind at ZDnet.

Read it.

Here are my key points of disagreement…

“TinyURL is the next YouTube. In fact. It’s better. It’s a dream come true for the Madison avenue types whose Holy Grail has always been how to serve people with an advertisement at their moment of greatest need.”

No, it’s not. Seriously. Insulting users with the insinuation that they must link to something in order to show intention (and he quotes Doc Searls in this article) by disengaging attention from that intent is simply off the mark.

“I’m not sure whether Doc would agree, but TinyURL is like a stealth intention engine.”

I can’t speak for Doc, but I don’t think he would agree that TinyURL is a stealth intention engine. It’s a way to send links without taking up too much space. It’s not YouTube. It’s not an intention engine. It’s not an attention engine. Simply put, it’s a useful tool, but it’s one that is quickly becoming obselete as the intention architecture of the web as we know it continues to change.

I’ve been using TinyURL for years and I do appreciate its makers, users and features. But, let’s elevate the web culture past the need for shorter links (and linking all-together) rather than elevating a program like this to YouTube status.

Are you a CJ affiliate promoting any of these programs with Google Checkout coupons?

If you are, you may need to look closely at how Google Checkout is affecting your commissions

The following is from an email from CJ’s Ziggy Kopetti on the forum thread discussing this issue…

I recently learned that the Google Checkout process which some CJ merchants are promoting on their sites will affect affiliate commissions. Here is an explanation of how Google Checkout works and how it affects affiliates who are working with CJ merchants that offer Google Checkout.

Please note: this explanation is specific to Commission Junction merchants only.

HOW IT WORKS

Google batches all the Google Checkout orders with the CJ PID and (if appended) the SID to the merchant. The merchant then conforms the order to our batching system, and batches it in to Commission Junction. The responsibility is on the merchant to filter the data from Google, identify the traffic from the CJ affiliates and batch it in. (Note: the CJ system does not distinguish if it is a Google checkout transaction or not.)

Further, pixel tracking does not work with Google checkout and most of our CJ advertisers utilize pixel tracking.

Thus, if the merchant relies solely on pixel tracking, affiliate tracking is lost when Google checkout is used even if the customer came to the site on an affiliate link.

Consequently, only those merchants that are batch merchants with CJ are encouraging publishers to promote their Google Checkout offer…

I recommend that affiliates NOT promote the Google Checkout offers for eBags, Petco, Golfsmith, eCost or Starbucks Store because these merchants pixel track. Unless the Advertiser batches in the order with the PID and SID received from Google, the order will never reach our system and you will not be paid a commission for the order. Loyalty shoppers who make purchases on these sites after clicking through from your site but then utilize Google Checkout will not receive their incentive.

This is an important issue at the moment as some merchants are pushing affiliates to push these offers and increase traffic during the holidays. Google itself is making a major push to promote the Checkout platform with merchants and the general public for the holidays as well.

Kopetti goes on to write that:

ValueClick is in negotiations with Google at the moment deciding if they want Google to insert the CJ tracking pixel into Google checkout, or not. This will depend on the revenue impact to the publishers. Please let me know if you can quantify the impact to your program.

How will these negotiations between ValueClick and Google play out over the coming months? Will Google see the issue from the affiliate point of view and make changes? Is it already too late to find a solution for the busy and important holiday season? What does this mean for the future of Google’s inroads into CPA?

Are Linkshare or ShareASale affected as well??

[Update 12/1/6 10:25pm est: Connie Berg also blogged about this on ReveNews. Check out her insightful post as well.]

It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be different. It just might change your mind.

Want to help? Email me.

The part of my Affiliate Marketing Manifesto (see below) which has garnered the most attention is #3. Linda Buquet has started a thread on her 5StarAffiliateMarketing Forums, so you can participate in the conversation there as well…

3. Affiliate Marketing Transcends Links
Links hold affiliate marketing hostage. Just as Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck to show the coming servitude of Israel to the Babylonians, we affiliate marketers should heed the writings on the wall pointing us towards the dangers of positing all of our hopes and futures of industry sustainability and industry credibility on the link. Clickfraud and AdSense farms are just two examples of the sinful state we will enter if we continue down the path of praising the link while ignoring the individual doing the action of clicking. Give readers, consumers and individuals the chance to elevate themselves and your program by not insulting their intelligences with links.

Just before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22… scroll down), I posed the question (and encouraged response… of which I received none!) of how and why affiliate marketing should start to move away from links. Here’s the main point of that argument…

“However, as online marketing continues to mature, we have to confront this question about the long term establishment of links as the primary tool for connecting advertiser to publisher or merchant to affiliate or network to partner because links, by their nature, do not offer enough flexibility and data gathering for developing trends (RSS, social web adoption, social networking, more intelligent web users, uses of the internet outside of World Wide Web).”

Just today I was passed this post about the death of “information architecture” (how information on the internet is spread). There are more similarities in my argument for a move away from links in our marketing programs and the idea that the way we share information in a link-based system is slowly eroding than at first seem evident…

In many ways, the success of Google’s Pagerank algorithm was the harbinger of all this. The simple idea that people’s actions model meaning better than a directory (even a flexible directory) is a critical step forward in thinking about the Web. The innovation we’re seeing with folksonomies, recommendation systems, social networking sites…all have their roots in the idea that modeling what people actually do on the Web is the best way to provide answers for them. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an admission that we simply can’t predict the future…we can’t design a perfect information architecture, and to attempt to implies that the world we’re modeling doesn’t change.

My argument for such an evolution away from links revolves around the idea that as individuals change the way they process information on the webs (web-based office programs, feed readers) and social platforms (Second Life, MySpace, Facebook, etc) affiliate marketing has to change the way it interacts with these individuals based on their attention communications and kinesics.

Rather than trying to rebrand affiliate marketing with a new name, opening up possibilities by moving away from links and towards other means of transferring data, deals and offers could position affiliate marketing as the future of the online monetization experience.

What do you think?