Sam Harrelson

If you’d like to see something covered or participate in the conversation here without commenting, there are two simple options.

-If you use del.icio.us, tag a page with “costpernews.”

-Or, if you use ma.gnolia.com, you can also tag a page with “costpernews.”

Most of you are already using one of these two services in your daily browsing, so if you see something interesting, don’t hesitate to tag “costpernews” and I’ll take notice.

I’ll feature the top taggers in a special article/interview/podcast/video post every week or month depending on their preference.

If you’re not following Shmuel Tennenhaus throughout the interwebs, you’re missing some interesting reads and insight. There are three seperate links in that last sentence, and as you know I am not a fan of links.

The fact that I’ve put three links into one sentence should alert you to the potency of the content that Shmuly is producing.

Hell, he’s even been credited with the destruction of a TV show.

For another example to learn from the Shmule…how should bloggers position themselves for the the longtail of coupon searchers and consumers looking for a deal? Shmuly has an answer…

You see, I just checked by blog stats for the day. And of course, it was another pitiful day of traffic. However, there was a glaring glare facing me in the face.

The blog got a bunch of traffic from people googling for a “j crew coupon code“.

Makes sense. After all, today was Cyber Monday. Many moons ago, I wrote a post titled “yahoo suggests jcrew coupon code“. As a result, if you make a search for “jcrew coupon code“, my blog is on the first page of results. (If that achievement alone does not make me sexy, I give up.)

Problem is…that specific post does not contain any coupon code. So, essentially, people are coming here for nothing; cause you and I both not, there aint nothing to read in this joint. (To defend myself just a bit; that blog post does inform people how to find current coupons…)

Follow along or get left behind in the path of content providers who are taking the road less traveled in a yellow wood and realizing that it makes all the difference. Learn from these early trailblazers and make sure that you are not being left behind in the content consolidation of Web3.0.

Grab the longtail by the horns… it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

ValueClick has launched valueclickvideo.com in preparation for their soon to launch in-stream video advertising network.

On the site is a preview of their in-stream video technology (with footage from a recent adtech nonetheless) meant to show the quality and texture of what they can deliver. Underneath the video is an option for “In-banner video” as well as “In-stream video.” The in-banner video seems to be powered or associated with Eyeblaster.

Here are the pro’s for publishers and advertisers listed on the site:

Publishers

• High revenue with premium CPM rates
• Easy to implement – integrated into our existing publisher platform
• Insert video, rich media or graphical ads into existing pre-roll/post-roll inventory
• Quality creative and effective campaigns
• Compatible with most popular video formats

Advertisers

• Two video products: in-stream (pre-roll/post-roll) and in-banner
• Leverage extensive reach and ad network management expertise
• Accomplish brand and direct response objectives
• Improve ROI with higher response rates
• Behavioral targeting and optimization capabilities
• Complete transparency

How will this integrate with CJ?

What will Linkshare do?

How will this impact online and affiliate/partnership/referral marketing?

Will Google make a play with Google Video?

Shoutwire, a Digg competitor, won’t let you submit a story that includes the keyword “Digg.” A fan of the Shoutwire service sent me an email earlier tonight with the tip to try and submit the previous’ post here entitled “Pay Per Digg” to the service.

This is the result (try it for yourself if you’d like)…

Netscape, on the other hand, does not restrict the “digg” keyword…

And neither does Reddit…

Interesting move by Shoutwire, but if the site is going to play catch up to Digg and build a community of loyal users, they have to let their users be the judge of the merits of their own keywords.

I say it is interesting, because at this very moment the top three stories on Shoutwire are:

1. Fox News’ Bullsh*t Has Hit The Fan
2. Was Jesus an Asshole?
3. 9 Reasons Why I Love Sluts

Glad to see that for Shoutwire “Digg” crosses the line but “Bullshit,” “Asshole” (particularly in reference to a figure over 2 billion people consider divine), and “Sluts” are acceptable keywords.

First there was PayPerPost. Then ReviewMe.

Just this morning Jim Kukral blogged on ReveNews about Agloco, which “pays you to surf.”

Now, we have Pay Per Digg.

Where Digg Submitters Pay for Digg Users to Promote their Stories.
And, Where Digg Users Make Easy Money.

Users are paid $0.50 for every 3 stories they digg. You can also submit a story to be amped by paying $20 plus $1 per desired digg. The value of a digg has certainly fallen off over the past year, so the market forces alone should be able to clean up this type of less-than-ethical gaming.

Considering market forces as a primary reason for this type of scheme, it is logical to see where the monetary drive to experiment with valuation platforms such as this come from. However, those same economic forces which put value on actions such as diggs also places the operator of these sites in a continual struggle to keep up with the micro-economic structures of supply and demand in a commodity style fluid market. That’s too much for most to accomplish, so I see the market driving this out of business quickly. However, the gaming of Digg will, of course, continue.

These same market forces extend to Agloco, ReviewMe, PayPerPost and the host of other new platforms allowing users to assign a certain value to actions they were already committing (surfing, blogging, clicking). In order to keep up with the market valuations of the actions needed for payout, and values of intangibles such as attention, user experience, ethics, these platforms must have a firm hold on a good deal of data. I suspect most do not and beyond the ethical implications of getting paid to post or surf or digg, the market will drive them into an escalating situation of irrelevance to the individual user.

See why we need to kill links to help affiliate marketing survive as a brand?

It’s Black Friday here in the US and countless Americans are driving from store to store looking for deals and the season’s newest gadgets and toys.

In honor of the shopping season, over the next few weeks I’m going to be pointing out a series of acquisitions made by players in our space and asking your opinion on whether these where a bargain or a dud.

Our first buy follows the theme of shopping but goes all the way back to 2004: ValueClick’s acquisition of PriceRunner. ValueClick made the purchase for $29 million during a buying spree which had included three other major buys within the previous year Search123 (May ’03); Commission Junction (Dec. ’03); Hi-Speed Media (Dec. ’03). PriceRunner, a shopping comparison provider, already had a large presence in Sweden and Germany and has since expanded into the larger European market as a whole.

Chairman and chief executive officer of ValueClick, James Zarley said about the acquisition in 2004:

“We have been looking to add comparison shopping services as part of our strategic growth plan, and in PriceRunner we have found an established partner that will help us take our first step in this rapidly-growing and profitable area of performance-based online marketing.”

In July 05, ValueClick also launched PriceRunner in the US. In October of this year, MSN announced it would use PriceRunner as the engine behind it’s European MSN Shopping service.

Did ValueClick make the right move by adding this B2C portal to its now expansive B2B offerings (CJ, FastClick, HiSpeed, Mediaplex, Search123, E-Babylon)? Has ValueClick been successful at leveraging this shopping portal in a highly competitive sector? Has PriceRunner allowed ValueClick to expand into the blooming European marketi? Is ValueClick integrating PriceRunner’s B2C consumer network with its other services such as CJ?

Great Bargain or Buyer’s Regret?

Following up on Wednesday’s post, here’s my podcast with a little more depth into my opinion of how and why we should move beyond links in affiliate marketing.
Agree? Disagree? Contribute too the conversation.

Homework is due Tuesday (see previous post)!

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pcecb7099049d634f584717933e8d1ca4Yl9wRVREYmN3&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=bp14

dailystatsheet2.mp3

Are links, as we know them in online and affiliate marketing, done for?

In order to answer this question, I’ve narrowed the discussion down to three areas: Leverage, Authority and Long Term Encouragements. Certainly, there are other areas and in the editing process of this post I cut a few of these out and merged them with the three categories above.

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).

Should you ditch the entire concept of linking in order to be progressive? No.

Am I advocating the complete replacement of links with something that can accommodate for attention data? No.

However, online (especially the affiliate) marketing should realize the importance of the need to look beyond the link.

So, here’s your Holiday Homework:

Think about and respond to the notion that links are dead, especially in relevance to affiliate marketing. I’d like to prescribe the areas of Leverage, Authority and Long Term Encouragement as the fields of discussion, but if your point is valid you can certainly travel outside those lines to make your point.

Here are some connections you should consider when thinking about the issue:

-Technorati, Techmeme

-Like.com

-Monetization

-Jellyfish.com

-AdSense Gaming

-Page Rank Problems (or Alexa)

-Participation from Readers/Audience

-Types of Traffic Delivered (Sustained or “Digg Effect” waves)

-Relevancy for Consumers and Individuals

-Value of “Attention Data”

Leave your comments for quick thoughts, or you can submit a longer piece similar to last week’s homework submissions on CPA Networks and Affiliate Networks. I’ll be posting some of your results next Tuesday after the Holiday and include a link to your blog or company. You can email those in, or if you prefer you can send in a voicemail (828.338.2129) on my Skype line which I’ll publish as a part of the post. The deadline is 3pm Friday Tuesday Nov 28 (thanks, Jonathan).

I suspect most of you will initially call me an idiot (I’m close) for questioning the present and future leverage and authority of links. However, put some thought into it, be creative and think of how using other means to reach users can enhance your program/network/platform/offer.

Every day, very early in the morning, I’m going to be recording a 3-4 minute episode of Cost Per News Daily Stat Sheet in partnership with the great folks at BlogTalkRadio.

This is the first episode and very experimental, so go easy, but do let me know what you think and what recommendations you have. I’m doing this day-to-day experiment in the spirit of a Coltrane concert… it’s jazz and heavy with flaws, highlights and brief moments of inspiration.

Feel free to leave a voicemail on the number below and I’ll play it during the show.

Daily Stat Sheet Show Notes (Episode One, 22 Nov 2006)

-Thanks for listening – very beta
-Shmuly’s (General Zod) Video on Digg and Netscape
-CPA Network Transparency? More Than Meets the Eye
-Response to Shawn Collins(Affiliate Summit), Deanna Key (Rextopia) Brian Littleton (ShareASale)
-Leave a VoiceMail for Tomorrow’s Show (828.338.2129)

As I said, there will be a new episode posted every morning, so grab the feed and let me know your thoughts. Yes, I know there is a botch at the very beginning, but I wanted to preserve the live, dynamic and jazz nature of the show.

Thanks for listening!

CPN Daily Stat Sheet Page

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/feeds/costpernews

At the beginning of the month, word spread that many affiliates using their links on MySpace were being terminated from networks such as Azoogle. However, it seems that the networks haven’t reigned in all of their affiliates.

Marketing on MySpace normally uses viral means of spreading a hot topic, issue, movie, album or tech product. However, in this scenario, affiliate marketers use the ease of collecting a large number of “friends” on the MySpace platform (can be easily done with automated software) to blast out numerous bulletins a day to these “friends.”

The result is a large number of eyeballs with a decent conversion rate. In order to compensate for declining click-thru rates, these marketers simply add more and more “friends” and blast their bulletin messages to larger crowds. Its akin to the email marketing vicious cycle a few years ago before CANSPAM.

MySpace says it does not approve of such commercial actions by members:

“Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace Services are for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com. Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting usernames and/or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles without notice and may result in termination of Membership privileges. Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services.”

This morning, someone alerted me to the blog DropShipArea.com and this post outlining a case study on MySpace marketing with an Azoogle iPod offer. The author of the post says he hopes to get a steady stream of traffic coming to his sites through MySpace, which is not inherently against the MySpace rules in the letter of the law.

The case study he outlines, however, does break some rules, and networks such as Azoogle must be careful about the actions of their affiliates in a post-acquisition MySpace platform which NewsCorp is continually seeking to monetize and clean up.

This is from the case study quoted on the site:

“First, I selected an appropriate offer from Azoogle.

Name: Superb Rewards – Free IPOD Nano (Brand New!)
Payout: $1.40

Why did I choose this offer?
– Pays for just the E-Mail; a simple action that can be completed by 99% of people.
– Decent Payment ($1.40); One of the higher paying iPod offers so I thought it was a good choice.
– Good Reward (iPod Nano); iPods are all the craze lately, some may say it is saturated but a lot of people still don’t have, and want an iPod.
– Appeals to my demographic; It’s usually the younger people wanting iPods, so 18-25 is usually a good range.

I have a MySpace account with 5400 friends (as of now) and I posted a simple bulletin with the following fields:

Subject: WOW!!! THIS IS SO EASY!!!
Body: Anyone with a MySpace account can get a FREE iPod just by entering your email address into this form!!!” CLICK HERE!!!

The results of his endeavor?

“Nothing too spectacular. I got about 10 people clicking on my Link and half of them completed the offer, so I didn’t make too much.

Why? Probably because I’ve used this account for advertising in the past and people have become wary to avoid my bulletins. I did convert at 50% though, so that’s very good – I just needed more clicks.”

And then he goes on to describe how he ramped up the clicks and concludes that MySpace marketing is now a matter of scale.  That’s dangerous for any network allowing this to continue due to MySpace’s state rules.
I can’t imagine this is the type of promotion advertisers within CPA Networks such as Azoogle are hoping to be a part of, even if it is an email only iPod offer. There is still liability to be had, and NewsCorp does have the resources to follow the money trail.