Zango, the company that became a byword for spyware and drive-by software downloads, has finally shut its doors with assets being sold to pay creditors. Known for several years as 180solutions, the company was named and shamed by the FTC who finally won a settlement soon after the company had adopted the name Zango. Its reputation sullied, the company found itself blocked by spyware filters and anti-spam products and, with restricted distribution, was never able to recover. Zango will ... More

2 Comments | Posted April 23rd, 2009 @ 12:19pm
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Google announced today at AdSpace that they will provide "category filtering" capabilities to publishers at some point in the near future. In limited beta at the moment, the idea of category filtering is to allow AdSense publishers to block ads that fall into particular subject areas such as religion, politics or dating. Google says this is one of the features most-requested from publishers, and that the implementation will also allow a view of recent revenue generated from each category ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 23rd, 2009 @ 12:18pm
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Melanie Seery continues her great coverage of various tax initiatives around the country with a reminder that New York affiliates will soon be receiving "proof of compliance" certificates from the tax authorities and also provides links to her sample contract clauses and downloadable PDF files that reshape the merchant-affiliate relationship in ways that rebuts the sales tax nexus. Get advice from your own tax attorney, but this is a great resource. Additionally, Melanie has an update from ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 23rd, 2009 @ 12:17pm
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Linda Raasch of Bizkidz.com has written a terrific piece in the Mercury News explaining exactly why CA AB178 is bad for small businesses and bad for California. Key graf: The premise of AB 178 is flawed. Affiliate marketers are not an extended sales force for retailers. Rather, we are paid for performance marketing advertising. We do not own the customer; we do not transact a sale; we do not accept money for sales; nor do we deliver products ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 23rd, 2009 @ 12:15pm
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Ann Smarty has a nice piece up discussing the different approach needed when researching keywords for an established site rather than a new one. Beginning with an analysis of referrals she describes a methodology that is simple and effective. Go take a look here.

Add Comment | Posted April 21st, 2009 @ 12:14pm
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In December Google launched their ad network for Android and iPhone, which allowed advertisers to target AdWords at mobile devices with full HTML browser capabilities. They now have a short video available explaining the differences between what they call standard and high-end mobile ads, the kinds of sites to which they may be linked and how you should choose between them. If you aren’t using mobile ads yet, now is the time to start your learning curve because ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 21st, 2009 @ 12:13pm
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ad:tech San Francisco begins today and, as if to celebrate, two of the major ad networks released news about increased value they are offering publishers and advertisers. It doesn’t look as though the ad network marketplace is going to get any less complicated or less dynamic in the near future. First, DoubleClick has made their Network Builder toolkit generally available. It’s primarily aimed at publishers who want to develop their own vertical and niche ad networks, and it ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 21st, 2009 @ 12:11pm
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A couple of weeks ago Toys'R'Us paid $5.1 million to buy the Toys.com domain name. This should have been a great deal for them with their shiny new domain ranking fourth for the "toys" keyword, providing an estimated 25-40,000 click-throughs every day. The only problem is, it appears that Toys'R'Us doesn't employ anyone who actually knows about SEO. Within 10 days of the purchase, the Google ranking had gone. What happened is that they simply redirected the entire domain to ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 16th, 2009 @ 12:10pm
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Microsoft has spent years trying to build an effective competitor to AdSense without much success but there are new reports that a partnership with ad optimization network YieldBuild is showing promising results. Microsoft's PubCenter is an ad platform for publishers that serve high-quality text ads alongside those from other networks, while YieldBuild's algorithms optimize for the most profitable combination of network and layout. There are several reports that significantly higher CPM rates have been achieved during private beta testing, but naturally ... More

Add Comment | Posted April 16th, 2009 @ 12:09pm
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The Federal Trade Commission is suggesting that bloggers and social media users who express false statements about products they promote should be held liable. This could be a big deal for affiliates, publishers or social media users who, if these proposals come into effect, will need to take the same sort of care as do print publishers and infomercial producers. This is part of a review carried out by the FTC's advertising-practices division in an effort to "update guidelines that are ... More

1 Comment | Posted April 16th, 2009 @ 12:08pm
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