With the Super Bowl less than two weeks away and baseball season right around the corner, I have been thinking a lot about my favorite professional teams. And as a transplanted Bostonian now living in San Francisco, all my sports memorabilia and fan needs are usually met online. Two trips a year back to Fenway Park just aren’t enough to get my Red Sox tchotcke fix. Hey, every gal needs a Pedro Martinez bobble head and t-shirt commemorating the 2004 World Series miracle.
All this excitement surrounding my Boston teams (go Pats!) got me thinking about sports and affiliate marketing. It’s a huge, competitive space with many players.
If you’re in this market, I’d like to hear from you. Start blogging and let me know about the barriers to entry in this arena, the latest trends and your main concerns for sports affiliate marketing in 2005.
I couldn’t make it to LinkShare’s annual gathering for affiliates. As a Bay Area resident, I’m not sorry to have missed out on the winter weather of New York City, but I do regret not hearing Kwame Jackson (of “The Apprentice” season one fame) speak at the luncheon. The second place finisher in the challenge to work for Donald Trump was said to be a highly motivational and engaging speaker. But if I was there, I might have asked way too many questions about Omarosa and not enough about nurturing the entrepreneurial affiliate spirit.
My sources at the conference say that several themes emerged from the gathering. At least three speakers referred to click fraud as the “biggest threat” to the Internet industry. Google’s newly changed AdWords policy was also a hot topic of conversation, both in and out of the sessions. While LinkShare’s desire to expand into other geographic markets, including Japan, Canada, Germany and the UK, was also discussed at length.
Stay tuned for more about that expansion. We’ll be focusing on that topic and much more about global affiliate marketing in our next issue of Revenue. Meanwhile, why don’t you start blogging and tell me what you learned, talked about or overheard at the LinkShare Executive Marketing Symposium.
Recently Google Adwords unveiled a new affiliate advertising policy that has many affiliates up in arms. The new policy states that Google will only allow one search term query for affiliates and parent companies directing to the same URL. Which ad gets selected depends on which has the highest Ad Rank within the Google Adwords system. If an official Web site has the highest Ad Rank then that ad will be selected. If an affiliate has a higher Ad Rank, it will be displayed.
As I understand it, the program will not prevent multiple affiliates of the same company from bidding on a term. However, the affiliates must drive people to original content - simply linking to a Web page that has minimal content, such as a link to another site, is not permitted.
Some industry pundits have suggested this change may, in the long run, prove positive for affiliates. Still others claim this hurts affiliates. I’m taking a wait-and-see position on this one. But I’d love to hear from you, the affiliates. So, sign up and start blogging. Tell us if this change in Google’s Adwords policy helps or hurts your business. We really want to hear from you.
Frank, who does not want his last name used, emailed me with a solution to missing/deleted cookies or hijacked affiliate links. About six months ago Frank (who works in computer networking and holds several IT certifications) and his dad were looking to buy an expensive informational package online. The product offered an affiliate commission and they each decided to each get an affiliate ID number and link. Frank bought the course and used his father’s link to sign up and buy the product.
Months passed and still no payout or commission for Frank’s dad. The affiliate payor claimed they did not know who to issue the commission to as no cookie existed. Luckily Frank had cut and pasted his entire affiliate link into the COMMENTS section of the order form when he placed the order. His dad mentioned that to the payor, they looked up the order and then awarded him his long awaited $100 commission.
Because of that situation, Frank believes cookies are no longer useful. He thinks someone with programming knowledge could instead combine the properties of two products such as a stenography image program and a public key encryption application to do the job.
According to his email, “The order form would include a picture or image of some sort (preferably a product LOGO). To a product buyer, it is just a logo. To an affiliate, it contains their ID#. Each affiliate would receive a copy of the order form for soliciting online sales. They could open the order form image using the stenography software and insert THEIR affiliate ID number into a preset location within the image or logo on the order form. The commission payor would simply open the order form image file and extract the ID number and award payment accordingly. To protect against another affiliate hijacking/editing the logo and inserting their own ID#, [to steal a commission] a type of password or public key could be used with the stenography software.”
Start blogging and let me know if you think this could work or if anyone is already working on another solution or better yet – give me your own great idea.
I heard from several affiliates helping with donations to the South Asia tsunami relief effort. Network shareasale.com is offering $1 for $1 matches for donations from both merchants and affiliates. The donation period was originally supposed to end after a week, but that period has been extended. It will likely end on January 20, which is when the affiliate accounts are balanced out. Shareasale.com officials say that so far the program has been a big success. Most of the pages on alexscoupons.com have links to the Red Cross Disaster Relief and World Vision, including front page placement for the Red Cross Link. In addition, pcsecurityshield.com sent out a newsletter to its subscribers and posted an article about how to safely make donations online. Babylounge.com will donate their January 2005 affiliate program revenue to International relief organization, Feed The Children. Reliefsearch.org will also donate 100 percent of click revenues generated from searches to the tsunami relief efforts.
A few other affiliates were mentioned as doubling commissions or making donations but I couldn’t confirm those before posting this entry. Start blogging and tell me what you’re doing to help the tsunami victims or anything else that’s on your mind.
The worldwide outpouring of aid for victims in South Asia has been heartfelt and swift. But along with generous charitable contributions comes the opportunity for fraud. This week the FBI issued warnings that fraudsters are using Internet scams in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami disaster. The FBI said the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Centre, has received reports of Web sites being set up allegedly to assist with collection and relief efforts for the victims of the December 26 disaster. Some of the schemes being used involve unsolicited email asking for monetary donations. Others involve a fraudulent relief donation site that contains an embedded Trojan exploit that can infect computers with a virus. But that exploitation is not indicative of the Net ethos. I would love to hear about something positive that Web publishers are doing for the victims of the tsunami disaster. Are affiliates (collectively or individually) doing anything to help with the disaster relief effort? Let me know if you have included links to relief fund organizations on your site or if you have a way for visitors to donate directly to help the victims of the tsunami. Get a password and start blogging so we can find out what you think on this issue and anything else impacting affiliates.
I can’t go a single day without reading about some new development related to spyware and adware. The latest issue of Revenue is jam packed with useful information about spyware, but even as the new issue arrives at your door (or a newsstand near you) there is still more spyware news to report.
As if we needed more proof that spyware and adware have gotten out of hand. This week anti-virus maker McAfee named adware from180solutions and Gator (now Claria Corp.) to its top 10 threats of 2004. What a difference a year makes. There wasn’t a single adware program on the McAfee list for 2003. McAfee makes its list based programs it intercepts online, samples users submit to the company for analysis and decoy programs that act as traps to weed out viruses and spyware. Not surprisingly, top-level executives for both 180solutions and Claria denied that their respective programs install ad-serving software without consumer’s permission.
Also this week, California Rep. Mary Bono re-introduced her Consumer Protection Against Spyware Act. Bono’s legislation passed the House last year but didn’t clear the Senate. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved the bill and it went into effect in The Golden State at the beginning of 2005. The new law makes it illegal to intentionally make or install computer software that can collect personal information, disable anti-virus shields and otherwise disrupt computer functionality. The bill also requires companies and Web sites to disclose whether its systems will install spyware. Consumers are allowed to seek up to $1,000 (US) dollars compensation if they think they have fallen victim to the intrusive software. Stay tuned as I expect lots of Californians to start filing lawsuits based on the bill. Let me know about your experiences with spyware or anything else about affiliate marketing that’s on your mind.
