Everyone is buzzing about a published report that appeared in today’s New York Times regarding Microsoft possibly acquiring Claria. The story claims the two parties have been in talks for the last two weeks (initiated by Claria) and that a firm offer from Microsoft for $500 million is on the table.
There’s been no shortage of opinions on the validity of this story or predictions on what will happen if the deal goes through.
Some people that i talked to today say the biggest stumbling block is that many Microsoft executives are worried that buying a company so closely associated with controversial ad-delivering practices will perpetuate Microsoft’s image as a corporate Big Brother. That echoed sentiments expressed in The Times piece.
Claria, previously known as Gator, has already changed its name because of its notorious reputation - as well as numerous lawsuits – regarding the way its software tracks user habits and delivers pop-up ads.
Many industry watchers and consumers don’t think this acquisition is a great move for Microsoft. Most think Microsoft is making further attempts to track every mouse click on the Web and profit from it.
Neither Microsoft nor Claria executives are commenting on whether or not any negotiations are underway.
Most folks that Italked to didn’t want their names used. However, the general consensus was that there are several potential conflicts of interest here. Many are predicting that Microsoft will attempt to bring legitimacy to the adware space by establishing privacy rules, all the while benefiting from personalized advertising.
But Ben Edelman, a leading expert on spyware and adware, doubts the deal will even go through - never mind do anything to help polish the tarnished image of adware.
“If this deal goes through, which I consider doubtful, I don’t know that it would legitimize adware. Edelman says. “It might have exactly the opposite effect – causing further uproar and backlash against adware.”
Edelman also sees conflict on other levels. In an email to Revenue Magazine, Edelman states that he sees two distinct problems if Microsoft bought Claria.
“That Claria and kin harm the PCs of Windows users, damaging the value of Windows and making Mac, Linux, etc. relatively more desirable - to Microsoft’s detriment. And, that acquiring Claria would gut MS’s anti-spyware business. Could MS credibly continue to detect and remove (say) 180, if MS was the new owner of Claria?”
However, if the deal happens, Edelman says he would see Microsoft focusing on Claria’s BehaviorLink banner ads, which track the web use habits of 40 million users, “not Claria’s existing pop-up business.”
He notes, “These new banners are quite different from typical adware pop-ups. In particular, the adware pop-ups cover sites without those sites’ permission. But the banner ads would only appear within sites that agree to run them and those sites would receive payment for running them.”
More of Edelman’s thoughts on this topic can be read on his site.
Still others claim that recent moves by rivals Google and Yahoo! have prompted Microsoft to seek out more technology in the area of customization, behavioral marketing and targeted online marketing.
I’ll keep updating this story, so send along your opinion on the impact this deal could have on the affiliate and performance marketing space.
I’m getting really excited about the upcoming Fourth of July holiday weekend. I’m all about the red, white and blue, embracing freedom and, of course, large slabs of beef on the grill. Having an extra day off from work ain’t so bad either.
As a kid this was always a special weekend for me. It was my dad’s birthday, my parent’s anniversary (or the day my dad lost his independence as he would jokingly tell us kids every year) and the weekend that we made the trek to our summer place on Cape Cod.
I’d prefer to just stick close to home. Then I can check out an old fashioned county fair, maybe hit the multiplex, try and watch the Live 8 concerts and possibly catch a glimpse of San Francisco’s fireworks display. If the fog doesn’t cooperate, then I’ll get my pyrotechnics fix elsewhere.
Okay, enough about my summertime fun. After all, it’s only Tuesday and there’s still plenty of work to be done. Plus, some explosive fireworks are happening right here in the online marketing space. Here are a four (in honor of The Fourth) hot topics that lit up the sky for affiliate and performance marketers over the last week or so.
Direct Response Technologies has settled its lawsuit with PrimaryAds, which was using DirectTrack, Direct Response’s proprietary affiliate and ad serving technology as the back bone for their network. PrimaryAds is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Think Partnership, a rival of r of Direct Response.
#2: Google will launch an in-browser video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player.
#3: Just days after high-power advertisers pulled ads appearing on user-created Yahoo chat rooms being used to lure minors for sex, online audience auditor I/PRO released BrandGuard Content Audit, a service to help advertisers protect their brands on the Internet.
#4: On Friday Microsoft unveiled plans to increase support for RSS applications in the upcoming seventh version of Internet Explorer, as well as its upcoming operating system, code-named Longhorn.
Let me know about any other issues that are setting off fireworks in your world. lisap@revenuetoday.com
I was unable to attend this week’s LinkShare Symposium 2005 and the company’s 2nd annual Golden Link Awards held in New York City. It would have been great to travel to the Big Apple to mix and mingle with all the LinkShare executives, their top affiliates and merchants. Okay, maybe I really wanted to go for the shopping, but alas, family and work commitments here in San Francisco prevented me from attending.
However, I’ve had several conversations with people that did make it to the event. For most, the highlight was LinkShare’s Golden Link Awards. Everyone praised the event as “well-done” and “extravagant.” LinkShare’s top dogs Steve Messer and Heidi Messer were extremely gracious hosts, who by all accounts barely got to partake in the delicious food and plentiful cocktails as they were both so busy extending warm greetings and chatting it up with their invited guests.
Wednesday night’s festivities were hosted by comedienne Kathy Griffin. She had the crowd rolling with her trademark shtick of taking pointed jabs at Hollywood A-listers. This time her biting barbs were directed mostly at Oprah and Tom Cruise. There’s so much comedic gold there.
No stranger to corporate gigs, Kathy didn’t seem particularly tuned into exactly what LinkShare does as a company. At the end of her routine she gave some general comments about how much she loved “that stuff” that LinkShare does and how it makes her world better. Kathy, it’s okay that you really don’t know anything about online marketing. The entire room still thought you were very funny.
Other celebrities in attendance included WB11 New York news anchor Julie Chang and chef/author/reality star/cookware designer Rocco DiSpirito. It sounded like Rocco was the talk of the evening – at least for the ladies. I heard that nearly every woman at the event commented about wanting to meet the chef or better yet hook up for some private “cooking” lessons. Forgetaboutit girls. That guy is all about Mama and her meatballs.
I admit that I didn’t take a big shine to Rocco after following his antics on The Restaurant. However, he may have redeemed himself at this event. When he stepped on stage to present an award with LinkShare executive Liane Dietrich, she took out one of his cookbooks and asked for an autograph. He then returned the compliment by whipping out the Spring Issue of Revenue magazine where Liane was profiled and asked for her to sign it. Aww, Rocco, how sweet. Nothing gets you back in my good graces faster than a well-executed plug for my magazine.
All 300 plus guests at the swanky Cipriani were dressed to the nines for the affair, which doled out awards in such categories as Innovative Affiliate of the Year, Best New Affiliate of the Year and Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate.
Many of the people I spoke with commented about how Overstock did not win any of the two awards it was up for. Overstock fared better last year. Here’s a complete list of the winners in each category for 2005:
Innovative Affiliate of the Year:
Winner: wow-coupons.com
Innovative Merchant of the Year
Winner: LaneBryant.com
Best New Affiliate of the Year
Winner: Knoxgolf.com
Best New Merchant
Winner: Apple iTunes
Merchant’s Choice Award
Winner: fatwallet.com
Affiliates Choice Award
Winner: PersonalizationMall.com
International Merchant of the Year
Winners: Tie between American Express and Avon
Best Performance-Based Search Strategy
Winner: 1-800-PetMeds
Best Online Merchandising Campaign
Winner: Dell Home Systems
Best Integrated Online-Offline Marketing
Winner: CouponCabin.com
Best Overall Online Distribution Strategy
Winner: Chase
Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate
Winner: Mike Hyland of EcomCity.com
Prior to the awards ceremony on Wednesday, LinkShare hosted a one-day event/seminar specifically for merchants. One merchant said too much of the agenda focused on lead generation and not enough was geared toward retail. Oh yeah, and there was a not-so-subtle emphasis on analytics. Don’t forget LinkShare just released its SynergyAnalytics product a few months back. There was also a lot of hand wringing about the CPA networks and what exactly many of them do including XY7.com.
If you attended Thursday’s symposium and want to fill me in on the details, you can email me at lisap@revenuetoday.com
Now for another shameless Revenue Magazine plug. If you’re in the Atlanta area next week, check out Affiliate Marketing: Finding the Perfect Match. It’s a three-hour evening seminar presented by the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association. Revenue is one of the main sponsors. The panel of experts will be talking about a variety of affiliate issues including methods that increase affiliate revenue and keep issues like cookie death and adware from ruining a good relationship.
I woke up this morning feeling like a kid again. Maybe it’s because it’s the first day of summer - although I only know that fact from a glance at the calendar. I certainly can’t tell by looking out my San Francisco window.
Back in the day (the 70’s for all of you that must know) I was always so excited about having two and half months of fun and sun and, of course, no homework. Without school life was filled with swimming, playing at the park, lots of baseball (wiffle ball, softball, and the heartbreak of the Red Sox), blockbuster movies, riding bikes and the hazy, hot and humid days of Cape Cod.
So, today in honor of the carefree, lazy summer days of my childhood, we are going to have a little fun. This is my nod to one of my favorite childhood pastimes - playing Mad Libs (even back then I was concerned with nouns, verbs and stringing words together).
So, grab a co-worker or friend along with a pen or pencil. Print out this blog entry and play along. If you send me your filled out Affiliate Mad Lib and if it’s the funniest one I receive (G-rated only please) I’ll mail you one of our totally cool Revenue T-shirts.
The State of Affiliate Marketing
There has been a lot of (adjective) talk about the state of affiliate and performance (noun). Everyone from advertising (plural noun) to etailers to merchants and affiliates is (verb ending in ing) to assess the (adjective) market to see how it can move forward (adverb).
I think affiliate and performance marketing has (verb) over the last (number) years. It is now in an (adjective) stage. But it is still (verb ending in ing) and there are many hurdles and (plural noun) to overcome.
Some of the (plural noun) that affiliates face include (verb ending in ing) more (noun) between merchants and (plural noun), controlling the spyware (noun) and (verb ending in ing) click fraud.
The blame for the industry’s (noun) rests (adverb) on the (part of the body) of (name of person in the room).
But if you are willing to take (adjective) responsibility and yell out (exclamation) then maybe we can all (verb) into the next (noun) of affiliate marketing.
Fill out your Affiliate Mad Lib and send it to me at lisap@revenuetoday.com or via snail mail at Lisa Picarille, Editor, Revenue Magazine, 300 Montgomery St., Suite 1135, San Francisco, CA 94104.
As promised today’s blog entry comes from Tobias Siegel, one of Revenue’s ad sales representatives, who just spent three days at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. This is Toby’s first shot at blogging. He may be new to the blogsphere, but I’ve heard he’s already got quite a following as a Vegas table dancer. Take it away T…..
Thanks Lisa. Did I ever tell you about the time I wrestled a Grizzly Bear at the top of Half Dome? It’s a great story, but not nearly as interesting as Team Revenue’s trip to Vegas this week for the 2005 Affiliate Summit.
I was very excited about making the pilgrimage to my first Affiliate Summit with our Publisher, Nick Smith and Advertising Manager, Chris Smith. Within the first hour of our arrival Sunday I was checked in at The Riviera and off to the pre-game festivities hosted by our friends at XY7.com.
One of the first things I realized in the early rounds of schmoozing is that the affiliate marketing community is a small world bonded by geographic regional networks, one of which is the Bay Area Affiliate Marketing Association, managed by Phillip Kidwell at eHealthInsurance.
After a couple rounds of cocktails at the Peppermill with my friends from the Rocky Mountain Affiliate Marketing Association, I hit the Venetian for bite to eat, then headed to The Palm’s roof deck hot spot, Ghost Bar. I felt like my Uncle Bugsy Siegel looking over all the bright lights on The Strip and dreaming of big things to come.
With a solid 4 hours of beauty rest under my belt, I hit the show running on Monday. Declan Dunn kicked off the Summit with the keynote address. As the track sessions began and the caffeine started to kick in I popped in to hear what the panel had to say about “Affiliates Bidding on Trademarks.” There was healthy debate between panelists Carolyn Tang, Affiliate Manager at Orbitz, David Lewis, Founder of 77Blue and Beth Kirsch, Senior Marketing Manager at Audible.com.
All offered seasoned points of view on how affiliates and merchants can work in harmony. As the track began to wind down and the panel started to heat up, Carolyn and David went toe-to-toe with an inspired exchange between the brand sensitive merchant and a Tier-1 affiliate with trademark attorney David Kibel literally stuck in the middle. Ultimately the shot clock expired on this panel and I was off to the next session.
Next up: lunch and an address delivered by Steve Messer, CEO of LinkShare. I was eager to hear what Steve had to say as he has played a big part in shaping the world of affiliate marketing as we know it today. Despite any pre-conceived opinions the audience had about Steve and LinkShare, I had to give him props for delivering a passionate speech about the current and future affiliate landscape for publishers and advertisers. He also gave a resounding call to action for the affiliate community to align their forces to prevent Darth Google’s Internet empire from destroying what it has worked so hard to build.
On to the afternoon tracks I went. The panel called “What Affiliates Want,” moderated by Linda Wood, President of PartnerCentric, was a good one. Panelists included: Rosalind Gardner, Author of The Super Affiliate Market Handbook (and one of Revenue’s newest columnists), Amy Lehman, account manager at Commission Junction, Brian Marcus, director of partner services at Performics, Nassim Nazemi, director of Website content at iGive.com and Hector Salcedo, senior sales manager at Ebates.com.
The track was rich with tips and tricks on how to cultivate relationships with affiliates. The topics included resources such as sortable EPC (earnings per click) ratings for merchants; being a hands-on affiliate manager who get excited and promotes compelling call-to-action offers for their affiliates; guidelines for assessing the value of a merchant; well constructed, clean RSS data feeds; the value of keeping images and prices up to date; and of course the importance of providing fresh, compelling content. The bottom line – affiliates want to be treated with respect and valued as unique partners by the merchants.
My day ended with the “Recruiting Affiliates” track. Mark Romanelli, DirectTrack manager with Direct Response was the Moderator. The panel, which included Liz Gazer, affiliate manager at Rugman.com, Bret Grow, vice president of Ouimette Communications, Liz Lloyd, director of strategic development at YFDirect and Dan Murray, Internet marketing strategist with Ravenwood Marketing, discussed strategies and best practices for merchants to recruit new affiliates.
They indicated there are many niche affiliates to consider and many merchants do not think through their affiliate recruitment strategy. For merchants, the panel suggested a need to define the channels of your affiliate strategy such as search, email, coupons, contextual, online, and shopping comparison. In addition, merchants need to determine their overall marketing strategy objectives including brand awareness and competition gaining market share.
Ultimately the best strategy for recruiting top-tier affiliates is the age-old relationship building mantra of bonding and rapport. As we all know word of mouth in the affiliate community spreads like wild fire. Loyalty and support of your affiliates will work wonders for your recruitment strategy. Needless to say, haggling with affiliates over nickels and dimes or misrepresenting an offer can create and uphill challenge for future recruitment. In the end, stay creative and responsive with your offers and remain loyal to your active affiliates, big and small. And by all means, nurture, nurture, nurture!
After resting by the pool for as long as I could bear the 100 plus temps, I was onto the post-game festivities, beginning with the Partner Weekly Tiki Lounge cocktail party. A couple of Mai-Tai’s later and I headed for the Wynn Las Vegas for a dinner date at the magnificent SW restaurant with my Revenue cohorts along with Melissa Salas, affiliate manager at Buy.com, Pat Terrell, affiliate manager at CollectiblesToday.com and Jason Stutes, affiliate manager for ShoppersChoice.com.
Next stop the Wynn Penthouse suite for a party hosted by one of our most loyal Revenue supporters, Brian Littleton, CEO of ShareASale.com. It was like partying with the rock stars of affiliate marketing, complete with plenty of food and libations and breathtaking views of The Strip. It was also Brian’s birthday. Happy birthday Brian.
With the Penthouse festivities winding down, we headed back to the casino and stopped in club Lure. It was a Monday night and folks were not exactly lining up to get in the door. I made my rounds through the club and chatted with some folks and then as we were clicking a few photos I felt a tug on my arm from behind. Suddenly I was whisked into sea of 18 women. Next thing you know I was on top of a table with Nelly bumping out the sound system. That’s right. I put the rump shaker in motion and instantly light bulbs were flashing and the club paparazzi were out in full force. It was now a sea of folks 10 deep up on tables getting loose and busting a move. As my girl Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott likes to say everyone was getting their freak on.
So as the morning beckoned and the Cinderella experience at the Wynn was over, I returned to The Riviera for some late night poker. I was struggling to keep myself going and down to my last $20 when lady luck struck big in the form of four Queens! That really made it a night to remember.
Overall the show was great. It was exciting to see all our partners and those that have supported Revenue coming together for the affiliate cause. I definitely felt the love and appreciated the enthusiastic feedback for the magazine.
I just wanted to extend a big thank you to Shawn Collins, Missy Ward and the entire team at the Affiliate Summit 2005 for producing such a great event.
We would love to hear what you got out of the Affiliate Summit, so be sure to send your thoughts to our Editor at lisap@revenuetoday.com
I’ve been out of the office for the last three days enjoying the scenic beauty of Yosemite Valley with visitors from Wisconsin. But just because I was acting like a combination of John Muir and Ansel Adams you shouldn’t be deprived of interesting affiliate and performance marketing news.
That’s why Tobias Siegel, one of Revenue’s key ad sales representatives, has agreed to help me out. As I wade through a mountain of email and voicemail, Tobias, who just spent three days at Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, is gathering his notes from the conference and whipping them into some readable form.
Tobias was up until the wee hours mixing, mingling, hobnobbing, schmoozing and pressing the flesh with the movers and shakers of the affiliate space, so I expect he’ll have lots of interesting tidbits to convey to you.
So, despite what the popular TV spots claim, what happened in Vegas will be revealed in Friday’s blog entry.
Today’s the day when I reach deep into the ol’ electronic mailbag and pull out some letters from Revenue readers. Most are thoughtful and filled with great ideas for making our magazine even better. Occasionally, there’s one or two that are a real slap in the face. But then I calmly re-read those and ask Mom to please stop sending such nasty emails.
Adam Viener writes: Like their magazine, Revenue Magazine’s newly updated Blog, provides a lot of good content about the affiliate world. However, the blog inadvertently fuels the online sblog world (Weblog spam). By listing and providing links to recent referrers and top referrers. The blog’s home page has quickly become a list of links to black hat search engine optimizers who drive traffic to sites offering these links of recent referrers to get inbound links.
A quick look at their recent referrers shows Xanax, rape glow and hydrocodone sites… Nice…perhaps their choice of blog software and feature implementation should be re-considered…
Dear Adam: Yikes. You are absolutely right. This not the kind of thing we want to be fueling. We launched our new blogging software about three weeks ago and are still working out the kinks. I’ve been in close contact with our crack Web team and they are working overtime to change the way we display recent referrers and top referrers. We don’t want to contribute to any sort of spam. Thanks for pointing this out.
Mark A.I. Fynn writes: I have been a subscriber to your magazine since day one and I look forward to each edition. I truly feel that there is a missing ingredient to your publication.
Only a very small percentage of affiliates actually make a success of their business. In my opinion, the reason for this is poor planning and being inundated with affiliate business offers. It is so easy to get overwhelmed with options and this makes it difficult to target a specific market or niche inside a market. Once you get confused many lose interest from the start and many get disillusioned with poor progress.
In my opinion it would take at least 6-months for any new affiliate to get established and to start generating a reasonable income.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a section of your publication dedicated to someone who is just starting out as an affiliate? Your readers can follow the correct steps and avoid the pitfalls and mistakes along the way. Each edition of your publication can update your readers with the progress over the last 2-months with detailed step-by-step instructions of what they did and how they did it. New affiliates can follow the steps or tweak their current affiliate business.
Dear A.I.: We tried doing exactly what you suggested back in our Winter 2005 issue. We began chronicling a semi-retired photographer who wanted to start an online photo magazine and use an affiliate model to pay for the venture. By our Spring issue, this would-be affiliate had given up. He realized that he hadn’t planned and researched as much as was necessary to start his business. We also wrote about his failed attempt to become an affiliate, hoping to help others avoid the problems he encountered.
While our first try following a fledgling affiliate didn’t go as planned, I’m not adverse to making a second attempt. I think it’s a good idea and would likely benefit many of our readers, regardless of how long they’ve been in the affiliate game.
Bob from Ventura writes: I really enjoy Revenue but it only comes four times a year. Where can I get more affiliate information in between issues?
Dear Bob: Many readers want more Revenue. We keep you up to date on affiliate and performance marketing issues, news and trends in a variety ways including this blog, which is updated every Tuesday and Friday (barring sickness or vacation time) and also via our monthly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get affiliate tips, an exclusive story that doesn’t appear in the magazine or on the website and information regarding upcoming stories (and how you can contribute to helping make those articles even more informative).
Keep those cards and letters coming. We love to hear from you. Your feedback make us better.
It’s not even Wednesday and it’s already a rosy week for online advertising. Online spending for advertising continues to grow and new methodologies for tracking the impact of online ads are in the works.
The online adspend for the first quarter reached $2.8, a 26 percent increase from the same period of 2004. This is the ninth consecutive quarter of adspend growth. The $2.8 billion figure is also up 4.3 percent from the previous quarter, which historically has the highest adspend because of the huge holiday promotional push.
These figures, from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, are estimates are based on sales reports from online publishers and online media providers.
The growth is being attributed to a bigger online audience and an increase in the penetration of broadband. It’s also become cheaper for marketers to target customers using search engine marketing. The IAB reported Web ad sales of $9.6 billion for 2004, up 33 percent from 2003.
While online ad spending forecasts for 2005 vary widely, all researchers seem to agree that there will be significant increases.
Goldman Sachs says 2005 will be a “breakout year” for online advertising and expects spending would increase 28 percent, reaching $12.3 billion. It also predicts that online advertising could account for as much as 7 percent of the ad market by 2009 - up from 4 percent last year.
In May, Forrester Research estimated that online advertising would reach $14.7 billion this year, a 23 percent increase, while eMarketer predicts that online ad spending would grow 34 percent to reach $12.9 for 2005.
Now that we have allsorts of prognostications on what will be spent, it would be useful to know just how effective those ads will be. It’s been done for traditional media, but up to now there has been no easy way for online advertisers to measure pre-campaign planning against post-campaign reporting.
However, all that changed earlier this week when DoubleClick announced new methodologies for measuring the demographic composition of individuals exposed to online ad campaigns, along with the reach and frequency of the ads delivered to those target segments.
DoubleClick commissioned media research firms comScore Networks, Nielsen//NetRatings, and Interactive Market Systems (IMS) to work respectively with the ad agencies MediaVest, mOne and Universal McCann to produce reports for live campaigns in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of online ads in accessing target demographic audience segments within measurable reach/frequency objectives. Each of the research firms used different methodological approaches to achieve similar results.
Some used image-matching technology to recognize creative ad units as they appeared in the browsers. Others established the demographic composition of the audience exposed to the campaign based on their knowledge of their own panel members, another used a standard browser cookie approach to measure the demographic composition of the campaign. Still another used a data modeling approach to correlate the ad serving reports to the demographic panel data.
There have been a lot of interesting happenings this week. As of Wednesday June 1, Buy.com moved its program to Commission Junction from LinkShare.
It’s a big deal when a company the size of Buy.com switches networks. Of course, both sides have their own spin on the story. Those in the Buy.com camp are overjoyed at the prospect of working with CJ and expect things to be much better (read profitable) for them.
LinkShare insiders say that Buy.com’s business model is not one that will be sustainable over the long haul. These Linkshare folks claim it was their choice to sever ties with Buy.com, not the other way around.
Either way, it should be interesting to see just how things shake out in the coming months.
Meanwhile, here are a bunch of other interesting things that came up this week.
