While most of you are calculating your commissions, praising Cyber Monday and white knuckling it for the holiday home stretch. I’m trying to just forget the last two weeks and move on from this nasty cold and flu plagued me for the last 14 days. I just couldn’t kick this bug and it put a serious damper on my Turkey day indulging, my anticipated brick and mortar shopping trips and my all-important lounging around the house plans.

While I typically do about 50 percent of my holiday shopping online, this year that figure seems way too low given the lack of gifts I have already purchased and the time I have left to take care of shopping. Living on the West Coast, but having all my family back East (and my husband’s family in middle America) we need to send our gifts by December 11th to insure they arrive before The Big Day. There’s no way I want to call home on Christmas day to hear that disappointed “Mom tone” if her bundle of presents don’t arrive on time.

So, after I wade through my mountain of email - ironically, mostly research about Cyber Monday shopping figures and returns - and take care of some pressing work tasks, it’s all about the online shopping for me. So, for me, I’m declaring this Cyber Tuesday, which is likely to turn into Cyber Wednesday, and Cyber Thursday and Cyber whatever, until I can cross everyone off my gift list.

I’ve got a lot of very, very important things on my mind today…like turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and football. Oh yeah, plus I have two days off from work and the after Thanksgiving holiday shopping season is about to kick into high gear.

But before I start stuffing the bird, here are just a few work-related things that I’m very thankful for this week in no particular order:

Ben Edelman
Love him or hate him (especially if you’re Zango), this guy is totally dedicated to the anti-spyware cause. He’s never without data – lots of it - and his work always makes for an interesting read. Check out his newest research on Zango.

Industry Acknowledgements
It’s nice to see those in the performance marketing space that are doing well (and doing good) publicly acknowledged for their achievements. Last week, super search affiliate Vinny Lingham’s company incuBeta was the recipient of the prestigious Top Technology 100 Award for Overall Winner in the Small/Medium Business Category in South Africa. This is the fourth award incuBeta has received this year in South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States (Lingham’s Clicks2Customers won the 2006 CJU Horizon Award for Global Vision). Congratulations.

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping
Surveys about who’s going to be shopping online when and how much they plan to spend are almost as exciting to me as actually doing the spending myself – I said almost.

That means I have lots to be enthusiastic about. Advertising.com says that more than 50 percent of its holiday-survey respondents plan to spend as much or more than they spent online during the 2005 holiday season. They also plan to go online early, with nearly a third of respondents planning to begin their online shopping before Thanksgiving.

Then there’s the Cyber Monday vs. eDay battle that’s brewing. And see what the National Retail Federation has to say about holiday spending and shopping.

Anyway you slice it, it looks to be a very merry holiday season for those marketing and selling goods online.

Community Spirit
I applaud the recent outspokenness of blogger Scott Jangro for not tolerating bad behavior in the affiliate marketing space that attempts to belittle and degrade those with differing opinions. Jangro stood up before against CJ’s LMI initiative and helped make a difference.

This time Jangro called out a well-known industry figure for allegedly creating an anonymous website that attacks the creator’s long time industry nemesis. Supposedly, it was all in fun and humor. I’m not going to get into the specifics here as I don’t want to fuel this any further.

I’ve known about this particular situation for more than a month as have many others who also opted not to write about it. I chose not to get into the fray because I didn’t feel that sufficient evidence existed to condemn anyone. Plus, I thought that calling attention to the offending website might be even more painful for the subject. Instead, I passed the information on to our resident gossip columnist - the Spider - and moved on.

And while I think that I was right not to hastily point fingers, I admit I was wrong not to enlighten our readers to the fact that Revenue, like Jangro and others, does not condone or accept this type of malicious behavior in any form.

It’s okay to dislike someone in our little community. It’s fine to disagree. And it’s even good to voice that disagreement over specific issues in public forums and message boards or on a panel at a conference. I think that’s healthy and can lead to interesting debate and possible change.

However, it’s just morally wrong to put up a website (anonymously at that) which personally attacks another. It’s mean and hurtful and I know that this industry as a whole is not about that kind of behavior. I’m certain of this because I’ve personally experienced the helpful folks who have kindly shared vast knowledge and experience with me over the years. Most of the people in this arena are savvy business people that want the space to grow and flourish, not spiteful ones looking to ruin someone else reputation.

The site in question has been taken down. I hope people will forget the messages it contained but I also hope people will remember and think twice about doing business with anyone in this business who condones, tolerates or participates in spreading such hurtfulness.

Now put on your elastic waist pants, ingest some tryptophan and have a very Happy Thanksgiving. lisap@revenuetoday.com

At this week’s PubCon show in Las Vegas on Thursday, all three of the big search engines united to announce they will all being using the same protocol to index sites on the Web.

Here’s what the press release said: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft today announced support for Sitemaps 0.90, a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. For users, Sitemaps enables higher quality, fresher search results. An initiative initially driven by Yahoo and Google, Sitemaps builds upon the pioneering Sitemaps 0.84, released by Google in June of 2005, which is now being adopted by Yahoo and Microsoft to offer a single protocol to enhance Web crawling efforts.

According to a post from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch, “Anyone already using Google Sitemaps needn’t do anything different.” The only change is now Microsoft and Yahoo will read those sitemaps, as well.

The good thing about this is that developers will only have one mechanism to support.

Let me know what this means to you. lisap@reveneutoday.com

I mentioned last week that former Commission Junction CEO Jeff Pullen was resurfacing. Here’s the official release on what he’s up to. Sounds like interesting stuff. lisap@revenuetoday.com

Yesterday I promised a more detailed report from Ad:Tech New York. That was before I went the night without sleep and came back to a pile of things that need my attention.

So, I’m going to have to just give you a brain dump of relevant and trivial things that I learned or encountered at the show:

·Zanox held a half-day of sessions dedicated to educating show-goers about the German affiliate network, which is making an aggressive effort to gain a foothold in the U.S. Consultant Shawn Collins spoke about affiliate programs. The company also hosted a party latest that evening. In addition, those attending the seminar were treated to post session beers, pretzels and sausages. Wunderbar!

·The newest issue of Revenue, which was in the bag of every Ad:Tech attendee was right on the mark with its story about mobile marketing. It was a hot topic at the show and covered in multiple sessions. What I didn’t hear though, was how the role of the carriers is impacting business. One lively luncher at my table said the carriers must approve every phase of every campaign for every advertiser and that can often result in a 12-week review and approval period – at the very least. Expect that wait to get even longer as the number of mobile advertisers increases.

·Video was another hot, hot topic at the show (and one that we also tackle in the latest issue of Revenue). Tuesday’s keynote on video was for me the most interesting session of the entire event. Execs from YouTube, CNN, Akamai, and Isobar. I think it offered the most forward looking discussion and in depth look at the market from a wide variety of perspectives.

·The Schaaf brothers – Brook and Forest – are moving their sibling run affiliate consultancy west from New Jersey to their hometown of Los Angeles. Hopefully, that will mean more Affiliate Dinners for us Californians.

·The Ad Network Grudge Match/Smackdown/Jello Wrestling Match panel was more like an ad for each of the ad networks. Even after listening to what differentiates them from each other, they all still look pretty much the same to me. It’s like deciding between the taco and a burrito. I’d rather have the Caesar salad.

·Ted McConnell, interactive innovation director at Proctor and Gamble, was on a panel about The Future of Online Advertising. Here’s what he had to say about user-generated content. “The mixed news is that I’ve got 100,000 people who want to help me do my job.” I hear ya, Ted.

·Lots of talk about the Second Life and Wayne Porter wasn’t even at the event.

·David Rosenblatt, CEO of DoubleClick, said in the future he expects ad inventory to be sold like securities.

·The exhibit floor was chock-a-block with CPA networks. I treated it like network television’s fall schedule. I expect more than half not to be around next season.

Tell me what you found interesting at Ad:Tech. lisap@revenuetoday.com

Greetings from Ad:Tech New York. It’s been a whirlwind two days of sessions, schmoozing and smiling. It’s been exciting and if I wasn’t about to get on a plane in three hours or so, I’d tell you much, much more.

But for now…I thought I would share just one of the tidbits that I learned at the show: Look for former ValueClick COO Jeff Pullen to resurface and make an announcement this week – possibly tomorrow.

Pullen’s new Santa Barbara-based venture - QFour Digital - will be making investments and acquiring other businesses in the performance marketing space.

Pullen, the CEO of QFour, is among a slew of high-profile departures at CJ over the last nine months or so – including CJ’s VP of sales Todd Crawford (now at Digital River), SVP of marketing and product development Elizabeth Cholawsky (now the SVP at Move.com) and SVP of business development Lisa Riolo (who has yet to announce her new plans). However, you can catch her as the emcee at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas.

I’ll give you more details from the show when I get off the plane and back to the office on Wednesday. Meanwhile, check out the Ad:Tech blog or Jim Kukral’s account.

Let me know if you have any interesting stories from Ad:Tech or ShareASale’s ThinkTank. lisap@revenuetoday.com

Here’s some news that caught my eye this morning. Zango is going to pay $3 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

I’ve been thinking a lot about Zango of late. One of our columnists, Rosalind Gardner, recently had some troubling experiences with the company. She’s written about it in her blog and also put together an interesting column on the topic of the January/February issue of Revenue.

In addition, the January/February issue of Revenue has a feature story about a particular facet of commission stealing and Zango comes up again as a big part of that article. I had lengthy discussions with John Gartner, the freelancer working on the piece, about Zango’s role in the story. Some of the on-the-record quote he has from Zango officials blew my mind. I can’t get into the specifics. You’ll just have to wait until the issue comes out at the start of the new year.

Anyway, a quick run down of today’s news on Zango.

*Zango agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it used unfair and deceptive methods to get consumers to download adware and then obstructed their efforts to remove it.

*Zango’s settlement with the FTC bars future downloads of Zango’s adware without consumers’ consent and requires Zango to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware.

*Zango must also give up the more than $3 million “in ill-gotten gains,” it acquired via these practices, the FTC said.

*The settlement does not constitute an admission by Zango that it violated the law.

*The settlement also prohibits Zango from using its adware to communicate with consumers’ computers - either by monitoring consumers’ Web surfing activities or delivering pop-up ads - without verifying that consumers consented to installation of the adware.

*Zango is also banned from, directly or through others, exploiting security vulnerabilities to download software, and the company is required to give clear and prominent disclosures and obtain consumers’ express consent before downloading software onto consumers’ computers.

*The settlement requires that Zango identify its ads and establish, implement and maintain user-friendly mechanisms consumers can use to complain, stop its pop-ups and uninstall its adware.

*Zango must now monitor its third-party distributors to assure that its affiliates and their sub-affiliates comply with the FTC order.

*The settlement contains standard record keeping provisions to allow the FTC to monitor compliance.

Read the complaint and other FTC info.

Despite all this, spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman, says, “I commend the FTC’s efforts here, but serious diligence will be required to assure that 180 [Zango’s previous name] actually complies with its many obligations under the settlement. At this instant, I am confident that it is not in compliance.”

He goes on to say, “180 continues plenty of bad practices, including some unlabeled ads, materially misleading installations that fail to disclose key aspects of 180’s effects, and installation attempts predicated on security exploits.”

Edelman says that he expects to post some proof of this on his website in the coming weeks.

I, for one, will be watching closely.

Let me know what you think about this latest development with Zango. lisap@revenuetoday.com

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) issued some blogging guidelines for marketers. The checklist is supposed to help marketers ensure they are always appropriate and ethical when communicating with bloggers.

WOMMA CEO Andy Sernovitz said the document applies specifically to marketers and does not cover “how to blog” or rules for internal blogs.

These guidelines seem pretty obvious, but then again, I bet Rubbermaid thought it was clear that their storage bins were not floatation devices or a child carriers until some “genius” misused the plastic bins. That’s why so many companies have to place ridiculous warnings on their products.

Here are WOMMA’s Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines: 10 Principles for Ethical Contact by Marketers:

1. I will always be truthful and will never knowingly relay false information. I will never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.

2. I will fully disclose who I am and who I work for (my identity and affiliations) from the very first encounter when communicating with bloggers or commenting on blogs.

3. I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers. I will respect all community guidelines regarding posting messages and comments.

4. I will never ask bloggers to lie for me.

5. I will use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.

6. I will not manipulate advertising or affiliate programs to impact blogger income.

7. I will not use automated systems for posting comments or distributing information.

8. I understand that compensating bloggers may give the appearance of a conflict of interest, and I will therefore fully disclose any and all compensation or incentives.

9. I understand that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them. Bloggers can return products at their own discretion.

10. If bloggers write about products I send them, I will proactively ask them to disclose the products’ source.

WOMMA is inviting comments and suggestions about the blogging guidelines on its Web site through Nov. 14.

Let me know what you think. lisap@revenuetoday.com