Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the BAAMC (Bay Area Affiliate Manager Coalition) monthly meeting. Held at the offices of Real Media in San Francisco, the two hour lunch meeting was attended by about 25 affiliate managers from leading companies and merchants in the area.

Revenue is pleased to be nominated for a 2008 LinkShare Golden Link Award for the Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate. This is the same category we were nominated in last year, but lost to the fabulous Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay.com.

Nearly two months after LinkShare President Steve Denton stepped down, the company announced it has appointed co-presidents.

I took a 450 mile road trip down to Camarillo, Calif. in the middle of last week. There’s nothing like a long drive to clear your head. I find it relaxing to hit the open road (although, that was before I reached the Los Angeles area later in the week).

I had several items on my agenda for the trip – to rent a car that I might consider purchasing in the future (a Toyota Prius); to try and do my weekly Affiliate Thing Podcast while driving down to my destination (don’t worry I used a headset); and to think about the broader issues that I would like to see an industry association address and bring them up at the dinner in Camarillo (which was really the main reason for the trip).

Earlier this week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its Interactive Campaign Setup Best Practices as part of a long term initiative to improve operational efficiency in interactive advertising.

I just got off a conference call where the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) attempted to give an overview of the New York State Tax Bill that goes into effect on June 1, 2008.

While LinkShare joined forces with the DMA to get its affiliates and partners involved in the teleconference call, no LinkShare representatives spoke during the more than hour long call, which also included a Q&Q period.

Beginning on June 1 the state of New York will start charging taxes for online transactions to companies that have no physical presence in that state. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue, how it impacts affiliates and merchants, and whether or not these regulations might be adopted by other states.

Earlier this week performance marketing network Epic Advertising, formerly Azoogle, announced a new metric for measuring online marketing performance and is seeking a patent on the method for tracking.

Because I’m feeling a little scattered today, this blog entry is a veritable potpourri of stuff.

Google has opened its television ad program to all marketers. The company has been testing the TV Ads platform, which uses an auction model, since June of 2007. The analytics include how many seconds consumers were tuned into an ad (per impression) and how many consumers watched from start to finish. The program allows businesses to reach upwards of 13 million Dish Network households from 94 different cable networks.

Unless you were living under a rock this weekend you must have heard that one of the potentially largest deals in the technology sector fell apart.