I’m finally back from my 10-day road trip to CJU and BlogWorld. Back-to-back conferences means lots of schmoozing, a ton of great ideas, a laundry lit of action items, hundreds of business cards to input, interesting people to follow up with and much catching up to do.

I used to be able to count on one hand the must-attend shows and conferences related to online marketing for a given year. Plotting out my travel schedule wasn’t much trouble and there wasn’t really any overlap among shows. And for the most part I was also able to tack on a few personal and vacation days to most of my trips in order to simulate actually having a “vacation”.

I’ve finally returned from New York and the LinkShare Symposium. It was a great time catching up with merchants, publishers and LinkShare executive. I also enjoyed attending the Golden Link Awards on Monday night. It’s so much fun to see everyone get all dolled up and it’s not just the ladies that look like a million bucks.

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.

The location for Affiliate Summit East 2008 has been set. I’m delighted to be going to Boston for the conference and with a little luck maybe my “World Champion” Boston Red Sox will be playing at Fenway Park, which would make my trip back home even sweeter.

Check out this contest to win a free pass to Affiliate Summit.

Anyone can make a mistake, but some times those missteps are just too ironic to overlook. Sorry, but I just couldn’t pass up this one.

On Monday afternoon I received this email from the 2006 Email Insider Summit inviting me to their inaugural conference.

“I would like you to be our guest for the 2006 Email Insider Summit. As a Summit VIP, the cost of your airfare, hotel accommodations and conference registration will be paid for by MediaPost.

The Email Insider Summit Advisory Board has identified you as a senior level marketer or agency executive decision maker within your company. You are among a select few to whom we are extending this special VIP opportunity.”

Okay, so now I’m a VIP. Please, go on…

“Information-packed sessions will alternate with relaxing networking activities. Each morning attendees will share information and learn more about email marketing through general sessions, keynotes, research presentations, case studies, workshops, and panel discussions. In the afternoons the fun begins with golf, rafting and other activities that take advantage of the Arizona desert. As our guest, you will be expected to attend three VIP breakfasts to hear a one-half hour presentation by our conference sponsor.

The Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa, named America’s Top Resort for 14 years running, is home of the Email Insider Summit. In the heart of the desert, the hotel boasts breathtaking views of 1,300 acres of pristine Sonoran Desert, and unspoiled natural beauty and includes two championship-level golf courses, four swimming pools, a terraced tennis garden and lavish spa.”

Spa? Did you mention spa? Now you really have my attention. I have been feeling very stressed out over deadlines and could use some massaging. Plus, I’m feeling gloomy from the incessant rain here in San Francisco. And I do love the desert. Go on…

“The purpose of the Email Insider Summit is to bring the best minds in the industry together to share leading edge information and experience on email marketing in a think-tank environment, while exploring new technology, strategies and tactics for effective campaigns.

Hosted by Bill McCloskey, the first summit will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona on May 21-24th. In a tranquil mountain setting, over one hundred brand marketers and agency decision makers will network, discuss and debate, working collaboratively to improve the email channel, as well as their own marketing efforts.”

That sounds very educational. In my mind I nearly had my bags all packed, but being an ethical journalist I knew that I wasn’t going to attend on their dime. Though, I’ll admit that I thought about it for 1 or 2 or 60 minutes or so.

However, just to find out the scoop, and test my new found “VIP” status, I quickly sent MediaPost an email thanking them for the invite and asking exactly how I needed to proceed to make this happen.

Here’s the email that I (and many disappointed others) received just a few hours later.

“Dear Lisa:

We apologize if you received an email from MediaPost earlier today inviting you as our VIP guest to the Email Insider Summit. That email was intended to be sent to a list of 50 top brand marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event. The email below is the email that you were intended to receive. If you would like to be a part of the inaugural Email Insider Summit please read below about the summit and how to register. Again we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience that error may have caused you.”

Then it goes on about the conference. Strategies blah blah blah. Thought provoking yada yada yada. Effective email campaigns ho hum. Somehow I’m less interested when I’ve been stripped of my VIP status.

Ah, the use of email as a tool to successfully communicate and build relationships with customers…..

Let me know if anything is rubbing you the wrong way today. lisap@revenuetoday.com

Several months ago this blog was forced to turn off the comment feature due to an overload of spam. Because of that issue, I wanted to make sure that ReturnOnAffiliate.com founder and president, Richard Lewis, got to add his two cents on my previous post.

The following is from an email he sent me: (Note: I added the links, not Lewis.)

“I was alerted on Thursday, March 30th by a member of our site Mike Nunez of Suluta that marketing affecting ReturnOnAffiliate.com was in some way connected with a company called MyGeek.com. Upon hearing that we went through our current marketing and discovered that a company called CPVMarket was in fact a partner of that company. We suspended the account on Thursday with them and alerted Mike to that fact, and he informed us that Kellie Stevens, the president of AffiliateFairPlay.com had informed him of that fact. Several e-mails were sent to Kellie, and the next day on Friday I spoke with her for 2 hours to explain the situation.”

Lewis goes on to note that, “It was due to my error in not understanding the difference between CPV and CPC marketing that this occurred. ReturnonAffiliate.com makes no income from any portion of its website and is provided free as a service to the affiliate marketing community. It was my ignorance of the issues at hand that lead to this problem. ReturnOnAffiliate.com does not condone the use of badware/spyware or any other negative behaviors. ROA Plans to hold a week long conversation in the week following eComXpo on the topic of badware and discuss ways to inform people about the dangers of CPV marketing. We will be suspending all advertising to the site until I am convinced that no further problems exist. We are very sorry, and we made a mistake in our advertising, it’s fixed now and won’t happen again.”

I certainly hope so, but Lewis should know that because this impacted so many people in the industry (most are members and early supporters of his fledgling site) many eyes will be watching the future moves of ROA very closely.

Let me know who or what you have your eye on these days. lisap@revenuetoday.com

I just want to thank several people in the affiliate community for taking the lead in alerting others about bad affiliate behavior and also for taking the necessary steps to help halt the offending actions.

Thursday afternoon affiliate consultant Shawn Collins was kind enough to instant message me about some shady behavior. He alerted me to the fact that ReturnOnAffiliate.com, an upstart social networking site for affiliates, was using MyGeek.com to serve ReturnonAffiliate pop-ups to visitors of a variety of websites including Collin’s AffiliateSummit.com and RevenueToday.com.

Collins informed me that he contacted the site’s founder Richard Lewis by email and requested that this activity cease immediately. He also noted that this type of inappropriate behavior “could easily give your site a big black eye.”

I told the appropriate folks here at Revenue what had transpired and they immediately began an investigation into the situation. But before we could even make a call to Lewis or hit the send button on the email, I heard back from Collins.

He let me know that within several hours of receiving an email from him, Lewis responded with an email apology and noted that he was alerted by some upset ROA members and had “suspended the account with MyGeek” and was “not aware exactly how they were generating traffic to ReturnOnAffiliate.com through there [sic] model.”

Bright and early Friday morning I also received an email from Kellie Stevens, the president of AffiliateFairPlay.com. Stevens sent the mass email to a group of people impacted by recent actions of ReturnOnAffiliate.com, including ReveNews.com,, AMSWO, ABestWeb.com, eComXpo, ShareASale.com, Commission Junction, Share Results, IncentaClick, AffiliateBoards.com, Performics, BeFree, CPA Empire, and LinkShare.

Stevens is the person who first let Collins know about the problem. She discovered it while doing some spyware testing.

The email from Stevens reads, “The ads were being run through MyGeek.com with targeting of URL’s of ROA to pop on. For those who may not be familiar with MyGeek, they are an ad network where you can set up ad campaigns similar to AdWords. They have two types of ads available: CPC and CPV (cost per view). The CPV ads are specific to be farmed out to numerous adware companies for ad popping. Basically it’s like having an account with 180solutions only your ads are delivered through numerous adware applications. Richard was running CPV campaigns. I’m sending this because your web site was one of the sites being targeted for the ReturnOnAffiliate website to pop on. That’s the bad news.”

The good news, she says, is that she also contacted Lewis and that he responded within hours. He admitted he was wrong and turned off the account. Stevens says that she has verified that the “account is indeed turned off at this time.”

What is particularly troubling to many involved, including Revenue, is that those targeted have been participating as active members of the ROA community and leaders in the industry. Not people that you want to tick off. Stevens, Collins and a legion of others will now be watching ROA extra closely.

Stevens also offered up a tip you can use to see if you are being targeted by someone through MyGeek for pop ups.

“Go to www.mygeek.com. Under the “Advertisers” section in center screen, click the link to AdOnNetwork. Make sure any popup blockers you may have are turned off. In the search box at the top of the page, type in any keyword or domain name (ie yourdomain.com) and do a search. You don’t have to be logged in to do this. If you receive a pop up, then that ad is being run through adware. If you receive an ad listing on the search return Web page itself, those are CPC ads which are provided for placement on actual web pages.”

I’m thankful that this industry has people that will take time out to inform, alert and educate people when inappropriate actions occur. lisap@revenuetoday.com

So many things that I’m not allowed to talk about like Todd Crawford’s replacement at Commission Junction and what big accounts are pondering a switch to a network no longer run by siblings. And then there are things I just can’t bear to speak of such as the departure of Chicken Little, Adam Morrison in the fetal position and my imploding bracket.

Instead, let’s focus on the good. So, here’s a baker’s dozen of tasty events and juicy news from this week that you must consume. Dig in and try not to spill anything on the keyboard.

Execs Differ on Video Ad Measurement

Clicks Come with First Exposures to Ads

Claria Abandons Adware

Study: Consumers Respond Best to Contextual Targeting

Online Search Drives Conversions – Offline

March Madness Bounces Online

Web Analytics Firms Defend Cookies

Google Evolves into All-Purpose Website

Search Marketing: What’s the Problem?

Bill Gates on the Future of Web Advertising

News Analysis: Page Rank Suit Unlikely to Get Far

DoubleClick Announces Deal to Acquire Falk eSolutions

Behind the Numbers: Men Versus Women Online

What’s news in your world? lisap@trevenuetoday.com

For some reason I had an inordinate number of searches to conduct this morning. I’m always looking up something as part of research for my job. I would say that I am on Google for a good part of most of my work days.

In my personal life, I often write down little things, or words or the names of people in movies, or anything that I want to know more about. Then, when I get home I run to my computer and immediately Google the items. Okay, my name is Lisa and I’m a searchoholic.

That’s why instead of dedicating this space to March Madness (go Boston College!) or to St. Patty’s day, I’m putting the emphasis on search. A comScore report crossed my desk today stating that there is evidence that the growth in the U.S. Search market is slowing.

The good news for search companies, according to the report, is that the utilization of search queries for advertising purposes continues to increase. In December 2005, 57.2 percent of search query results included a sponsored advertisement, up from 49.1 percent a year earlier.

Additionally, the international search market continues to be strong, with a growth rate of 34 percent, the report states.

Total Internet Searches January 2006 vs. January 2005
Searches Jan-05(Billions) 4.95
Searches Jan-06(Billions) 5.48
Percentage Change 10.7 percent

Still, Google reinforced its status January 2006 as market leader of the U.S. search market with a 41.4 percent share of all searches submitted, up more than 6 share points versus year ago. Yahoo maintained the number 2 spot in the ranking with 28.7 percent share of all searches, while MSN ranked third capturing 13.7 percent of all online searches.

Here are some additional findings from the January monthly analysis:

•Americans conducted 5.48 billion searches online in January, up 11 percent from the previous year. This growth reflects a substantial slowdown from the 42 percent surge seen in January 2005 versus the previous year.

•Google Sites led the group with 2.3 billion searches followed by Yahoo Sites (1.6 billion searches), MSN-Microsoft Sites (752.5 million searches), Time Warner (432.6 million searches), and Ask Jeeves (307.3 million searches).

•Google Sites won top honors in share of tool bar search, capturing 49.5 percent of all tool bar searches, while Yahoo! Sites secured 45.5 percent.

Tell me what you’re searching for….lisap@revenuetoday.com