Marketing

Performance Marketing Leadership Summit 2011 Recap

Posted on Apr 21, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Once again, on the eve of ad:tech SF, OfferVault put on another afternoon Performance Marketing Leadership Summit.  Last year’s topic was compliance, whereas this year’s summit focused on growth, transparency, and improving CPA networks everywhere.  The 2011 summit was graciously sponsored by CPA Detective, LashBack, LinkTrust, EFFECTUS, & HasOffers.

While I didn’t explicitly learn much myself from this summit as it was definitely geared towards CPA networks, there was a lot of good information for those folks I’d like to share with you.  Here are some highlights of information I took from the afternoon’s speakers:

Darin Namken
Founder & President of Bulldog Media Group, Inc.

• Why Diversify?
  • Create value & enhance margins.
  • Stability & structural positioning.
  • Do you have the resources?
    • Management.
    • Technology (in house, other).
    • Cash Flow.
    • Infrastructure.
• You have to do something special in the market.
• You may need to diversify just to survive.
• Where to diversify?
  • Verticals/products.
    • Do you own your own products?
    • Do you have your own technology?
      • Internal development.
      • Partnership.
      • Strategic alliances.
      • Joint ventures.
• You’ve got to have a good database, not just emails but information about these people.  That’s where the real value is.
• You’ve got to be able to work well with others.
• Reciprocating traffic works well.
• Pay day loans have higher traffic, as do prepaid cards and rewards programs.
• You must have a stable strategy to survive.
• What direction to diversify?
  • Analyze, evaluate, and plan strategy.
• Future areas of diversification:
  • Major players of influence (Google, Facebook, Apple, Groupon, others).
  • What’s the next generation?
  • What are the trends?  (Chase them or plan for them).
• The economy has created more reasons to look farther into true performance.  Who’s checking out your backside?
• Who’s aiming for what current teens will be looking for?
• Spending marketing dollars doesn’t mean a lot of you don’t know what the ROI on that money is.

Panel 1: Diversification Strategies
Darin Namken (Bulldog Media Group, Inc.), Chad French (PeerFly), James Murphy (BurstDirect), Bob Regular (Kitara Media), & Curtis Fullmer (AdKnowledge)

• Is it enough to just be a network?
• There’s not much barrier of entry.
• The relationships are what set the networks apart from each other.
• It’s more about conversion & yield than the type of offers.  it starts with the offer but it can’t overcome traffic sources.
• It’ll be tough if you don’t have the right mix of affiliates and offers (e.g. Gaming affiliates but pet product offers).
• Understand where the publishers are getting their traffic from.
• Most networks don’t have a good handle of where the traffic is coming from.  Which leads to the bigger question – as long as you’re not dealing with risque sites, does it even matter?
• Go with what you know.  There’s no one path.  Go from there and then expand.
• What are you solving?  Are you solving anything?  If you want to grow, you need to ask “What are you solving?” or are you just opportunistic?  If you’re not solving something the relationship can’t last very long.  It’s all a supporting mechanism to fixing the problem.
• Remember that you don’t have to be all things to all people.  Build your identity and have a solid foundation to build it upon.
• Where is a bad idea to diversify into?  Chasing trends too heavily is dangerous, like with re-bills. Focusing on a trend too much means you’ll go down when the trends go down. Don’t act like an affiliate. Haves multiple eggs in multiple baskets. Facebook fan page marketing is tricky these days, hard incentives tricky,
• What traffic is ok? All traffic is fine. You want everything in between. All traffic has a value, but it needs to be transparent. Understand the transparency of where your offers are running. If you know that, then you can calibrate your offer to suit the traffic being driven. Take those factors into consideration & you’ll get better yield. Bad traffic isn’t necessarily fraud, just mismatched traffic to the offer. There’s a place for incentives, but it takes focus, time and understanding. What you ultimately have is a user with no intent & no interest in your end offer. If you don’t understand how to create the intent, stay far far away.
• What do you need for resources & focus to pull a true diversification off? Make sure your core competency is solid to support the side stuff.
• How do you measure if something is worth getting into? In our industry you don’t have to be 1st, there’s still a lot of room. How does it fit into your core strategy? Evaluate what’s the dollar value you could potentially build that business or division to? I there a growing market there? If the answer to any of those things is no, consider moving on. Don’t chase, identify if it’ll help what you do. If you can’t do it very well & be superior at it, run away. Know when to cut your losses. (i.e. affilicert, affiliate certification that OfferVault was attempting to do). Be mature as a company & don’t look at it as a monetary thing.
• How do you diversify the traffic flow to different kinds of offers in one network? Make sure to understand the performance metrics, it becomes an education thing, be transparent, educate the affiliates on the performance of other offers. Just ask if they have traffic for those kinds of offers. How many times can you tell your publishers to “trust me!”? If they had an answer, they’d probably not share it lol. Get them to believe in the offer & why it’ll work for them. Look at the whole marketing funnel. Don’t kill your credibility by pushing something you’re not sure will work. Educate them that it’s in their best interest as well for them to diversify because advertisers can back out on offers in the blink of an eye for various reasons.
• Should you be a network without an in-house media team? It helps. The easiest way to get knowledge on traffic and performance is it do it yourself.
• Do you consider who your ultimate client is? Advertiser or publisher? Does that come into play on how you diversify? Consider the end user, if they don’t want to participate in these offers, the advertisers wont have the money to write the checks. There needs to be a balance. If you work direct with the merchants, you can look at things as more of a partnership with affiliates.
• Do you have issues where an advertiser is asking for full transparency (double verify) and how do you work with that? You give it to them. if they demand a certain quality and you want to work with them, you have to give it to them & meet that quality or the alarm bells start ringing. The money flows downhill. The increase in transparency is coming to more verticals and more industries. It goes back to relationships, if you build these good relationships then transparency is second nature. Why hide? It’s a two way street.
• Do many publishers say they won’t run 3rd party ad tags & want to hard code everything? If they’re that resistant, you have to ask yourself if they’re worth the time to work with or career to.
• International a great way to diversify? Is it? It’s key to future growth, but you’ve got to be prepared for the challenges of fraud, compliance, policy issues. Canada & UK fairly easy to get into, but do it in a very stepped, focused way. Consider your offers if they appropriate for international traffic as is, are there any TOAs that prohibit the international traffic, etc. Do you have the resources for that kind of expansion.
• What industry trend or issue keeps you up at night? There’s a constant battle with shady publishers & compliance. Regulation from the government. How are government departments interpreting the regulations. The government of Google & Facebook & their control over the Internet & their policy changes. The inability to integrate technologies & lack of standards.

Ryan Pamplin
CEO, Ryactive

• Patented technology, open sources, propriety
• Apparently affiliate marketing is patented (Patent# US 6804660) filed in 2001, granted in 2004.  Probably without merit, companies getting sued.  Mid level networks (ShareASale, Blue Phoenix).
• Going to trial 4/17/2012.
• ShareASale has filed a counter suit against essociates trying to invalidate the patent.
• In house, proprietary tracking solution instead of licensing direct track or LinkTrust or another vendor.  All the networks mostly with propriety tech have much higher network revenue (i.e. Neverblue)  They all started with their own solutions.
• Benefits of in house platform:
  • Less reliance upon third party tech products.
  • Increased value for investors and shareholders.
  • Ability to quickly adapt to changes in the industry.
  • Data portability and security.
  • More control over your user experience.
  • Differentiates your network from the thousands of other networks all using identical software.
• Benefits of an outsourced platform:
  • Quick time to market with lower up front costs.
  • Software that continues to be developed and improved on their dime.
  • Predictable start-up and operating costs.
• Is Open Source the future?
  • Tracking202/Prosper202 is open source, and became the industry standard tracking software for affiliates.
  • WordPress is open sources and 13% of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.
• Stop reinventing the wheel!
  • Every network is reinventing or licensing the wheel.
  • Instead, a group of networks could sponsor the creation of open source software.
  • A network is more than software, it’s about people, offers, and relationships.
  • Imagine if the resources going into development of the dozens of proprietary networks and the monthly fees for licensing were allocated to building a single universal platform.
• Noteworthy tech solutions:
  • If you can reduce the size  of your landing pages, offers and/or redirects you will make more money.
  • Cloud is virtually infinite scalability.
  • No need to overbuild gory intransigent with cloud.
  • Software required to automatically scale.
  • Pay just for what you use.
  • Increases your risk of downturn, not necessarily so with applications that don’t need scalability.
  • Dedicated, fine grain control over hardware.
  • Dedicated server is likely to be more reliable.
  • Model is proven and relied upon but 90% of Fortune 500 companies have it.
  • Wouldn’t put whole business on cloud.
  • ServerBeach (offshoot of rack space).
  • Backup your servers everyday.
  • Create scripts to automatically upload from your servers backups to your local FTP email you files, and/or another website.
  • Your data is the core of your business, and if you’re not already you need to take measures to ensure you keep it safe.
  • Auto backup with Tivoli.
• WordPress is free and open sources, with tens of thousands of templates available.  It’s secured and trusted by millions with extreme flexibility.  Websites can be developed in hours not weeks.
• Joomla powers 1 in 37 websites on the internet, not many of which are blogs.  It’s slightly more complicated to learn, but great for split testing with thousands of themes available.
• Drupal powers millions of sites, including MTV, Lifetime Television, Yahoo, and more higher volume sites.  It’s considered the best framework but is most complicated to learn of the open source CMS out there.
• Braintree is a great eCommerce solution that powers sites like LivingSocial, Bright Cove, 37 Signals, Open Table, and more.  It’s easy to integrate.
• Visual website optimizer is $49 per month but worth it; it’s like Google Website Optimizer on steroids.
• Be sure to include trust symbols on your website – 100% satisfaction guaranteed logo, privacy seal, SSL certificate, Verisign, McAfee, etc.  Avoid less trustworthy things, like GoDaddy right now.

Panel 2: Technology Insights
Ryan Pamplin (Ryactive), Matt Frary (SmarterChaos.com). Lucas Brown (HasOffers), Beto Paredes (Offered Launch Media, LLC), & Jay Moore (BigDeal.com)

• HasOffers goal is more people in the industry.  They’re doing a lot to increase data redundancy.
• If you can build something better than anyone else, go for it, but if not, don’t bother.  It’s not about if you do it in house or outsource it, it’s do I have go do it in house?
• How can you innovate on a closed platform if you can’t integrate a new technology?  Open API is the suggested way.
• HasOffers rather on the spot.
• Innovation is driven by need.
• Cookies vs. Server side calls? You’ve got to make sure you don’t violate Apples rules. Cookies are becoming outdated.  It’s inevitable that cookies will be going away.  There’s also an element of educating people on the new tracking methods.
• Larger networks are also looking at the tracking solutions with the working group.
• The banks are guilty of screwing the whole merchant services thing up.  A lot are just white label stuff.
• By removing inefficiencies, within the existing infrastructures, you’re going go make more money.
• You may find more of the advertisers having moe control on their programs mandated by the networks.
• Make sure your advertisers know how to do things, like tracking a sub ID.  What’s lacking is a true integration.  The education for the advertisers on the technology that’s available is also lacking.
• It’s not about the technology sometimes, it’s about the willingness to apply it.
• Its not unreasonable to want to know who you’re doing business with.  The way things are with affiliates being in the dark is not going go persist.  People are going to be changing the way things are done in favor of transparency.
• All industry panels lead to transparency.  We all talk about it, but who does it?  Advertisers do it, and unfortunately they’re going around the networks and collapsing the value chain.  They’re the ones on the hook with the government.
• If the networks used their tech for good, instead of just protecting their own interests, then there’s more money for everyone.
• It’s the business ethics behind the technology that’s going go drive the industry.
• Any tech you’re excited about or think it’s a game changer? Blue Cava (allows you to ID a user all over the net without cookies or server side tracking, browser fingerprinting with ip).  Any tech tracking people across devices or without cookies, across platforms, etc. Excited about online to offline to online tracking like pay per call.  Anything that’s going go move towards a more sustainable affiliate marketing industry.
• Privacy is dead, if you’re putting all your info out there on Facebook & whatnot, FTC requires everyone offer a way to opt out.  Overall it’s going to improve the consumer experience.  Theres a lot of opportunities to give people a chance to opt in.  The more important privacy issues surrounding ID theft are being addressed.
• Full transparency isn’t necessarily the way, but we want to know who the affiliate is generally speaking & have a way to contact them.

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 53: Interviewing Yanni Kayani

Posted on Apr 18, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

Shady’s back.  Tell your friends!  Mike’s back after a podcasting sabbatical to focus on his consulting business.  Today we’re keeping that chatter to a minimum and speaking with Naeem “Yanni” Kayani, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Adknowledge.  In in this episode we discuss:

• The relevant targeting with email marketing that AdKnowledge can help with.
• The fascinating stuff that Facebook and the other email service providers are doing these days to give users more control.
• Yanni will be speaking at The Power of eMarketing Conference in San Francisco April 19th & 20th.  The format will be less presentation, more conversation.
• His fellow panelists are Daniel Kuperman of Aprix Solutions and John Janetos of iPost.

Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Be old fashioned and just leave us a comment!

Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics!

Chango Expands Search Retargeting

Posted on Apr 12, 2011 in Guest Posts, Rambles |

April 12th, 2011 (San Francisco @ Ad:Tech). Having successfully delivered fully managed search retargeting campaigns at scale for agencies and brands, Chango is now providing direct access to its technology for self-serve marketers and partners. As of May 2nd, clients will be able to harness the power of Chango’s Intent Marketing Platform to launch and optimize campaigns with the same level of control as they have with a SEM campaign. Clients already on board with Chango’s solutions include iCrossing, Booyah, AKQA and Clickable.
“While we continue to expand Chango’s fully managed solutions, the direct access we are providing to our Intent Marketing Platform satisfies a demand from marketers who are looking to get more hands-on, particularly search marketers. Using our dashboard, these marketers can now target in-market shoppers and keyword searchers right down to the keyword level” said Chris Sukornyk, founder and CEO of Chango.
Chris Wallace, SVP Media, iCrossing said “we are excited about the results we are seeing with Chango’s search retargeting offering and are looking towards a more enhanced integration. Search retargeting is positioned at the crossroads between search and display, using the best of both mediums. The use of search data as a measurement of consumer intent has already been proven in SEM and can be applied to display through this solution; enabling campaigns to successfully achieve both acquisition and brand messaging goals for clients.”
Whilst Chango’s first offering on the platform has been search retargeting, a highly targeted solution that finds those individuals who are expressing the intent to take an action in the form of a search action, other types of intent marketing include site retargeting that talks specifically to previous site visitors. The combination of both search + site retargeting in one platform makes for an intuitive and powerful combination.
Troy Lerner, President of agency Booyah commented on the performance they have been seeing for a variety of their clients. “Our clients expect us to bring them the newest and most effective methods for meeting ROI goals – Chango has been a top performer across all of our media options for the past several quarters.”
In addition to today’s announcement of self-serve access, partners can also connect directly into Chango’s platform through an API. Programmatic access allows search management platforms and other ad platforms to seamlessly launch and optimize hundreds of campaigns that use RTB (Real Time Bidding), including site and search retargeting.
“Search retargeting is not only a smart strategy on its own, it’s a great way to expand the ROI of your hard-earned and highly qualified paid traffic,” said Peter Chun, Senior Director of Solutions at Clickable. “We look forward to working with Chango to expand our retargeting solutions to search and social advertisers across our platform.”
Mazdak Rezvani (VP Engineering) elaborates. “Unlike most ad companies that rely on third party demand side platforms, our platform is directly connected to all major ad exchanges via our own proprietary RTB system and has the ability to bid on billions of ads today. This direct connection allows us to optimize media buying down to each individual, thereby efficiently optimizing campaigns. Customers of our Intent Marketing Platform can now access this power under their own terms.”
Customers interested in our self-serve dashboard should pre-register at: http://www.chango.com/.

New Liqwid Ad Unit Redefines Interactive Advertising

Posted on Apr 12, 2011 in Guest Posts, Rambles |

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, April 5, 2011 — LeftsnRights, Inc. today announced that it will debut its new liqwid ad unit at ad:tech San Francisco, April 12-13, 2011. Liqwid ads (http://www.liqwid.com/) are the first ad units to monetize today’s unused web real estate, increasing revenue opportunities for publishers, advertisers and agencies while improving the visitor experience.

Liqwid ads dynamically fill the empty space between webpages and the viewer’s browser or screen, ensuring ads are always viewed when rendered without popping up, floating or blocking website content in any way. For the first time, advertisers will pay only for ads viewed for a minimum time.

Unlike today’s online ads, liqwid ads apply the media buying model traditionally used in TV and print advertising to the Internet. The liqwid technology that powers the ad units provides sophisticated delivery, monitoring and reporting capabilities that make it possible for advertisers to specify true reach and frequency by controlling the number of viewers who see each ad and the number of times they see it.

“Who isn’t tired of pop-up ads? Even my favorite sites have succumbed to blocking valuable content in return for cash,” says Eric Kavanagh, CEO and co-founder of The Bloor Group, a new-media analyst firm. “That trade-off drives down traffic and irritates the customer. What Liqwid offers is a viable solution that honors the separation of concerns that viewers want: content in the middle, ads on the outside.”

LeftsnRights co-founders, Jim Rowan and Nikolai Mentchoukov, decided it was time to redefine the interactive advertising experience with the development of liqwid ads in 2010. Rowan has an extensive financial and technology background, while Mentchoukov is one of the leading experts worldwide in rich media content and online advertising technologies. Due to their backgrounds, both founders have an especially in-depth understanding of the challenges facing today’s online publishers and advertisers and have found a way to solve these issues using their proprietary new liqwid technology.

“With liqwid ads, we’re creating a paradigm shift in the online advertising industry. Liqwid ads enable publishers to preserve the integrity of their websites while generating incremental revenue,” says Mentchoukov, LeftsnRights CEO. “And advertisers can gain complete control over their ad spend to accurately calculate and increase ROI of their online investments.”

The liqwid ad unit was recently chosen as a finalist for the Utah Innovation Awards in the category of Enterprise Software and Web-enabled B-2-B Solutions. The Selection Committee, comprised of seventy professionals from Utah’s business, technology and academic communities, made their selections after a month-long evaluation process. Winners will be announced on May 3, 2011.

Liqwid Ad Feature Highlights:

• Minimum size guarantees up to three times larger than banner ads
• Content can include any type of creative or application including games, rich media, video and social media
• Viewer-directed placement enables advertisers to choose number of specific viewers who see each ad and the number of times they see it
• Virtual board technology positions ads outside of web pages, guaranteeing ads are seen whenever rendered without disrupting content
• Minimum Viewing Time tracking ensures visitors view an ad for five seconds (MVT:5) before charges are incurred

It’s All About the Cookies!

Posted on Apr 2, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Rambles, Social Media |

Philanthropist extraordinaire Missy Ward has announced her latest project to help fellow marketers and share some yummy recipes in her new book, It’s All About The Cookies.  As of today, Missy is now accepting folks to submit their recipes!  Not only will this be a great book, but it’s ultimately for a great cause.  100% of the net profits will be donated to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, which has raised more than $380 million since 2003 to help fight this horrible disease.

This unique book may look like a cookbook, smell like a cookbook, and you’ll be able to make yummy delicious treats like from a cookbook… but here’s the catch.  It’s REALLY a marketing book.  When you submit your recipe you must also submit a marketing insight to share with other marketers.  So not only are you going to get some great recipes (I’m very partial to the one I submitted), but you’re going to get some marketing schooling.

From their website:

Since the 90’s, affiliate marketers have had a love affair with cookies – not the chocolate chip, or oatmeal variety – but the pieces of code that ultimately tracks affiliates’ sales and commissions earned.

These affiliate marketers are a diverse group. Some work part-time and earn enough to subsidize their income while others have created extremely lucrative businesses.

For the uninitiated, Missy Ward is Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Publisher/Co-Editor in Chief of FeedFront Magazine, VP of Operations for MoneyMindedMoms.com, Founder of Affiliate Marketers Give Back, and all around amazing woman I’m happy to know.  Also involved in this great project are Mary Poiley, founder of InternetCareerHunt.com; and Jen Goode, Doodler in Charge of JGoodeDesigns.com.

If you’ve got an awesome recipe, and some keen marketing advice or knowledge to share, please submit a recipe!

1st Affiliate Summit Day SF Recap

Posted on Apr 1, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

The first ever Affiliate Summit Day Meet Up happened on Tuesday.  I’ve had a lot of time to digest, and it was definitely a great time.  Knowing ahead of time that my best method of transportation into San Francisco would be BART, I was relieved to see that the meet up location was just 2 short blocks from the BART station.  I was delighted to wander up to Kate O’Briens to see the familiar faces of Julie Vazquez, Lisa Picarille, and Murray Newlands congregating outside the bar.

Inside, more affiliate marketers!  More familiar faces guided me through the crowd to point out where our nerdy group was assembled, but also, more patrons belonging to the group generally referred to as the “public”.  I really enjoyed talking to a few new folks, and was especially flattered when someone approached me, already knowing my name, and proceeded to thank me for the knowledge I shared during our Get Noticed Fast presentation at Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York.  How nice!

Scheduled to speak was Murray Newlands about site monetiztion, however due to some unexpected limitations of the bar (noise, other patrons, space, etc) the presentation was scrapped.  Hopefully Murray will just shift his presentation to next month’s meet up!

All in all, it was great.  A little rough, but hey it was the first one!  Huge thanks to Lisa Picarille for organizing the event – I’m sure it was NOT an easy task!  In case you live under a rock & haven’t heard, Affiliate Summit Day is going to happen once a month on the last Tuesday of each month.  You can follow the fun and track where your local meet up is happening on Meetup.com