A new kind of affiliate network was launched just a couple weeks ago – Impact Radius.  They boast themselves as the first multi-channel performance marketing platform.  Impact Radius links performance advertising to TV, radio, print and online distribution channels—delivering to advertisers and media partners opportunities for growth and profit. I’m happy to present you with an interview with one of the founders, Lisa Riolo.

What is the Twitter (~140 Character) Definition of Impact Radius?
Well, I’m going to cheat a little and send back-to-back tweets from @impactradius

• We’re the first multi-channel performance advertising platform. Emphasis on multi-channel.
• We feature an open directory for discovering partners, electronic insertion orders, comprehensive tracking, reporting and payout processing.

Are all the founders of Impact Radius from your days at Commission Junction?
Yes, we all met there in the early days. We’ve all worked for other companies or pursued other ventures in-between then and now.

Those other experiences apart provided tremendous value because it gave us all expanded perspectives. It’s like when everyone in a band goes off and does solo projects and experiments with new rhythms and different instruments. Later, the band reunites with transformed creativity and a familiar, but fresh sound.

How do you feel this will impact the industry in the short term?  Long term?
We see the convergence of traditional and online media as a huge opportunity. Almost immediately, new partnerships that bridge traditional channels to online and vice-versa started forming. Relationships like these, before Impact Radius, were challenging. This makes us a catalyst for growth for the industry as a whole.

Do you foresee any hurdles since the nomenclature of performance marketing terms usually mean different things in different aspects of marketing?
One of the greatest opportunities about building this business was the chance to start with a completely clean slate. We re-visited everything about performance advertising. We asked questions like: What is fundamental to the relationships and what could benefit from a new approach? What business processes are counter to the way people actually work together? And even—is this the best descriptor to use?

So, yes, with respect to nomenclature, we have introduced changes that should minimize confusion and help bridge the differences in a way that creates opportunity. Let me give you an example: We don’t call “affiliates” Affiliates. We don’t call “affiliates” Publishers either. We say: Media Partners—which works for Internet marketers, broadcast TV networks, print publications etc.

Who do you feel this is a sure sell to? (i.e. Who are your primary demographic?)
The performance advertising industry, meaning the advertisers, the media partners, the agencies and services, and even the networks.

I know that answer sounds like we’re flying in the face of conventional wisdom—trying to do ‘everything’ for ‘everybody.’ We’re not, though, doing everything for everybody. We are a technology platform designed specifically for performance advertising. But we’re not also an agency and also a broker and also direct response product owners. We designed Impact Radius to serve the needs of many business models, including the one’s I just listed, as they manage their performance advertising efforts.

How does this integrate with the existing affiliate technologies out there?
Technology companies and solution providers alike can promote their services in our directory and interface with our technology platform through Web Services.

What are the questions you get asked the most about Impact Radius from affiliates?  From merchants?  From agencies?
How do I sign-up? Seriously.

There really isn’t a strong argument against doing some level of business with us. Even if it’s just to manage a few relationships on the platform or promote your services in the directory…

How about questions from the networks?
The initial response is congratulatory and supportive. Then comes the question: Should I consider you a competitor?

Our answer is: Not necessarily. Aspects of our functionality may overlap—but aspects may also be complementary. For example, a CPA network could promote their offers in our directory and use platform features like the electronic insertion orders or payout systems to efficiently manage certain relationships. Or, an affiliate network could refer one of their customers to Impact Radius to start managing their “offline” advertising on a performance basis.

The idea is to fuel performance advertising growth exponentially.

Lisa Riolo is an active, dedicated member of the performance advertising community and remains committed to its further growth and achievement. Prior to co-founding Impact Radius, Lisa consulted with high-growth businesses to develop online marketing programs and scale operations. Lisa’s previous experience includes serving as senior vice president of business development at Commission Junction, where she played an instrumental role in growing company revenue, and managerial roles at Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Bank of America.

Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Claremont McKenna College.

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Twitter lists seem to be the greatest thing since sliced bread lately.  I have to say that I do love them.  I read a post by my former lovely co-worker Manda Otto about what lists she’s on.  I have to admit that got me thinking and wondering what lists I’m on.  Vanity, and all.  So I looked it up.

28 Listed… Pretty Sweet!

• @mcbrundage/affiliate
• @startpoken/poken-fans
• @Route53/affiliatefriends
• @Garth_OBrien/social-media
• @stefaniehutson/internet-marketing-women
• @Happy213/viewaskew
• @LisaP/affiliatemarketing
• @LisaP/coolsfpeeps
• @FredericPrigent/affiliation
• @JudiM/marketingwork
• @karengarcia/affiliate-marketing
• @CRschilliger/etc
• @LindaSherman/geeky-girls-to-love
• @latenitecoder/affiliatebiz
• @jangro/affiliatorati
• @danielmclark/geekcast-fm-podcasters
• @sharonmostyn/amazing-affiliate
• @Rexanne/affiliate-marketing
• @MarketLeverage/friends-and-fans
• @brettbum/affiliateindustryinsiders
• @jgoode/affiliate-pals
• @toddfarmer/affiliate-marketing
• @TFNDina/orlando
• @TFNDina/too-awesome-for-titles
• @nikkixbee/irl
• @nikkixbee/friends
• @drcool73/awesome-affiliate-people
• @angies91/affiliate-marketing

So let’s examine the stats… 14 mentions of affiliate… two mentions of awesome, one mention of amazing.  As you can tell, I seem to have done a pretty good job branding myself as an affiliate marketing professional.  I’m sure I probably reside on more lists that users have chosen to keep private.  I think my two favorite are Dina’s “Too Awesome for Titles” and Linda’s “Geeky Girls to Love”.  Thanks a lot ladies!  Thanks to everyone who thought to toss me onto a list, for that matter.  I know that, personally, a lot of my lists are private because I just don’t feel like making them public.  I know when Twitter lists came out, I went through my entire list and categorized EVERYONE.  And if I didn’t know what category they really belonged in, I cut some.  I think this is a great development for Twitter… much better than the new retweet function!

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I know it’s been probably over a year since I did a Free Toolsday post, but I want to get them going again.  So if you know of any good free tools to share, let me know and I’ll review them!

This week I’m going to review an application I use daily.  I was a big user of Trillian for a long time in an effort to effectively manage all the different Instant Messenger programs I have friends on.  Digsby goes one step forward and not only allows you to connect to multiple accounts on MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and Google Talk, but you can also connect to Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter.

I use this to effectively manage the fact that I have friends, colleagues, and coworkers that all use different instant messaging platforms to connect.  It saves system resources to run one application instead of 4, and is just more convenient.  I do see the basic emoticons, but sometimes I miss the more advanced features of some of the various messengers.  The one thing I wish Digsby would add is IRC support.  I was able to open an mIRC chatroom I used to frequent in Trillian, but Digsby does not have that feature.

The social network features work for statuses, not all the features of Facebook, MySpace, etc.  It does work like a basic Twitter client, but is a little clunky.  I mainly use it to tweet on the fly and check statuses, but I do still mostly just use TweetDeck for my heavy twittering.  Best of all, as you can imagine considering I’m posting this on Free Toolsday, it’s a free application.  So you can streamline your instant messaging at no cost.

You can download it here. (Download link has been fixed!)

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