CJU Course: At Your Service
Unleashing the power of web services can literally change your program. Getting the data you need faster and then customizing it to suit the exact needs of your program or web site—that’s what web services are all about and Commission Junction is the industry leader. Hear real-world examples of clients using the CJ Web Services APIs in all kinds of creative ways to help them run their businesses more efficiently than ever
before. The panel consisted of:
- Bram Roukema, Director, Product Management, Commission Junction (Moderator)
- Adam Viener, imwave
- Michael Khodos, Simply Best Coupons
Bullet Point Review!
- Most APIs in CJ are done in ReST & SOAP (which will be phased out eventually).
- 6 APIs are offered:
- Publishers: Commission details.
- Publishers: Advanced look up
- Publishers: Product search.
- Publishers: Link search.
- Advertisers: Commission details.
- Advertisers: Publisher look up.
- Before APIs, people used feeds. Those took 1 day+, APIs are real-time.
- How to get started:
- Talk to your developers.
- Go to Webservices.cj.com.
- Review the APIs documentation.
- Register for a developer’s key.
- Remember to use ReST, not SOAP.
Points brought up during the Q&A
All APIs are pull; they’re considering using push APIs too so publishers can apply to the programs, etc.- When a link expires, they still track – they’re just not promoted anymore.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 28: Interviewing Christopher Calvi
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!
We’re continuing our series of interviews with some speakers at Affiliate Summit East 2010, coming up in just a month in New York City. This time, we talk to Christopher Calvi about his origins in affiliate marketing & his Ask the Experts topic “Using APIs to Maximize Affiliate Opportunities”. Chris chats with us about what he does at AdKnowledge and the new acquisition of Hydra . In this episode we discuss:
- Chris’ blog Politivi.com.
- What an API is.
- The APIs available at AdKnowledge.
- Lewis Carrol trivia
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! You can also ask Trisha questions through FormSpring.me. Or leave us a comment!
Read MoreASW10 Session: Product Datafeeds: The Next Level
Session Description: Product datafeeds are among the most powerful tools available to affiliate marketers. We’ll discuss the current state of datafeeds and industry progress, best practices, and moving toward standards. The panel consisted of:
- Scott Jangro, President, Mech Media Inc. (Moderator)
- Larry Adams, Product Manager, Google
- Shergul Arshad, VP Business & Corporate Development, StyleFeeder, Inc.
- Brian Smith, CEO & Founder, SingleFeed
The panel was really well organized. Scott asked questions and then each panelist answered. I did my best to note the questions Scott asked and who each answer came from.
Bullet Point Review!
- Have you seen innovation in datafeeds?
- Larry: Haven’t seen a lot of innovation on the advertiser side, but have seen innovation from publishers. Deriving interesting information from feeds to actually provide some value. Taking this huge library & simplifying it. GAN is trying to figure out how to make the data more accessible & easier to consume. Easier for the publisher to get what they want out of it. The networks’ role is to be a facilitator. They push advertisers to get highest quality data and make sure as many publishers who want the data can access it.
- Shergul: 30% of the datafeeds they work with are truly excellent, 40% just acceptable, and the rest they have to mess with. 30% aren’t in the right format, and not just smaller programs but some are from big retailers. They’re on a campaign to try to help improve this and they reach out to the merchants. Sometimes merchants need to be shown what they’re missing by not providing accurate data. It’s easier for people to take advantage of open source tools to innovate so more people want to access datafeeds to automate sites. It’s hard to envision a one-size-fits-all datafeed.
- Brian: Not much has changed, but in the last 18 months datafeeds have become more complex. More attributes are being asked for from the merchants. That’s a good, positive sign. It does kind of screw things up for merchants trying to format new feeds in different formats. Merchants are starting to recognize datafeeds are great, and they’re looking for the next great channel. NOw they’re being forced to deal with datafeeds.
- There’s been more development of product APIs instead of downloading text files. Is API going to take over datafeeds?
- Shergul: API are more accessible when you’re pulling in fewer feeds. Using thousands of datafeeds just isn’t scalable. There’s a place for coexisting, but in general for speed and size constraints, they can’t shift towards APIs.
- Brian: Some publishers don’t know how to use APIs, so it’s going to take awhile for publishers to move over there and mostly they’ll coexist for awhile.
- Larry: The nice thing about an API is the data is fresher. GAN integrated with Google Base because they have a nice API. Working to provide more keyword targeted ads.
- Scott: Data has never been more accessibly and most networks now offer free access.
- If someone is just starting out, how should they start?
- Larry: Start small. Deal with usefullness before scale. Find out who has the best feeds and start easy. Figure out how you’re going to use them & then you can figure out ways to imprve the bad data or ignore it until the advertiser provices high quality fdata. Literally tens of millions of products are available to you. You don’t need every single product on your site to have a good user experience. There’s a fine line between copying and searching for inspiration. Don’t do what your competitors are doing – but shop there and find what you like and dislike in the shoes of a consumer and improve upon that.
- Shergul: It depends on what your site does. It’s manageable to access the “right” 20 datafeeds to be comprehensive in your vertical. Too man products can get too big and too overwhelming too quickly.
- Brian: Go after high quality. You might as well start with APIs and they have a wealth of information you can access. Make some calls & learn more about them. Start from there. Look at the big guys pushing great data – Amazon, eBay, Shopping.com.
- What are the major hurdles in getting “good datafeeds” to a higher number?
- Larry: That’s more of a merchant problem than a network issue.
- Brian: The networks need to sell datafeeds better. Case studies will work.
- Is there hope for standardization? Can we? What does it really mean?
- Larry: The first thing that comes to mind is categories. Building a common taxonomy that works for millions of products and thousands of merchants.
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Shergul: Positive examples of great datafeeds and data quality: Nordstrom, Shoe Buy, Target, CSN Stores.
- Larry: It can seem like a daunting task to improve a feed, but start small with one category to see if there’s a payoff on the work you’ve put in. Then you can more easily convince your boss it’s worth the time.
- If you have duplicate products, would you suggest changing the descriptions to avoid dupe content?
- Use your own analytics to pick the best product and dump the other one; there are enough products that you don’t need to worry about using both.
I hope I got comprehensive notes. I was trying my best to pay very close attention, but I have to admit that I got lost in some parts. By nature, it’s a dry subject, and though the presenters were doing their best to keep it lively, that early of a time slot might have not been the best. Here’s the presentation:
