Posts Tagged "CPA"

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 56: Interviewing Greg Hoffman & Ian Fernando

Posted on Aug 17, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics, Conferences & Networking |

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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!

You’ve come to love it – our interviews!  This is one last interview with speakers at upcoming Affiliate Summit East 2011 at the New York Hilton in New York City.  Today we’re chatting with Greg Hoffman & Ian Fernando about their origins in affiliate marketing & their panel “Industry Clash: Balancing CPS & CPA Marketing”. They’ll give us a bit of insight into this peace-making panel. In in this episode we discuss:

• We chat a bit about Greg & Ian’s fellow panelists Jason Rubacky and Logan Thompson.
• The stereotypes CPS marketers have about CPA marketers.
• The vast differences between the way the “older” CPS marketers party and the way “younger” CPA marketers party.
• Bridging the gap and learning from the other side of the coin.
• Put Greg & Ian’s panel on your Affiliate Summit Schedule! Sunday, August 21st from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm in the Gramercy Suite.
• Eric guarantees he’ll have a front row seat.  No heckling!
• Show some love to today’s co-host Eric Nagel! Blog: EricNagel.com & Twitter: @esnagel

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!

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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.

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Whatever Happened To Class?

Posted on Sep 2, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, Career, Conferences & Networking |

I’m going to rant on about something that happened at Affiliate Summit East, and I know I’m not the first and probably not the last.  Credit where credit is due… I owe the rants of Karen Garcia (I’m sorry…why are you here?) and Jen Goode (Professional events and sexual harassment, when did that become ok?) to remind me why this kind of thing isn’t right.  And make me feel the need to write something about it.

So, if you weren’t there, heres the gist – a network decided to hire two girls in very small bikinis to promote a new network that’s starting soon.  It’s actually appropriate consider that the concept of the network, apparently, is that they only hire female affiliate managers who look good in bikinis and will be talking to affiliates while wearing said bikinis.  And this genius idea has been dubbed – wait for it = Bikini Babes Network.  SIGH.  At least, that’s all these “representatives” could tell people since the CEO didn’t make it to the show because of some travel/customs issues.

First of all, it’s insulting.  It’s insulting to every woman working in our industry.  Whether or not you look good in a bikini, it’s degrading to know that someone gave you business just because of your body and not because you’re good at what you do.  It devalues them as a person.  I hate to speak ill of fellow women that I don’t even know and pass judgment, but I’d assume that the women agreeing to work for this network are in dire straights in terms of needing the job.  I’d personally sooner work at a retail register than be hired based on my appearance alone.  Or, they’re not bright enough to realize what a joke this is, which means they probably won’t be taking home Affiliate Manager of the Year trophies any time soon.

As I walked around one day during the conference, the bikini babes in question were loitering near a booth featuring a Ducati motorcycle in their booth area.  I say loitering, because these women knew nothing of affiliate marketing or the rest of the conference, and didn’t actually have a booth of their own to post in, so they were wandering around distracting others.  I was not surprised to walk by and witness no less than 5 men attempting to talk the girls into sitting on the Ducati so they could get a picture.  They scrambled to get a camera, and finally ended up with some dude’s iPhone.  Was this picture for their website?  Probably not.  Did it have anything to do with business?  Absolutely not.  I was distinctly witnessing a male adolescent fantasy in action.  And if felt dirty.

Besides being insulting, it’s inappropriate.  While Affiliate Summit does not enforce a dress code, they do suggest business casual as the way to go.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting this on Affiliate Summit in any way considering they had no way of knowing in advance the company’s marketing tactic.  However, It’s my opinion that people need to remember that their companies are sending them to this conference to drive business, not to gawk at bikini babes.  If everyone else remained professional and ignored these women, companies would stop using them and we could all go back to civilized working conferences.  What affiliate would take this kind of network seriously and decide to work with them?  I can only imagine anyone working with them might try the network out of sheer morbid curiosity.  Otherwise, they’re not an affiliate I necessarily care to work with if the lure of bikini clad affiliate managers honestly drew them in.

There have been issues with “booth babes” at the conferences in the past.  The first show I went to, Affiliate Summit East 2007, some legitimate employees from one merchant company dressed as naughty, goth school girls – highly inappropriate considering their product was a reading learning system for children!  And almost every conference in Las Vegas features some kind of showgirl on loan or naughty nurses asking people to enter to win a Hummer (the car, not… the other thing).  A lot of people defend these kinds of attention-getting antics as “par for the course” or claim these babes can sell anything (as probably proven by beer commercials around the world).  But should they?

It seems there’s always a backlash afterward, and many affiliates elect not to partner with such companies that attempt fleshy stunts to gain attention.  Reputable affiliates, the ones that are most likely to make a company money, chose ethics over babes and go with the merchants, networks, and other vendors that take their businesses seriously and don’t jump to sell using sex.  Case in point – I haven’t seen the company whose employees dressed as goth school girls exhibit at an Affiliate Summit since, yet their company still exists.  People remember.  Do you remember what the naughty nurses were selling along with entering to win a car?  Me neither… I’m fairly sure the company doesn’t exist.  And by January and Affiliate Summit West 2011, most people will probably laugh off the Bikini Babes Network as another flash-in-the-pan CPA network that quickly went the way of the dodo (if they ever actually launch).

Here’s the moral of my story, folks.  If you’re going to do something attention getting for your business, do it with class.  Inject some wit, and style, and people will remember you positively.  That’s how you gain attention for your business and leave an indelible, positive impression with someone.  Stay classy, businesses.

BTW… Class from Chicago is a great song, and it’s where I stole my headline from.

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Interview with Lisa Riolo of Impact Radius

Posted on Feb 1, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, Tools |

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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