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:

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 Affiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode 8 [45:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

Another two weeks has passed and we’re back. We started with a good sized agenda and elaborated into areas we didn’t expect. Despite trying to keep it short since Mike’s not feeling well, we still ran a hearty 45 minutes. Remember to drink your fluids, kids! In in this episode we discuss:

• Twitter Job Search?
• Twitter TV Show?! Twitter says not so fast.
• Blink 182 Tweet Deck
• Whatever happened to WeFollow?
• Server issues Mike’s having with GoDaddy Shared Server Hosting.  Might try Host Gator, BlueHost, HostMonster, JustHost.  Not ready for dedicated servers like Rackspace.
• Update on DataFeedR data feed plug-in Mike’s using
• Blogger LinkUp Update

So please, go check it out and comment and let us know what you think!

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 8: Twitter Obsession and Some Real Tools

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It’s been a slow week for news coming across my desk.  Then again, it’s been a slow week for me in general.  We’re doing Affiliate Marketing Fanatics about every other week now when news is slow.  Hopefully with the upcoming LinkShare Symposium in New York, Affiliate Convention in Denver, and a smattering of other events we should have more to talk about soon!  In the meantime, check this stuff out.

• Geno Prussakov posted some pretty great articles on his blog this week, 7 Common Problems with Affiliate Data Feeds and Common Mistakes of New Affiliate Program Managers.  I have to give Geno kudos for some great articles!
• Andy Beard wrote an insightful entry on his blog about his Product Launch Affiliate Strategy, and what checklist he uses to determine if he’ll support a new affiliate launch or not.  It’s definitely a good read for any affiliate starting out, and any merchant who wants to optimize their launches to make them attractive to affiliates.
• FeedFront Magazine has issued a call for entries for their 7th issue, which will also serve as the conference guide for Affiliate Summit East 2009 in NYC, at which I’ll be speaking!
• Speaking of Affiliate Summit East 2009, they’re all sold out of booths! You snooze, you lose!
• More interesting posts about whether or not you should disclose affiliate links with Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Link Disclosure Manifesto.  Good stuff.

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