CJU Course: Innocent Until Proven Guilty
his is the last of my notes, finally! This panel promised to deliver real live examples from advertisers and publishers who have faced the best practices issues and discovered the resolutions that helped both sides continue a successful working relationship. The panel consisted of:
- Brian Conchuratt, Sr. Sales Manager, Commission Junction (Moderator)
- Matt Earls, Sr. Marketing Manager, Yahoo!
- David M. Lewis, CEO & Founder, Cashbaq
- Kurt Lohse, CEO & Founder, Keycode.com
- Maggie Tucker, Manager of Performance Marketing, Intercontinental Hotels Group
I didn’t get many notes from this session, but it was some good stuff.
Bullet Point Review!
- 2009 is the year of the data feeds.
- CJ is listening to publisher complaints about data feed accuracy and uniformity.
- Threshold of quality needs to be raised on CJ so advertisers can take advantage of IT resources effectively when asking for the creation of data feeds.
- Utilizing data feeds is top priority for the top publishers.
- Advertisers wonder if anyone’s listening? Always looking for better ways to speak to publishers.
- Understand what your core publishers need. Give them exactly what they want.
- Lead time is good to make it easy.
- Don’t mark offers urgent if they’re not – publishers need to appropriate their time wisely.
- Understand how your publishers want to communicate, whether it’s IM, email, phone, etc.
- It’s difficult to write one email for all publishers.
- -> Don’t worry about flashy templates, data is the most important aspect.
- -> Segment to different publisher groups and address their needs.
- Keycodes white labels their syndicated content.
- Publishers should tell the advertisers straight out if they develop a new promotional method.
- The higher the trust level, the more aggressive you can be with payouts.
- Look at click-through URLs, conversion rate, cancellation rates.
- -> Not looking for secret recipe, but just a general idea of what the publisher is doing.
- Good publishers are looking to be transparent and will let you know when they’re experimenting.
- Violation of T&Cs us more of an opportunity to start a conversation than to punish.
- Affiliates are direct marketers.
- Run the numbers before you go to publishers with unappealing offers or news to prove it’s necessary.
There was no time for Q&A on this panel, but there are definitely some good take away tidbits. This concludes all my notes from CJU! Until next year…
Read MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Feeds
Feeds:
- A Web document that is a shortened or updated version of a webpage created for syndication. Usually served at user request, through subscription; also includes ad feeds to shopping engines and paid-inclusion ad models. Ad feeds are usually in eXtensible markup language (XML) or rich site summary format.
There are great tools out there for affiliates to utilize data feeds put out by merchants to create their own customized online shops. Pop Shops and GoldenCAn are the two big ones.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Data Feed
Data Feed:
- A text file that contains the information needed to generate a website. It is provided either directly to the affiliate or indirectly through a network. The affiliate then converts the data feed into a database, which is then used to populate webpages full of products.
There are a lot of questions in the affiliate world surrounding data feeds. What content is required? How should they be formatted? I know that one of the hopes of the budding Performance Marketing Association is to set some industry standards on this rogue content generation tool.
Unfortunately for me, data feeds are something that I’ve yet to master. It’s one of those things I keep meaning to research and learn how to generate and use, but haven’t yet had the time. If you want to learn more about the PMA’s efforts, they’re hosting a Q&A on Monday at Affiliate Summit East in the Harbor View Ballroom from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
