Performance Marketing Leadership Summit
On April 19th, the day before ad:tech SF 2010, OfferVault presented their Performance Marketing Leadership Summit, a half-day event featuring discussions on compliance, fraud, and transparency. This was one in a series of events presented by OfferVault focusing on improving the performance marketing industry. Big thanks to Jim Lilig and the folks at OfferValut for putting this event on for free, allowing anyone interested in joining the discussion to attend. This event was also co-sponsored by AffCon, OfferMobi, and DirectTrack.
I headed over to the city to go, and I’m glad I did. The afternoon was divided between two singular speakers and two panel discussions, end capped by lunch to start, drinks to end, and a break in the middle. Here are some highlights of information I took from the day’s thought leaders:
E.J Hilbert
President of Online Intelligence, Epic Advertising
- Compliance is a dirty word, some people think it always equals loss. Truth is, there is no true definition.
- Compliant traffic is actually a 15% increase in profit in the long run.
- Margins decrease initially because of the bad traffic.
- Whether or not we see what we do as spam, the rest of the world does – it’s due to a lack of understanding.
- Remember, to the general public, we’re guilty by association.
- Compliance seems to be a catch-all, referring to legal, network, advertiser, corporate, affiliates, etc. Perhaps it should just be legal and corporate and we can call everything else fraud.
- More traffic = more money.
- The most profitable cybercrime is spam.
- We can’t because they don’t – there’s not enough enforcement in the industry. We need to crack down.
- Many top media outlets are developing their own advertising platforms they can trust instead of utilizing the existing platforms we use.
- Partner with the advertisers, that’s where the money is, not with super affiliate A or B.
- There are 4 ways to deal with fraud: accept it, insure against it, mitigate against it, not accept it at all. We should not accept it at all.
- Top advertisers are the ones calling the shots, because they have the money.
- Watchdog groups are paying attention. If we don’t do something soon, others will. We don’t want that.
- Online advertising is mainstream.
- Sometimes the way we have to go isn’t the popular way, but it’s the right way.
Panel 1: What We Need To Do to Combat Fraud
Jason Spievak (RingRevenue), Brandon McDonald (Product2Web), Chris Graham (Atrinsic), Tom Cohn (Venable), & Carrie Birkner (Lashback)
- How often does a company do something when one of these outside agencies tells them about a problem? Fairly often, actually. They gets lots of flack from publishers if they don’t take action.
- A lot of the responsibility in combating fraud comes from the technologies, the networks.
- Many networks and managers are now taking the stance that if an affiliate isn’t going to be forthright about their methods, they’re out.
- In the industry, we don’t trust each other.
- Product2Web stops fraud at the cart level. Networks should force their advertisers to utilize this kind of tool.
- Longevity planning should be the new term for compliance.
- Most affiliates live in this world of cloak & dagger, so where’s the incentive to be transparent? They incentive should be in taking the high road.
- Part of a network or merchants positioning & branding should be that they watch things & enforce their guidelines.
- Affiliates are black hat or gray hat because it works. They’re looking at the short term money makers, not long term business planning.
Peter Borders
Founder & CEO, MediaTrust
- We have the chance to seize a tremendous long-term opportunity.
- Affiliate marketing harnesses the best of the best, and we continue to harness new channels.
- Direct response television (infomercial) industry is trying to get into affiliate marketing.
- Evolution from Mass Media to Me Media. The consumer used to be at the bottom of the funnel, and now they’re at the top.
- Consumer is king, and we need to empower them. The market should be driven by quality and lifetime value.
- Right now there is little innovation, minimal brand presence, and an “all for me, more for me” mentality. We need to evolve.
- What do we need to do? Share information and data, innovate, move up-market, and collaborate.
- We have to think holistically for the sake of the industry.
- We should help each other to set standards.
- We have to be an industry of problem solvers.
- If the whole industry goes up-market, we ALL win.
- It’s time to build collaboration and trust, and support agents of change.
Panel 2: The Road to Tier 1 Advertisers
Rebecca Madigan (Performance Marketing Association), Todd Crawford (Impact Radius), Theresa Farmer (UnsubCentral), Peter Klein (MediaWhiz), & Liz Wasserman (Mate 1)
- Big advertising agencies still don’t understand affiliate marketing.
- What do we need to do for tier 1? Educate – be transparent.
- Big brands, this should be sales. Agencies can’t guarantee the spend of budget in terms of performance marketing.
- It’s a much longer sales cycle with large agencies.
- People want stability and consistency, which is tricky with performance marketing.
- Is it possible, technologically’? There’s efficiencies when you automate that always allow you to make more money.
- Big brands don’t understand that with “performance” you’re getting branding for free.
- Brand reputation is a concern for big brands, so performance seems scary. But it goes both ways, you can also build a brand using performance marketing like Mate 1 did.
- We need to do a better job explaining the metrics to agencies. They need to understand that there’s two types of advertising – performance and branding. And often there is some overlap.
- There’s a kind of lethal nihilism. Outside impressions of the industry is that we’re “a little shady & quasi criminal” and people don’t want to get involved (great quote by Liz there!)
- This gets perpetuated by smaller, CPA type folks that are looking for short term gains and give the rest of us a bad rap.
- Self-regulating isn’t going to work because there’s always a few folks willing to break the rules for a quick buck.
- Advertisers worry about negative brand impact and are worried about consumer respect.
- We don’t bring the consumer into the equation enough.
- Merchants need to focus on moving up-stream.
- It should be a goal to really be able to understand the lifetime value of a customer.
Vote for the Podcasting 101 Panel for Affiliate Summit East 2010
Affiliate Summit is making a lot of changes to this years’ eastern version of the conference. In addition to changing the Mentor Program to the Newcomer Program and offering an Affiliate Scholarship Program, they are now allowing the public to vote for Affiliate Summit East 2010 Sessions. In the past, panel selection has been a closed process, with the members of the Affiliate Summit Advisory Board discussing and voting on which panels they want to see on the agenda. For this year’s Eastern show, they have decided to open up the process to help narrow down the choices before the advisory board makes their ultimate decisions. Anyone who registers with Slinkset will have the chance to vote for as many of the panels as they want by clicking on the arrow to the left of the panel descriptions. Voting is open until May 14, 2010.
There are a lot of great potential panels, and later this week I’ll tell you all about which ones I voted for and why. In the meantime, you have the opportunity to vote for the panel I hope to be a part of, Podcasting 101! There have been live podcast related panels in the past, however they seem to have been less structured and more about current events than the business of affiliate podcasting. We want to give attendees a chance to get a really basic primer on starting a podcast.
What’s Podcasting 101 Going to Cover?
Podcasting 101 will be a panel for beginners talking about how to begin a podcast and monetize. In this era of self-publishing, anyone – including you – can produce a podcast (and make money doing it!) Come learn the basics of producing, monetizing, hosting and promoting your very own podcast. It’s much easier and cheaper than some people think, so we’re going to go over the various tools available for recording, mixing, and promoting a podcast. We’ll also touch on some of the more basic ways to monetize the podcast beyond text affiliate links in your show notes.
Who’s On The Panel?
Should we be selected, the panel will consist of myself, Daniel M. Clark and Tricia Meyer. Daniel is a co-host for the Geek Dads Weekly podcast, a podcast for parents raising kids in a digital age, along side Joe Magennis and Drew Bennett. Daniel will be able to talk about the production aspects of a podcast using a Mac, as well as monetizing the podcast. Tricia is the owner of MeyerTech, which runs the popular rewards site Sunshine Rewards. Along with Cindy Ballard and Angie Meeks, Tricia co-hosts the She Shops Around podcast, featuring seasonal merchants in the affiliate space. In case you’ve already forgotten (for shame!) I co-host Affiliate Marketing Fanatics with Mike Buechele. All of these podcasts, and more, are available at GeekCast.fm.
Sound Like a Winner?
Does this sound like a session you’d want to go to? Great! If so, please take a moment to register and vote for the Podcasting 101 panel! Remember that Affiliate Summit East 2010 is taking place August 15 – 17, 2010 in New York City at the New York Hilton. The early bird registration has already passed, but you still have time to register before they sell out!
Read MoreASW10 Session: How To Get Motivated For Success!
Session Description: Get off your butt and get to work. Motivational tips, tricks & strategies that can put you on the path to online success. The featured speaker was:
- Jim Kukral, President, JimKukral.com
This was a great session, a real kick in the pants to get off your ass and finish those projects you’ve put on hold. I picked up a lot of great tips to put into action here on my site, and I think you will too. Jim is a master motivator, without the cheese (for the most part).
Bullet Point Review!
- Doers get what they want…everyone else gets what they get.
- Be remarkable.
- Have a signature product.
- Are you a loser or a failure?
- The failures are the ones that are successful. Because they keep trying.
- Learn your lessons the hard way.
- Fail hard, fail fast, and try something new.
- Negativity kills. Remove negativity across the board.
- Everything we do online falls under two categories: solve problems or be entertained.
- If you can combine both of those things, you can find a faster path to success.
- It’s about having your pain taken away – find ways to take pain away from people.
- Easy always wins – solving problems is how you make money.
- Think like Google – simple.
- Simple, problem solving, customer oriented.
- Branding is the thick, sticky goo that a company puts on your hand – if it’s good, you’ll lick it off. If it’s bad, you’ll go wash it off.
- You don’t sell what you think you sell.
- e.g. Nike doesn’t sell apparel & sports equipment. They contract spokespeople like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods because they sell winning.
- What is it your customers REALLY need from you?
- Lead with what you sell.
- If you can lead with “We save you time” or “money”, great.
- Universal Internet truths
- No one reads anymore, they scan.
- Average attention span online is 2.7 seconds (about as long as it takes to read a tweet).
- Resource: DontMakeMeThink.com
- Figure out why people come to your site and get rid of the other junk.
- No more interruptions!
- Short attention spans.
- There’s a million competitors out there.
- There’s got to be a way for you to stand out and be more noticed.
- Go back to problem solving and understanding your customers.
- You know you need to do these things, you just need a reminder to apply it. Go out and make it happen.
- Where do you want to be in a year from now? 6 months from now?
- People want bargains
- It doesn’t matter what you sell, people will buy more often if you give them a deal, OR the perception that they’re getting a deal.
- The truth about humans is that they want to feel like they’re getting one over on you.
- Always have some kind of discount and put it in their face.
- Take a chance and get creative
- What ideas have you had that you let slip away?
- You never know what will happen, so try it.
- No one reads anymore, they scan.
Most of the Q&A was just follow up on some of the examples and resources Jim talked about. I really feel energized with this site to take it to another level. Here’s the presentation:
ASW10 Tuesday Keynote Brian Clark
Entreproducer: The Affiliate Marketer as Media Mogul
Thin affiliate sites are disappearing from search engines, while social media is powered by content sharing, not sales pitches. It’s time to start thinking like a new media producer first and foremost, with affiliate relationships as just one form of monetization. The keynote was given by:
- Brian Clark, Co-Founder, DIY Themes
Brian notes that this was his first keynote, so good job on one under the belt! It focused on creativity, which I really did connect with. Unfortunately it did get kind of dry in the middle and I admit, I lost focus on taking notes. But he ended on a memorable note using some music clips to illustrate some points.
Bullet Point Review!
- Focus on branded websites – better for link backs. If you can get a keyword in, great, but that shouldn’t be the focus.
- Positioning – What’s unique about you? How do you stand out in a competitive landscape?
- Design – Great usability of the content (presentation).
- Contact & Community – you want people to raise their hands and pay attention to you over time.
- It’s easier to make money if you’re using content to attract an audience and sell something related.
- From a mindset standpoint, realize you’re in the media business.
- Branded content started with soap operas, kinda.
- There’s nothing more powerful than being an authority figure yourself.
- Branding is really everything – it’s the story you’re trying to tell the world.
- They hear what they want and hopefully it’s what you want them to hear.
- It’s not about traffic, and it’s not just about audience, it’s about creating fans.
- You don’t have to be a rock star to the whole world, just to a group of fans.
- Your brand is a story. If someone is saying something bad about you then it’s still branding.
- If the only thing people are saying about you is bad, at least you have feedback telling you want you are doing wrong.
- Most people that study creativity find that these people have lower associative boundaries.
- We’re socialized to put things in boxes and categories.
- Fail fast – keep trying and you’ll get a lot better at it.
Brian summarized with some clips from a group called Girl Talk that makes unlikely musical mash ups. I highly recommend going in search of this group, who has two albums out if I remember correctly.
Here’s the video provided by Affiliate Summit:
ASW10 Session: Oprah, Flogs and FTC: Hot Topics 2010
Session Description: This session un-muddies the murky waters of the FTC’s ever-changing focus, the proliferation of IP-related lawsuits, and the legal ambiguity regarding many forms of Internet-based marketing. The panel consisted of:
- Bennet Kelley, Founder, Internet Law Center
- Pete Wellborn, Managing Member, Wellborn, Wallace, & Woodard, LLC
I did like this session more than the FTC related session I attended at the last affiliate summit. It was put together with the affiliate industry really in mind, though it captured my interest for being not entirely affiliate related.
Bullet Point Review!
- Truth, proof, & fairness – everything we talk about today can be summed up with this.
- Misleading – common violations, disclaimers, & disclosures, demonstrations, refund policies, ads directed at children, environmental claims.
- Unfair ads – causes or is likely to cause injury that is:
- substantial AND
- not outweighed by other benefits AND
- not reasonably avoidable
- Who is liable?
- Seller (manufacturer or provider)
- Ad Agencies
- Site Designers
- Affiliates
- Individuals (personally involved)
- “Negligence Standard” – knew or should have known that the ad included false or deceptive claims.
- Exert as much control over people as you possibly can because you don’t want to find yourself peripherally liable.
- Other FTC Enforced Laws
- Franchise & Business Opp Rule
- MLM Pyramid Scheme Rules Laws
- Truth in Lending Act
- Fair Credit Billing Act
- Fair Credit Reporting Act
- Equal Credit
- 900 #s
- Rules of Thumb
- Truth
- Consumer point-of-view
- Proof
- Careful: disclaimers/disclosures – rules have dramatically changed.
- Careful: endorsement claims
- Testimonials & Endorsements
- Celebrities
- 1st – Accurate
- 2nd – With Permission (“right of publicity”)
- General Considerations
- Honest opinion/belief of endorser
- Same claim-standard as seller
- Endorsers must continue in belief
- Statements must be presented in context
- Consumer Endorsements
- You cannot get away with “results not typical” anymore.
- Claims must be representative
- Claims must be substantial
- or Claims can be disclaimed (MAYBE)
- Same claim-standard as seller
- “Actual Consumer” must be just that
- Expert Endorsements
- Must be true
- Must be a real expert in the correct field
- Organization Endorsements
- True collective judgment opinion
- Must be true “expert” opinion
- Material Connections
- This is where the FTC is trying to go after the “mommy blogger” crowd
- Connection between endorser and seller that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement must be fully disclosed (very gray area in terms of HOW)
- Rule often applies where endorser is not celebrity or well-known expert
- “Connection” may be money or publicity
- Applies to blogs & flogs (fake blogs)
- Walmarting Across America was a fake blog made by Walmart to generate publicity.
- Absolutely forbidden by the rules of the FTC
- They don’t want to have a chilling effect on guerilla or creative marketing campaigns, but at some point it has to be disclosed that it’s marketing or advertising.
- Celebrities
- “Free” Stuff
- “Free” means free
- “Regular price” means same price, on the same quality, quantity, and service level at which the seller has sold the product in that geographic market or trade area for a reasonable substantial period of time
- Ad must be clean
Points brought up during the Q&A
In the context of an agency, how can you transfer liability of claims to the client?
- Have a bullet proof contract
- Make sure your agreement has a provision that you’ll periodically monitor any celebrity or expert endorsements to ensure accuracy
They read through the presentation rather fast so my notes are probably incomplete. Luckily, the presentation was made available! I had to leave during the Q&A portion to get back to the booth, so I probably missed some good stuff caught on video, so I’ll add that here in the next few weeks. Here’s the presentation:
ASW10 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:
