Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 19: It’s a Search Tool!
Wednesday
Feb 3, 2010
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!
In this all-too-RARE episode, we reunite and make lots of fun of ourselves for being inconsistent in our scheduling and shows. We discuss some things that are kind of old and some things that are brand-spanking new. It happens. Incidentally, I realize I said the name Richard Attenborough when we were joking around and I was trying to reference those classic nature shows from our childhood with the stoic British actor describing gazelles running across the Serengeti. Not sure what the actor’s name actually was, but I know now that it wasn’t Sir Attenborough. Oh well, despite that, episode 19 comes in at a cheetah like speed of 39 minutes.
Also, I just fixed the audio problem where it cut off about 33 minutes in. Sorry, should be all good now! In this episode we discuss:
- My new gig with For Me To Coupon.
- The Advertising Tax hits Colorado. Read more about it here:
- Fox 31 KDVR News: Online sales tax bill moves through House
- Examiner.com: Are state representatives going to put work-at-home moms out of business overnight? (by Jen Goode!)
- Performance Marketing Association: Colorado House Passes Bill that Threatens to Devastate Affiliates (by Lisa Picarille!)
- The launch of Impact Radius – more of an exchange than a network.
- Seesmic Look. Seriously, what is this? We decided – it’s a search tool!
- 1938 Media starts 1938 Business & teams up with some heavy hitters to produce this year’s Audience Conference.
- Shout outs went to the losers of the Affiliate of the Year Pinnacle Award, Kim Rowley and Eric Nagel!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Or leave us a comment!
Interview with Lisa Riolo of Impact Radius
Monday
Feb 1, 2010
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.
Day 3 of Affiliate Summit West 2010
Thursday
Jan 28, 2010
Tuesday January 19th
The final day of Affiliate Summit started bright and early with the Pinnacle Awards scheduled before the last day’s keynote by Brian Clark. This was a change for the conference agenda, which usually puts the Pinnacle Awards in the afternoon after other sessions. I like the change because it gets the awards out of the way, and didn’t interfere with any other sessions or independent parties planned in the evening. I seem to remember last year that some of the award winners had to jet quickly after the awards to get to a charity poker tournament, among other places.
The winners have been blogged all over, but here’s a quick recap just in case this is the only blog you read (unlikely): Affiliate of the Year – Nicholas Koscianski. Affiliate Manager of the Year – Matt McWilliams. Exceptional Merchant – eBay Partner Network. Affiliate Marketing Advocate – Angel Djambazov. Best Bloggger – Jeremy Schoemaker. Affiliate Marketing Legend – Scott Jangro.
Next up was Brian Clark’s keynote. He admitted at the beginning that it was his first keynote, so I guess he did pretty well all things considered. Of course, I have a whole post devoted to the keynote that I’ll go into later.
Once again, I intended to go into more sessions on Tuesday, but got sidetracked with all the networking possibilities. As well, I was given a demo of a new affiliate network of sorts, Impact Radius. It gives merchants and affiliates a way to also reach out and work with more traditional media partners. I had an opportunity to interview one of the founders, Lisa Riolo, about the launch of the new network, which will also be another blog post coming up soon.
I made it a point to get to Jim Kukral’s session How To Get Motivated For Success!, which I’ll of course be posting a recap for. It was a great kick in the pants to get going with projects that have been stalled for awhile. I know Eric Nagel wrote an entire post about Jim’s kick in the ass.
While in Jim’s session, I heard via Twitter that Daniel M. Clark of Geek Dads Weekly was invited to speak on the GeekCast.fm Live panel. I was bummed since I wanted to participate with that panel/group like I did at Affiliate Summit East 2009, but happy for Daniel. I went into the session for a moment, but left in favor of running back up to my room for a few things. As I understand, the session was some industry talk followed up with a lot of “how to podcast” type questions, so it looks like I personally didn’t miss much information that I didn’t already know.
The evening ended with a fail on the part of the Rio. A BlogUp mixer was planned at the VooDoo Lounge, which was official and everything, not just 100 people crashing the lounge for a mixer. Unfortunately, it was raining and since the lounge has an indoor and an outdoor area, the lounge ended up double booked with another much larger group of people. So we tried cramming into the bar at the steakhouse for awhile, overwhelming the poor bartender on duty. Finally, the Rio moved the charade down to the iBar and served complimentary champagne as a mea culpa.
I stayed for awhile, the it was on to another Las Vegas tradition – the buffet! A large group of us went to the Carnival World Buffet at the Rio, one of my favorite buffets ever. Then again, I haven’t been to many. It was good times and good food with good people – one of my favorite activities! After dinner, I went and hung out with Heather Smith & Julie Vazquez, who were still at the iBar. Had a very pleasant last night of Affiliate Summit West 2010!
