Affiliate Marketing

Amazon Associates, one of the most popular and well-known affiliate sales programs in the online world has decided to scale back on its ad-based referral program.

From 1 May 2009, Amazon will no longer pay its members referral fees for search traffic. In simple terms, this means that members will not be rewarded for sending visitors to the website of Amazon Associates – amazon.com, endless.com. amazon.ca - through keyword bidding on popular search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.

The official announcement by the company did not give any explanation for the move but speculation is rife that the leading online retailer has finally understood that it can do its own keyword bidding and does not need any middle-man to do it. Whatever be the reason for this change, the associate members of Amazon are not happy with it.

Many online marketing specialists who make a huge amount of money through affiliate marketing are lamenting this change. Being linked directly to Amazon through paid search was an easy way for anyone having a strong knowledge of pay-per-click to make easy money. But with this decision from Amazon would mean a pay cut for many people.

Without a doubt, this new policy of Amazon from May 1 will leave a lot of associates unhappy.

DoubleClick Inc., a leading online display ad technology provider, is all set to join hands with leading mobile ad networks. The recently Google acquired firm DoubleClick is integrating its mobile advertising delivery system with AdMob, Google’s AdSense and Millennial Media’s MBrand and Decktrade to facilitate publishers (deal) with their ad inventory.

The group product manager of the DoubleClick products, Ari Paparo stated that if a publisher is getting traffic on his mobile pages in the mobile business, he or she has to choose between selling all his ads directly with his sales force or alternatively outsourcing all the ads to a network. According to him, this merger will help publishers to easily allocate inventory to whichever networks they want that will enable them to treat mobile like display ads on the Internet.

Mobile publishers will be able to fill more of their inventory on the channel and increase their revenue base. Additionally, DoubleClick Mobile will help them to accept ads from Millennial Media’s advertisers while allowing them sell directly as well. Plus, DoubleClick clients will now be able to join 4,000 existing AdMob publishers to sell mobile ad inventory. DoubleClick is positioned to publishers as a helping hand for managing inventory across the various direct and indirect channels.

All those who are regular in checking their statistics on Adsense must have realised that there is now a new facility being provided to them since the past one week or so. Users can now view the performance statistics for Adsence Link Units.
Adsense Link Units are the bunch of text links that alternate with standard text advertisements. Only the performance statistics for the standard text ads were previously viewable in the Adsense dashboard.

Now, after the introduction of this facility wherein users will be able to view performance statistics for link units, Adsense publishers have more options. They can view the number of click-throughs and individual CTR per link unit.

To view the link units’ reports, users will have to mark the Adsense Reports tab. Users don’t have to look into the specific Adsense channels that they have created for an Adsense link unit to see its performance. It can also prove to be a good way for them to determine whether the links are, in reality, bringing any worth to the Adsense account.

Doubleclick Performics, one of the world’s leading affiliate networks, has undertaken a project for significantly upgrading its network. The upgrading exercise will enhance their communication capabilities, and infuse more transparency in relationships between merchants and affiliates.

The upgrading exercise will bring some new feature enhancements to their ConnectCommerce platform. One such feature would allow open lines of communication between merchants and affiliates, who have not yet established a relationship. According to the Affiliate Product Manager, Larry Adams, they will soon be making live a feature to advertisers, which will allow them to recruit Doubleclick Performics network and also view the comprehensive contact information of the publishers that have opted for ‘non-joined’ advertiser communication. According to Doubleclick Performics, this will help in opening up their network and facilitating many more such relationships than they could form through their own recruiting/matchmaking efforts.

Affiliates would also be able to view links that have been added to the network in the past week or so for all advertisers in the network or for just the approved advertisers. They can even further filter the list by link/banner, banner size, promotion type, and for short term promotions. The firm also plans to add new features to ConnectCommerce platform, such as Newest Links UI Updates, Advertiser Profile Navigation, Order Inquiries and Search Update.

Affiliate Summit West 2008 took place in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel. The global event, revolving around the fast-expanding affiliate market industry, happened between February 24 and 26. Missy Ward and Shawn Collins founded the Affiliate Summit in 2003. Their purpose was to provide informative and educational sessions on the needs and demands of the industry. The idea was also to foster a productive and fruitful networking environment for various affiliate marketers.

As part of the Summit, a full-day event - Affiliate Manager Training – was organised. It aimed at teaching key affiliate marketing fundamentals and passing how-to instructions on recruiting, motivating, training and dealing with affiliates. Relevant legal concerns for affiliate managers were also discussed. Ideas on creating and also using effective reports were generated during the session. The event was a perfect platform for new entrants to affiliate marketing, looking to increase their knowledge on the terminology, trends and tactics. Another interesting session was on the golden rules of Internet marketing. A team of net marketing experts, including Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz, Lifescript.com CEO Ron Caporale and writer of ‘The Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook’ James Martell delved into the important strategies for effective Internet marketing, providing an insight into improving the web site so its shows up in top results of Google searches.