Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the @MediaTrust community & #affiliatemarketing

Hello MediaTrust Community!
Its that time of year where we give thanks here in the US, so it's a great opportunity to let you all know how thankful we are for helping us get to where we are today.
This year, your partnership helped us become the 9th fastest growing Company in the US, according to Inc Magazine, and you helped us earn the #1 spot on the mthink Bluebook Top 20 Performance marketing networks. You also helped us articulate a new direction of the performance marketing landscape by participating in our community blog and podcasts. Thousands of you are followers of our twitter and facebook profiles, and your feedback, input and comments have helped shape our platform and industry into an innovative and robust community of driven and resourceful individuals.
As a way of thanking you, we have been working diligently to bring you new features to make performance marketing with MediaTrust easier and more efficient. Here are a few things we have been working on:

• We're refactoring our entire code base to make the platform faster and more efficient
• We've added hybrid tracking (cookie-based and cookie-less) to ensure conversions are correctly attributed to the referring publisher
• We've enhanced our fraud detection tools to minimize fraudulent activity, enabling us to maintain the highest payouts from our advertisers
• We've added a compliance center to our website (http://mediatrust.com/compliance.html) to aggregate key information for our advertisers and publishers

As always, our goal is to provide you with a rich community and the most innovative tools to make your performance marketing activities even more 'bountiful'. Feel free to contact us with comments, suggestions and ideas so we can make next year even better.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Peter Bordes and the MediaTrust Team

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Relevance Remains a Challenge for E-Mail Marketers - eMarketer

Relevance Remains a Challenge for E-Mail Marketers - eMarketer

Relevance Remains a Challenge for E-Mail Marketers

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Batch-and-blast has consequences

It might seem obvious that marketers must send relevant messages if they want to be noticed and appreciated by consumers. But the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions Company’s “Why Relevance Drives Response and Relationships” report indicates that they have a problem being faithful to audience preferences.

US Internet users deluged with mass e-mails have little time for irrelevant promotions and newsletters, and they have enough experience to know how to unsubscribe. More than nine in 10 respondents to the CMO Council survey had unsubscribed from an e-mail newsletter at some point. Relevance—or lack thereof—was the No. 1 reason.

Web users also complained of receiving too many to manage and getting tired of all the clutter. In many cases that clutter can have consequences for marketers: 22% of respondents have decided not to purchase from a company because of irrelevant promotions, either via e-mail or direct mail. A further 41% said they would consider doing the same.

Promotional e-mails were the most common thing for respondents to find in their inbox, with 60% saying they received such e-mails most. E-newsletters were the next-most-common type of messages.

But it was the least common messages that were most likely to be opened—monthly bills and bank statements. Only about four in 10 recipients said they “always” opened promotional offers or newsletters.

“Irrelevant, impersonal communications, be it email or traditional mail, is a waste as it does not engage a receptive recipient,” said Liz Miller, vice president, programs and operations, CMO Council, in a statement. “It is no surprise that consumers are opting out of irrelevant emails. However, what is a grave sign for marketers to heed is that customers will disconnect and stop doing business with brands who continue to send messages that demonstrate a lack of intimacy, customer insight and individual understanding.”

Keep up on the latest digital trends. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription, today.

Check out today’s other article, “Digital Convergence for US Households.”

Affiliate Fraud Roundtable Discussion :: Affiliate Marketing Indsider

  LISTEN TO BROADCAST HERE
The latest edition of the Affiliate Marketing Insider podcast tackles "affiliate marketing fraud" one of the biggest challenges our industry faces. Affiliate fraud is an increasingly problematic issue that is causing our industry to have to come together in a new way to create technology. Set standards and guidelines.

Joining Wade are three people who are now working to lead our industry’s attempt to self-regulate affiliate fraud: Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director of the Performance Marketing Alliance, Jivan Manhas, Head of Sales for MediaTrust and Mark Roth, co-founder of Offer Vault

Tracking202 Acquired by Bloosky Advertising Network

The Tracking202 team leaders Wes Mahler & Steve Truong announce on their blog that they have been acquired by Bloosky Internet in an all cash deal. The deal has been covered by TechCrunch since 202 has been on Michael Arringtons radar when he posted about the Facebook click fraud issue that was reported on this year. Congratulations to Wes & Steve who are passionate affiliate marketing indusrty veterans and technologists who have done an outstanding job creating much needed innovation in our segment of the online marketing industry.

Here is the email that went our from the 202 founders ::


From: noreply.newsletter@tracking202.com
Date: Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Subject: Tracking202 Has Been Acquired!
To:
We have some BIG news to announce today. As of a little over a week ago, Tracking202 has been acquired by Bloosky, another company within our space. We wanted to give you details about everything that has been going on that has lead up to this point as we’ve always been 100% transparent with our users and would want to remain so. We felt this acquisition was beneficial for everyone and there are a lot of things we wanted to disclose in this blog post to clarify why this deal makes a lot of sense for all of our users.
Tracking202 was founded a little over 2 years ago and have grown tremendously in the short time span we’ve been around. Many may not realize this but we’re still very much a bootstrapped startup operating out of our house! Literally we have desks in the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, etc… Its not what you would have probably have imagined for the growth we’ve seen and support shown from all of our users around the world. We appreciate everything and all the love you’ve given us. But as you may have realized, we were perhaps growing too fast.
As some of you may have noticed in recent months, its been getting harder and harder to answer support around the clock the way we use to in the early days. The number of users grow larger every day and unfortunately we didn’t have enough resources, staff, or funding to keep on doing support and everything else without infringing on time spent innovating on the technology everyone has grown to love. Above all else, we only have two full time programmers on board, one of them being Wes himself who’s pretty much coded 98% of everything we have today!
Having said that, we were limited on growth in several areas and with the launch of our new network, had a hard time keeping up with the sheer volume of affiliates that were getting on board with our software and network. Lately, its felt like we were in a catch-22 situation, working hard just to maintain things, even when we gave our best efforts its been difficult to continue to grow the company and help the community the way we have wanted to.
Several months back, we had the privledge of meeting with the founders of Bloosky. At the time, we were thinking of strategic ways the two companies could work together to help each other out. Wes and I were also debating about bringing outside funding to continue growing the company. Although we were affiliates early on and for the most part, have self funded Tracking202 with all the campaigns we’ve built in our early days, it got to a point very early on where we no longer had time to run any campaigns and went full steam into Tracking202. With that, the company grew based on what it was able to bring in itself for revenue in terms of software subscriptions, advertising, and of course now network revenues. However its difficult to scale when you have limited resources, time, staff, and funding to continue to grow.
After debating long and hard about bringing on venture capital (VC) to grow the company who probably wouldn’t understand our business, we decided we didn’t like that option. We felt it was in Tracking202’s best interest as well as the interest of our users and the community we created to keep VCs out of this. What started as just a discussion on a simple business partnership ended up becoming talks of a potential buyout. This made a lot of sense to us because Bloosky was already involved in the space and more than just funding, they had extensive knowledge and ideals that complemented Tracking202 VERY WELL. After long talks, the deal made a lot of sense.
Before I dive into why I think this partnership is great, I wanted to give you guys a background on what Bloosky does for those unfamiliar with the name. Many companies in the space know who they are but they don’t have such a strong presence among the affiliate community. The reason for this is because most affiliates don’t deal with Bloosky directly or run Bloosky’s offers. Over the last couple years they have focused on working with other types of publishers, emailers. The other thing they are known for is their advertising relationships and focus on providing advertiser services. They have call centers, creative services and a strong ad sales team. They pull in an average of 60-100 new offers per week!
Tracking202 on the other hand as many of you know, is a publisher focused company with a strong affiliate base and technology that control several traffic sources such as search, social, contextual, media buys, etc… basically other than email. Like two halves of the same coin, the combination of the two companies made perfect sense. So what does this mean to our users?
Wes and I are staying on board to continue our vision of what we believe Tracking202 should have been since day 1. This deal gives us an equity stake in Bloosky and allows us to gain valuable resources necessary to continue doing what we do best. Above all else, Bloosky shares the same passion, values, and vision we have, which is one of the key reasons we were excited to do this. We would never compromise our values or visions for anyone, hence why we didn’t want to go the VC route when we could of. With this deal moving forward, this allows us to put more emphasis on support where it is needed. We now have more resources and funding to accelerate on the growth of the technology side building faster and bringing more tools, and to help the community as a whole to help our affiliates better. We saw several positives in this and Bloosky have been very supportive of everything we’ve done and wants to see our goals achieved. We hope with this, you’re able to get a glimpse of things to come and see why this is so beneficial on so many levels. We hope to make Tracking202 an even greater company in the near future. Thanks for everything to every one of you guys out there! We couldn’t have done it without the support and love you guys have shown us. The ride had been wild and it’ll only get wilder from here on out =]

Affiliate Benchmarks 2009 Affiliate Marketing Research Released

AffiliateBenchmarks' Second Annual Survey Reveals Challenges Associated with Significant Growth in Industry

 Affiliate Benchmarks the research division of NetExponent just released its 2009 Affiliate Research Study. It is the most comprehensive report of its kind, with participation from 3,500 affiliates. It surveyed publishers on topics ranging from creative and promotional preferences, to business model segmentation.

• The results affirm that affiliate marketing has exploded over the past 2 years.  And you might be surprised to learn that there is a much higher number of full time publishers than previously thought.
  

• The study uncovered several proven practices in which high income veteran publishers are engaged, and which appear to separate them from low income novices.
  

• Advertisers, OPMs and networks might be surprised to learn how often and in what ways publishers want to be reached. 

AffiliateBenchmarks uncovers the needs, challenges and opportunities in today's rapidly growing affiliate landscape

“The affiliate industry is growing and evolving rapidly, and it is essential for new affiliates joining the game to quickly come up to speed on the latest trends and strategies if they want to compete in this lively marketplace.”

First Third-Party Facebook Ad Manager Launches Using Facebook Ads API

« This Week In Facebook - November 15, 2009

Screw Drugs, Girls Now Addicted To Facebook »

First Third-Party Facebook Ad Manager Launches Using Facebook Ads API

Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 16th, 2009 11:26 AM

Share3 2 Comments »

Back in July we first wrote about the impending launch of the Facebook Ads API and today marks the launch of the first ad manager built on top of the Facebook Ads API. Alchemy, which has received just under $500,000 worth of initial funding from the TechLightnment team, is a proprietary tool for planning and buying social advertising. The initial campaigns have seen anywhere from 500 to 1,000 percent increases in click-through-rates according to the company.

TechLightenment is not exactly new to the social marketing scene. The company launched soon after the Facebook platform launched, developing custom applications for brands including the Bob Dylan application which garnered a lot of attention. The new Alchemy tool enables advertisers to create hundreds of ads for individual campaigns to run tests to determine the effectiveness of various images and copy combinations.

While I’d expect other companies to launch their own Facebook ad managers, this is the first one we’ve heard about. The company has told us that they are looking to accomplish performance at scale, which means running hundreds of ads to dramatically increase campaign performance. Want to get started with Alchemy? You’ll need an initial media spend of at least $16,000 to start working with TechLightenment.

I’d assume that we’ll see similar requirements as other third-party ad managers launch over the coming months. Scaling Facebook ad campaigns require a lot of testing and a significant budget, however investing in larger campaigns can produce better results. We’ve heard that many large affiliates are investing tens of thousands of dollars a day on Facebook Ads, making it necessary to have more robust ad manager tools.

Alchemy has already been used by companies like Samsung, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nissan. While I’m sure a number of other agencies will begin offering similar services, this is the most robust implementation of the Facebook Ads API that we’ve heard about to date. If you are looking for a robust Facebook Ads manager service, you can check out the Alchemy website for more information.

Bluebook Top 20 | bluebook.mthink.com

Bluebook Top 20 | bluebook.mthink.com:

Bluebook Top 20

---

Bluebook's Top 20 Performance Marketing Networks and Exchanges
The Top 20 list is the result of aggregating expert views, traffic data, measures of industry influence and many other pieces of information we researched. The resulting top 20 selection has generated a lot of conversations and even disagreements in our office but represents our view of the best networks and exchanges around.

1	MediaTrust	Recently named the 9th fastest growing private companyin the USA by Inc. magazine -several other networks here appear on the Inc. 500 -Peter Bordes´ MediaTrust seems to be able to do no wrong. It has a great reputation, he leads admirably and their advertisers and publishers stick around. What´s not to like?
2	ShareASale	Brian Littleton isalegend inthe affiliatemarketing community and his network reflects his reputation with 2,500 merchants and multiple industryawards.
3	oneNetworkDirect	Digital River´s oneNetworkDirect is the leader in software sales with the industry´s best networktechnologyand offices worldwide.
4	Hydra Network	On the Inc. 500 list three years running, Hydra is one of the biggest CPA networks and is wellregarded byeverybody we know. Atop network.
5	Epic Advertising	Epic has grown remarkably and now claims 45,000+ publishers, 1,400 advertisers withcomingtraffic from over 200countries.
6	CPXInteractive	Recently ranked #154on Inc. magazine´s list ofthe fastest growing companies in the USA. Claims 30 billion impressions per month across 60+ countries.
7	IntegraClick/ ClickBooth	Ranked #5 on the Inc. 500 list. ClickBooth has proven itself to publishers and advertisers over the last couple of years and is now regarded as one of the industryleaders. Focuses on exclusiveoffers.
8	Commission Junction	The biggest affiliatenetworkin the USA. PartofValueClick. One ofthe Big Three. Presents the CJYou Awards everyyear.
9	NeverBlue	ACanadian networkthat is strong in lead-gen worldwide. Popular with high-performing affiliates.
10	LeadPile	LeadPile is a lead exchange rather than a network. Itfinds its place in this list because ofits size, growth and the simplicity it offers both buyers and sellers ofleads.
11	buy.at	The affiliate marketing arm ofAOL´s Advertising.com unit. Global reach.
12	LinkShare	LinkShare´s ownership by the Japanese companyRakuten shows itself in their dedicated networks for the UK, Canda and Japan, and their strong foreign language and currencycapabilities.
13	Pepperjam	Kris Jones has built Pepperjam into an online marketing powerhouse offering a wide range ofinteractive agencyservices.
14	zanox	Europe´s biggest affiliate network. Part ofthe Axel Springer news/magazine media group in Germany.
15	COPEAC	Ranked #320 on the Inc. 500 list. Part ofIntermarkMedia. Strong in lead-gen. Fast growing with 30,000 affiliates claimed.
16	Google Affiliate Network	Known as Doubleclick Performics prior to Google´s acquisition in 2007, the Google Affiliate Network is Google´s affiliate network. What else is there to say?
17	MarketLeverage	ACPAnetworkpopular with affiliates, Market Leverage has built itself a good reputation for result. Produces MLTV, aTVshow for affiliatemarketers.
18	ClickBank	This venerable affiliate network that specializes in digital, downloadableproducts is now10 years old and stillgoing strong.Everypublisher should have a ClickBank account.
19	Max Bounty	A smaller network that gets a lot of play with bigger affiliates and offers advertisers acost-effectiveCPAsolution.
20	Media Whiz	30,000 publishers, 3,000 advertisers, and a claimed $100 million in publisher payments in 2007. Media Whiz is strong in email and lead-gen.

Offerpal releases policies for virtual goods offers - Blogs & Content - BizReport

Offerpal releases policies for virtual goods offers

When it comes to online advertising new avenues are constantly popping up. One of the newest avenues is the virtual goods/currency avenue, by which consumers accrue points or currency and then send the points send virtual - or sometimes real goods - to friends and family. The proliferation of these opportunities comes with a few concerns, as well, that unsavory marketers will entice consumers into something they don't really want.

by Kristina Knight

Enter a new set of advertising policies from Offerpal Media, a leading virtual currency monetization platform, which will help to ensure these virtual offers are legitimate for the consumer.

"The direct marketing industry, in all channels, is plagued by unscrupulous marketers, but the rapid growth and popularity of virtual currency offers has spotlighted the problem in social media," said George Garrick, CEO of Offerpal Media. "As the leader in the space, Offerpal is in the fortunate position of having more resources than any of our competitors, and we are investing these resources to build out technologies and compliance systems to help take the industry to the highest possible standard of quality and integrity."

Offerpal's oversight solution will watch for 'deviations in advertiser landing pages', add more customer service agents to respond to potential problems and review all offers to ensure the offers are legitimate and above-board.

According to recent research from virtual goods platform AdNectar consumer purchase intent increased by more than 20% after seeing or sending a branded virtual good. Research has also shown that women, especially, like sending virtual goods - chocolate, drinks, stuffed animals - to friends and family. Q Interactive researchers found that women are playing online games in order to accrue points to send and receive other items.

Better Landing Page Conversion

Better Landing Page Conversion

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Relevantly Speaking - Adtech Interview with Kenzei CEO

The first edition of our Relevantly Speaking podcast show from ad:tech New York.  The first piece we want to show you is an interview with Mike Stocker, CEO of Kenzei. Mike talks about the current state of email marketing as well as the unique way that Kenzei prices their offerings.

Kenzei is a performance marketing CRM platform and services business that enables advertisers & marketers to mail relevant, engaging email to their customers. Kenzei offers four email services that help companies monetize their visitors. Advertisers only pay for results when a leads or sale occurs.
The four services on the Kenzei platform services include:

1. ConversionMail : uses multi-step pages for a sign up or purchase process and has the concept of an abandoned visitor. Implemented for Lead-Generation clients with a 2 or 3 step form as well as Continuity Marketers with a 2 or 3 step form. ConversionMail increases ROI by recapturing drop off traffic and abandoned forms & shopping carts.
   
2. ConversionMailRemarketingMail : for any Advertiser that collects data. This service allows the Advertiser to monetize their collected data by sending upsell and cross-sell offers to their data. RemarketingMail is different from standard list management in that it mails the Advertiser’s own in house offers to the data.
   
3. ConversionMailLifetimeValueMail : for any Advertiser that wants to extend their relationship with the consumer via relevant follow up messages including newsletters, helpful advice emails, offers of discounts to come back and shop.
   
4. ConversionMailMailConfirm : for any Advertiser launching a new product who needs to gauge the quality of traffic quickly by emailing customers to ensure that they are valid customers of high quality.
   
   
   
    We are big fans and have had great success with the Kenzei system with our advertisers.
   
   
   

Affiliate Marketing: A Better Alternative? Ad:tech 2009 Content Revenue Strategies Panel

Affiliate Marketing: A Better Alternative? Ad:tech 2009

View more presentations from MediaTrust.

In today’s economy, everyone is looking for new sources of revenue and new ways to grow. For mid-long tail publishers, affiliate marketing could be the perfect fit. In 2007, web proprietors paid out several billions of dollars to affiliates globally, yet that’s only the tip of the iceberg for this widely untapped medium. As the recession squeezes ad and marketing budgets, many businesses are committing more resources to performance-based programs like affiliate marketing, making this an opportune time for savvy publishers to join the game. At the same time, consumers are spending more time online researching products and pricing, growing savvy to ignoring the often questionable network ads shown to them on their favorite blogs. This leaves the door wide open for high-quality publishers to better engage and inspire trust in their customers through affiliate marketing. On this panel, experienced affiliates and advertisers will discuss the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, highlight the key areas of opportunity and offer tips and best practices to help new affiliates achieve maximum ROI.

MODERATOR:
• Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO, Offers.com

PANELISTS:
• Will Martin-Gill, Director, eBay Partner Network
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
• Shawn Collins, Affiliate, Blogger and Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
• Brook Schaaf, Affiliate and CEO, Schaaf Consulting
• Gil Abir, VP, Corporate Partnerships, Payoneer, Inc. less 

UK Search Engine Benchmark Report 2009

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

UK Search Engine Benchmark Report 2009

View more presentations from Econsultancy .com.

MediaTrust Overview Fighting Internet Marketing Fraud

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Media Trust Overview Fighting Internet Marketing Fraud

View more documents from MediaTrust.

View more documents from MediaTrust.

Submit Nominations for the 2010 Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/submit-nominations-for-the-2010-affiliate-summit-pinnacle-awards/
The fourth annual Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards will be presented on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at Affiliate Summit West 2010, taking place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Nominations are being accepted for the six Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards through November 30, 2009.

These awards recognize exceptional performance in affiliate marketing.
Here are the winners from the previous Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards:

• Affiliate of the Year – Mike Allen
• Affiliate Manager of the Year – Angel Djambazov
• Exceptional Merchant – CelebrateExpress.com
• Affiliate Marketing Advocate – Melanie Seery
• Best Blogger – Scott Jangro
• Affiliate Marketing Legend – Kellie Stevens

Submit your nominations at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/pinnacle-award-nomination/.
Video: Affiliate Summit West 2009 Pinnacle Awards

Ad networks must unite to fight fraud! Volunteers? » Adotas

Ad networks must unite to fight fraud! Volunteers? » Adotas

ADOTAS - “We are seen as the ugly stepchild of online marketing,” Jivan Manhas of MediaTrust told the crowd at the Performance Marketing Leadership Summit hosted by OfferVault. “We call it performance marketing because the term affiliate marketing is tainted.”

No one in the packed room at the DoubleTree in midtown Manhattan disagreed. It’s no secret that during the past 18-20 months, widespread fraud has greatly harmed ad networks and advertisers — and given them an ugly reputation. Big-budget advertisers are staying on the sidelines.

The solution seems to be for everyone in the segment band together to fight fraud. So who first?

Uniting is a tough proposition for ad networks as they fight tooth and nail for their best publishers and aren’t keen on sharing them. The network space has been fragmented for a long time and communication channels are lacking if they even exist. In general, networks have been too reactive Manhas lamented.

“Our industry has dropped the ball on this issue,” he said. “We got all excited about the numbers, but no one has built the technology to really take advantage…. We should have had antifraud tools built into platforms years ago.”

And the scammers have become so arrogant as to openly advertise for CPA network accounts on sites like Twitter.

“These guys are living like kings,” he said. “They probably have hundreds of accounts and are just milking them.”

MediaTrust has found a way to wipe most of the fraud out of its network, but it hasn’t been a pretty process. Manhas noted that 95% of fraud derived from unverified publishers; so MediaTrust simply separated the good eggs from the bad eggs — they demanded each of their publishers provide them with referrals. Those who couldn’t comply were shown the door.

The company was given a hard time on many advertising forums, but ultimately the purge was successful. The few good publishers improperly kicked out came back and stated their cases, and ultimately rejoined the network.

However, the industry needs standardization to really take a bit out of this crime. Law enforcement officials aren’t considered a viable option as the fraud is difficult to explain and many scammers are internationally located.

A blacklist? What criteria would force an affiliate on it? There was little agreement. A whitelist? How would you manage such a thing and maintain network privacy? A third party? But who would run it?

Manhas saw potential in HitPath’s recently released tracking solution, which shared blacklisted publishers with other websites. But he advocated for a third-party agency similar to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (which he noted was not set up to monitor performance marketing), but more specific to the cause. He cited the Performance Marketing Alliance, but called it only a starting point that needed industry support.

“We must lead the charge to build an industry association,” Manhas said. “Industry leaders have to come together to fight fraud.”

This sentiment seemed to be shared throughout the room, but the path to making that happen was up for debate. Until a universal solution is found, ad networks have little choice but to be extra vigilant in vetting the affiliates on their networks. As MediaTrust found, a purge could do a network a lot of good.