Facebook's virtual currency conundrum | Blog | Econsultancy

Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly going to pull in approximately half a billion dollars this year in advertising revenue. It's a significant amount, but hundreds of millions of dollars more are being made on Facebook through virtual currency transactions that Facebook has no part of.
Facebook, of course, has its own official virtual currency, Credits, but most Facebook app developers can't integrate them with their apps, and are not required to use them.
In short, Facebook created a thriving developer ecosystem with its open platform, but the 'open' nature of it has potentially cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Ironically, apps developers like Zynga, which have developed own virtual currency, are some of Facebook's most lucrative advertisers. They make lots of money from their Facebook apps, and Facebook gets some of that back in the form of ad buys.
But if Facebook is going to get where it needs to go, that's not enough. Rumors are now circulating that Facebook may be planning to inject itself into the virtual currency trade that takes place on its service by mandate.
According to Insider Facebook, Facebook is talking to large developers about virtual currency, and mandatory use of Facebook's Credits system is on the table. Ostensibly, Facebook would be looking to take a relatively substantial cut of the revenue. Perhaps even "an Apple-like range around 30%" as Inside Facebook speculates.
From a business standpoint, this is a no-brainer. Facebook could probably generate more than $1bn in revenue in 2010 if it muscles in on the virtual currency business. And there are good reasons why developers would be interested in Facebook playing a stronger role. After all, by making Credits universal, there'd be a single virtual currency that all Facebook users can put to use on any app that features virtual currency. That, of course, makes the virtual currency more valuable to end users.
Unfortunately, there are a number of challenges that may make Facebook's life difficult. A mandatory Credits regime would:

• Change the very nature of the Facebook platform. By mandating that Credits be a virtual currency option in all apps that employ virtual currency, Facebook would be going back on what it told developers when it launched the platform: "You are free to monetize your canvas pages through advertising or other transactions that you control". Even if developers are free to use third party virtual currency platforms alongside Credits, the requirement that Credits be used too is not "control".
• Change Facebook's relationship with developers. Right now, developing an app for Facebook doesn't create a formal relationship with Facebook. Yet if Facebook mandates that all (or some) developers support Credits, it will essentially turn Facebook into a development 'partner' of sorts, which could raise some interesting issues. For instance, will developers have creative control over the implementation of Credits, or would Facebook require that integration be done in a certain way? If so, it's worth considering that Facebook's requirements may be at odds with the creative desires of the developer.
• Create new responsibilities and burdens for Facebook. Right now, Facebook does have a variety of rules that developers must abide by. And it does occasionally enforce them. But even so, the recent scam offers controversy has led to a lawsuit in which Facebook is named as a defendant, even though it really wasn't involved. So imagine the potential liabilities Facebook could incur when it is directly involved with the majority of the virtual currency transactions that take place in third party apps. What if a rogue developer creates an app that scams users out of Credits, for instance? Facebook will certainly have to police against these sorts of things, but that will be tough and costly.

If Facebook does make Credits mandatory, all of the above lead me to believe that the company would likely have to move towards an App Store model for apps taking advantage of virtual currency. That's a big shift, and I can't think of any development platform that has ever made the type of transition we're talking about here: very large and almost completely open to very large and very controlled. How developers react is a big question mark. I certainly wouldn't be pleased if I had a bunch of apps making good money and was suddenly forced to invest in integrating Facebook's virtual currency system and therafter having to give up a double-digit percentage of the earnings from it.
Frankly, I think Facebook probably underestimated how successful its development platform would be. In an effort to lure developers, who in turn would build apps that would lure more users, Facebook seems to have overlooked the possibility that those apps themselves would become so lucrative. It was merely trying to get more users which it would figure out how to monetize those users later.
And so it figured it would throw developers a bone: let them figure out how to monetize their own apps. Ironically, it was the developers who created the more lucrative business model and Facebook has left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table with its "you build it, you monetize it, you keep the money" approach. Now it wants to get those dollars back. It will definitely need a lot of good luck.

Ad Management Plug-Ins And Tutorials For Your Website

The world of digital media and advertising is moving and fragmenting at a blister rate. There are so many different ways to publish and even more ways to look at monetizing your blog and web site.  There are almost to many choices out there in the noise of ad solutions, ad network & affiliate networks. Publisher also need to keep in mind that time is money, and a important aspect of any ad solution is ease of use so you can focus on quality content, users experience and the myriad of social distribution mechanisms for increase your community, traffic and reach. Smash Magazine has created a good list of plug-ins that can simplify your ability to not only manage ads on you site. But what type and how they show up on the site based on your content and users. Remember that not all ads are created equal.

"There are plug-ins for virtually every CMS and blogging platform out there that allow you to rotate banner ads or insert blocks of ad code.
This post is a collection of ad management plug-ins for WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal and Joomla! to get your started. At the end are a few tutorials for creating your own banner ad rotation scripts in PHP and ASP (so that even if a plug-in is not available for your CMS of choice, you’ll likely be able to build your own)."

1. Plug-Ins For WordPress

Who Sees Ads?
Control which visitors see ads on your website, based on where they came from, whether they’re logged in, how old the post is and more.

AdRotate
A simple tool that lets you manage banner ads (even for multiple sizes and different placement) on your website.

Ads For Old Posts
This plug-in automatically inserts an ad block in your posts once they’re past a certain age.
OIO Publisher
An ad manager that focuses on maximising your revenue, saving you time, and keeping you in complete control of your ad space. The php-script can be used to sell and serve ads and it is also available as a ready-to-be-used Wordpress plugin.
OpenX Manager
Lets you integrate the open-source ad server OpenX, along with the ability to import data from an existing OpenX server.

WP125
Manage 125×125 pixel ads without having to edit your template or keep track of when advertisements need to be removed.
Advertising Manager
A plug-in to manage Google AdSense or other ad network ads.
Twitter Brand Sponsors
Allows up to 10 different brands to syndicate their most recent tweets on your blog’s sidebar.

All in One AdSense and YPN
A plug-in to integrate AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network ads into your blog.
WordPress Classifieds Plug-In
Another plug-in to create a classifieds section on your blog.
OmniAds – WordPress Ads Plug-In
An ad plug-in that allows you to post HTML or PHP units within your code.

Post Layout WordPress Plug-In
A plug-in to let you control where your AdSense ads appear within a post.
Feed Layout
Add advertisements or other items into your RSS feed.
Smart Ads WordPress Plug-In
A plug-in to automatically insert ads at the beginning and/or end of each post, depending on the post’s length, age or category or the blog member’s status.
Another WordPress Classifieds Plug-In
An easy-to-use plug-in for creating a classifieds ad page on your blog.

AdSense Revenue Sharing
A great plug-in if you want to share your AdSense revenue with multiple authors on a single blog.

WP-banner
A plug-in that allows you to put banner ads in a widget or a DIV anywhere on your website.
Random/Rotating Ads
Show any kind of ad on your website, either in widgets or in your template.
Clickbank Hop Ad Plug-In for WordPress
Lets you add Clickbank ads to your website through a configurable widget.

2. Plug-Ins For Joomla!

Featured Entries and Ads
This plug-in lets visitors to your website purchase a featured entry or ad, and it completely automates the process, with PayPal payment included.

MultiAds
Lets you insert any type of ad in your website’s articles.
Adsense and YPN Inserter
A plug-in to insert your Google AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher Networks ads into your website automatically, with full control over position and display.
YOS Ads with pop-in and inject features
Lets you insert ads on your website via either a pop-in (separate window) or inject page (between two other pages).
Hide GoogleAds in PDF
If you let users create PDFs of your website content, this plug-in will hide AdSense ads in those PDFs.
Text Link Ads Module
An easy-to-use plug-in that handles all the technical aspects of managing Text Link Ads.

Hide Google Ads in RSS Feed
This plug-in prevents AdSense ads from showing up in your website’s RSS feeds.
Chitika eMiniMalls Mambot 1.0
Automatic integration of Chitika eMiniMalls in your website, including automatic placement of ads, selection of a default ad channel and color adjustment of ads.
Phoca – Google AdSense Easy
A very quick and easy plug-in for adding AdSense ads to your website by just copying and pasting in your AdSense code.

Page Peel Banner
A plug-in that manages page peel banner ads for your website, including impression and click statistics. It supports JPG and Flash ads.
AdSense Deluxe Module
AdSense management plug-in that includes a complete set of ad formats.
AdSense Easy Insert
Allows insertion of two AdSense ads around your content (one before and one after).

3. Plug-Ins For Drupal

Advertisement Module
A module for displaying ads (graphical or text) in a random order anywhere on your website. Ads can be automatically or manually inserted into your website.

ad_flash
An add-on that allows Flash advertisements to be displayed with the Drupal ad module.
Affiliate
Allows you to set up your own affiliate network and issue affiliate links to partners.
Classified Ads
A module that allows you to create a text-based classified ads section on your website.
Click-Thru Tracking
Allows website owners and admins to track click-through rates on their websites, for ads or any other links.
Pay2Publish
Allow visitors to your website to publish free listings (content) on your website and then upgrade to paid versions at any time.

Rotor Banner
A plug-in for creating blocks of rotating content on your website, where you can place banner ads or anything else you want.
Slidebox
Create ad boxes of any size that float into your page from above.
Simple Ad Block
A very simple ad management plug-in that places an ad block onto your website in which you can paste code from AdSense or any other ad network.

4. Plug-Ins For Movable Type

Page Layout Plug-In
Allows you to create and use page layout templates, which facilitate the hiding and showing of ads and other content on certain pages.

Google AdSense Widget
This widget allows you to view your Google AdSense daily earnings in your Movable Type dashboard.

5. Ad Management Tutorials And Articles

Which Ad Manager Plug-In Makes Managing Ads Easiest?
This article provides a great comparison of ad management plug-ins for WordPress, listing the pros and cons of each.
Blogtalks.net
A collection of articles about managing ads on your blog, including “How to track clicks” and “Tips for using OpenAds with WordPress.”
How to Integrate Advertising into Your Blog
A great overview of things to consider when integrating advertising in your blog, as well as some practical how-to information.
How to Set Up Google Ad Manager on Your Blog/Website
Comprehensive overview and set-up instructions for using Google Ad Manager on your website or blog.

Banner Rotator
Another PHP tutorial on showing rotating banner ads on your website. This one stores information about the ads and the views that each ad gets in a MySQL database.
Rotating Banner Ads Using a Database
An ASP tutorial on creating a database-driven banner-ad rotation script.
Dynamic Banner Administration
A comprehensive ASP tutorial on putting rotating banner ads on your website.

Display Ad Optimization's Teracent Bought By Google

Yet another out of Google in the 4th quarter adding another expansion building block to the Google ecosystem. Google has bought Teracent for an undisclosed amount. Teracent has developed a platform for dynamic ad optimization and enables dynamic offer management for direct response and brand marketers who want to turn online display advertising into performance media. The startup is led by Vikas Jha was previously was VP of Engineering at Inktomi for 7 years.

Teracent has raised $5.8M to date much of it from New Enterprise Associates. Teracent competes with Tumri, which seems to be doing better in terms of revenue and has a deal with Yahoo to optimize display ads there.
Another smart move by Google. Display ad optimization is a nascent market but has proven to be effective.This further confirms the emergence and growth of dynamic smart ad technology that turns display inventory into interactive units.
View - site

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

Quick Links
Not yet a MediaTrust Publisher?
Join MediaTrust Today!

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.

MediaTrust Named #1 Performance Marketing Network | Mediatrust Blog

MediaTrust Named #1 Performance Marketing Network | Mediatrust Blog

MediaTrust Named #1 Performance Marketing Network

by MediaTrust : Nov 6, 2009

MediaTrust has been named the #1 Performance Marketing Network by Blue Book, a publication of Revenue Performance Magazine.

From Blue Book:

What Is The Blue Book Top 20 Ranking?

“As we put this guide to ad networks and exchanges the single biggest problem that advertisers and publishers expressed to us was the difficulty of finding and selecting good partners.

There’s no shortage of networks and exchanges from which to choose. At last count we personally knew of well over 400 and we are reliably informed that there are a few hundred others in private beta, running as merchant networks or that are simply below the radar. Given the plethora of options, how to decide?”

Why We Like Them?

“Recently named the 9th fastest growing private company in 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?”

You can check out the complete Top 20 list HERE.

LinkShare Launches #tweetshop Affiliate Twitter Tool

LinkShare has announced a new tool called #tweetshop that enables affiliates to search for products and recommend them with affiliate links to their Twitter followers from a single interface.

The #tweetshop tool is a new Bento Box feature.

There is a good post and video HERE on Shawn Collins AffiliateTip.com blog

More details at http://www.linkshare.com/publishers/bentobox/twitter/.

A Framework for Building Customer Experiences - Peter Merholz - HarvardBusiness.org

A Framework for Building Customer Experiences - Peter Merholz - HarvardBusiness.org

This is an excellent article from Harvard business review regarding customer experience. There is good information that we need to use in our industry. Affiliate marketing is still a young segment in the online marketing industry. We as an industry need to create better customer experience standards.

A Framework for Building Customer Experiences

2:12 PM Thursday June 11, 2009

Tags:Customers, Decision making, Organizational culture

In helping a client understand how to reframe their internal conversations to support delivering customer experiences, we shared with them the following framework that has helped our thinking.

Systems: Companies have core systems that serve as the foundation for their efforts. The most obvious example are IT systems — ERP, accounting, CRM, and the like. Perhaps less obvious, but in certain cases quite crucial, would be facilities — such as real estate, architecture, and infrastructure.

Procedures: The policies, processes, and business rules that provide the "logic" for how the business is run. Some of this is embedded in the systems, some of this is taught to employees.

Touchpoints: The liminal spaces where engagement with customers occurs. Typically considered through channels such as in-store, call center, postal mail, or online.

Interactions: The activities in which customers engage. Any business supports dozens, if not hundreds of interactions. With a bank, you can deposit money, withdraw money, write a check, pay a bill, move money between accounts, open or close accounts, apply for a loan, etc. etc.

Experiences: The sum of what the customer takes away from the interactions they've had with you.

Many companies don't intentionally plan their customer experiences, and as such, design from the inside-out.

This is particularly true when companies consider CRM initiatives. One would hope that something focused on "customer relationships" would take the customer to heart when being developed. Instead, as Edmund Tribue points out, "Most companies have concentrated on automating processes for their internal users... But what about the customer? This mindset is perfectly illustrated by the most common CRM objectives: increase sales, drive cross-selling, minimize resources, reduce ancillary expenses, and lower the number of costly channel interactions. Those objectives indicate an inside-out view that implicitly treats the processes and internal metrics as more important than the customer."

Customers have no idea what's going on in those layers below "interactions", and just end up feeling insulted and abused by these mercenary mindsets.

Instead, companies need to identify what makes for a delightful customer experience, and coordinate their interactions, touchpoints, procedures, and systems to support that.

This harkens back to the my last post about Target's ClearRx. By starting with a prototype, an embodiment of an experience, Target was then able to align the appropriate interactions, touchpoints, procedures, and systems that would support it.

And as the Target story pointed out, it's not a one-way street. Reasonable limitations with the systems, regulatory restrictions on procedures, those are going to ripple back up and ultimately affect the experience. But by beginning outside-in, you make better decisions when you deploy from the inside-out.

(Thanks to my colleague Brandon Schauer whose work helped shape this article.)