Contextual advertising platform - now in Spanish. - Advertising - BizReport

Contextual advertising platform - now in Spanish. - Advertising - BizReport: "BizReport : Advertising : September 24, 2008

Contextual advertising platform - now in Spanish.
A new offering from Lucid Media could help marketers targeting the Hispanic population. This week, Lucid Media released a Spanish-language version of it's ClickSense contextual advertising platform. In the US, Hispanic Internet users are expected to reach more than 20 million by 2010 and researchers have found that a bi-lingual approach is the way to go.

by Kristina Knight

lucidmedia.gifThe ClickSense platform incorporates more than 14,000 categories, giving marketers the ability to highly target display ads to consumers. In addition to display, the platform allows marketers to use direct marketing and gives brand advertisers a better chance to engage this growing demograpic.

'The online buying power and growth of the Spanish speaking demographic cannot be ignored,' said Ajay Sravanapudi, President and CEO of Lucid Media. 'Given that the growth of Spanish speaking Internet users is outpacing the rest of the world's usage growth, we felt that it would be in our clients' best interests to be among the very first to market with highly targeted contextual advertising capabilities.'

According to a recent report from CommuniSpace, Hispanic consumers prefer to be active in online comm"

How to Optimize Your Landing Page

How to Optimize Your Landing Page

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MySpace Ads Platform Launches

The new MySpace Ad Platform has opened up and it looks like we have a great new social media marketing platform

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How to Optimize Your Landing Page

How to Optimize Your Landing Page

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What Do Affiliates Want?

We ask this question all the time in our industry, but does anyone really listen? At Advaliant, we like to think that we do. Recently Bryn Youngblut had some questions about our network and we listened:“I was first contacted by Peter Bordes, the CEO of MediaTrust. Advaliant is the online performance marketing division of MediaTrust. Peter is a very welcoming and friendly guy, especially since I haven’t done much using Advaliant he took the time to contact me and answer some questions I had about the network. Most companies will forward your e-mail off to their support people. It’s nice to see that people as important and busy as the CEO of a company still take the time to personally contact you.”

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What is the "performance marketing alliance"

Over the last couple of months there have been hearing rumblings about the need for an organization around performance marketing. After several starts and stops, the Performance Marketing Alliance is giving it a go.

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Getting Inside Microsoft’s Head

Getting Inside Microsoft’s Head

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Advaliant Podcast #4 - Carsten Cumbrowski

Advaliant Podcast #4 - Carsten Cumbrowski

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Interview with Jeff Molander on the "Lack of Marketing Innovation"

Interview with Jeff Molander - Part II

by Scott Parent : Sep 19, 2008 Post from the Advaliant Performance Marketing BLOG

The President of Advaliant, Jivan Manhas, talked to Jeff Molander on two different occasions. During the first interview, Jeff talked about the lack of innovation in our industry as well as how performance marketing is perceived by traditional media. A short time later, Jivan talked to Jeff again and they continued their conversation:

Jivan : Should marketing channel cannibalization be a real concern for merchants or are they simply misinformed of the value affiliates bring to a merchants program?

Jeff: Yes, it is real and and should be a concern for SOME advertisers — in particular, retailers. But to call this channel cannibalization and such is to miss the point. I’ve always called it that too but we’ve got to stop. The issue is advertisers wanting to UNDERSTAND the way their channels interact and respond to that understanding — with a more logical or “fair” way to attribute sales to channels. Ultimately that trickles down to how they want to pay — and paying on performance is what it’s all about! They LOVE CPA but it’s got to be sensible and FLEXIBLE. That is where networks like Advaliant can cash in as I see it — offer more flexibility to advertisers.

Yes, some retailers are misinformed but is that really the right way to look at it? Yes, the people running their association are echoing the negative perceptions. I suggest that they’re not mis-informed at all. THEY consider themselves informed. Bottom line: advertisers’ perception of truth drives this industry — drives their spending patterns, their investment decisions. In many cases, advertisers are ‘inclined to see things differently’ because they’ve got competing interests with their affiliate partners.

The fact is, everyone is showing up at Internet Retailer and hearing large and small brands tell horror stories about how working with affiliates and networks just isn’t worth it — or is highly questionable in terms of value. If we want to do something about it we need to move far beyond suggesting that Google is validating us now and constantly asking for more respect. We need to RE-EARN the respect of advertisers.

Advertisers perceptions are driven by:

1) Their past experiences with affiliate networks (they felt resistance when they wanted flexibility)
and
2) The nature of their customers… specifically HOW they buy.

So if we want to change things with advertisers we need to address these issues.

1) Affiliate networks need to offer more flexible tracking and payment systems that help advertisers visualize channel interaction and sensibly reward/pay performance partners (CPA, CPC — all of them).

2) Marketers are measuring and actually seeing channel interaction/inter-mingling/cross-over in the order-level data. Orders are being attributed to multiple performance partners — affiliate networks, CPC partners (shopping comparison, search, etc.), offline media promotions, etc. Networks are forced to accept this phenomenon and cannot sweep under the carpet.

On the lead generation side, advertisers leads also use affiliate marketing… but the concern isn’t as prevalent. I think because there’s so little focus on lead quality and follow-through… at the moment. Actual ROI analysis — understanding how many leads actually convert — isn’t as much a priority for, as an example, educational lead buyers. That kind of thing. In simple terms, it’s sloppy. Yet that will change in time too.

So… it’s important to remember that retailers want more from their affiliates — more value. How do they measure that? Simple: They’re hyper-focused on getting more incremental sales/leads from affiliates. In simple terms, they want affiliates to send all the customers and potential customers they can but they only want to pay for customers that buy as a direct result of their efforts. Why? Because the Web is all about measurement and this phenomenon can be measured.

BUT… does it need to be measured? All of it? I’m starting to have serious doubts in certain retail categories. Not to mention the two sets of rules that have emerged: One for CPA affiliate marketing and another for CPC Google and Yahoo (CPC). CPA affiliate marketing cannot be allowed to scale (when it does Walmart ends up on white supremacist sites). Yet Google, Yahoo, MSN et al can offer that same dangerous scale without consequence.

Jivan: Where do you see the growth for the performance marketing industry in the next 3 years?

Jeff: I hoped you’d ask that because it connects with the way retailers perceive affiliate marketing. Direct response retailers — who are at work behind the scenes making all these problems for affiliate marketers — need to get on the stick. The problem, in their very perfect and measurable direct response marketing world, manifests itself as “we’re over-spending on customers” and “it’s clouding my ability to understand which marketing channel actually works best dollar-for-dollar.”

In reality what they need to do is understand something very important. Just because it should be measured doesn’t mean it should be measured to the extend that it retards innovation — actually getting to a new place where the cost economics work better for EVERYONE involved. That same place may also offer increased volume.

If they can make that leap soon, Jivan, I think it will spur a new growth area for marketing services/performance marketing companies that can offer a holistic, scaleable value proposition to advertisers. Microsoft (Atlas), Valueclick and Google all see this and are rolling out their products. What happens to Linkshare and similar networks that don’t have a diverse offering? You know, comparison shopping, review sites, display ads, etc. Hard to say.

The eventual realization among advertisers will look like this: ALL the channels work together, in harmony and we can see how customers fit into easily identified “personas” that are based on HOW they shop for stuff. Many are already understanding as much and taking action — with companies like Valueclick.

Think of it this way: The performance channel is absolutely an “indicator” of purchase intent, Jivan. We all know this. Shoppers’ path to purchase is clear and huge, diverse networks like Valueclick can “look across” the various places consumers visit (ie. search engines, comparison shopping engines, e-mail, display, social/collaborative shopping sites, etc.). In doing so they are understanding how customers typically consider purchases. Here’s the rub: If a customer goes through a long process that starts with research… and does NOT purchase after visiting Fatwallet.com’s CPA cash-back site there’s a clear opportunity to chase them down and make them an offer. This is the future and, no, thinking that we’re being “validaded by Google” isn’t going to get us there. Affiliates need to add value or die and many are dying. This will continue and should continue as Google “goes direct.”

Briefly… I saw Scott Parent’s excellent interview with Angel Djambazov of Revenews… who is one of the smartest and most gifted talents in this industry. The guy is a tremendous critical thinker and that’s why I’m going to make this statement. Angel is missing the mark with this “Google is validating affiliate marketing” stuff. Sorry, Angel, and I’d love to debate this with you if you’ll make the time investment with me… but I’ve yet to hear anyone define what that means in terms of how this changes things. I’d like to know, how does Google’s purchase of an affiliate network change things? How can it change things? How will it change things beyond suggesting ‘rising tides float all boats’ kinds of statements? I belive that this investment is a complete disintermediation and part of a series of on-going, distructive moves by Google. I may be wrong but would love to debate it.

Where does Google see the growth coming from? We are forced to consider how Google has leveraged LACK of transparency to its advantage all while CPA affiliate networks have been held back by it. I’ll ask you to think about that one for a minute too. Think about it this way: advertisers buy vastly more traffic from Google and Yahoo with very little expectation of where or how that traffic is generated. Affiliate marketing is highly, some say unfairly, scrutinized on these factors — the 2 sets of rules I mentioned earlier. As customers expect more from search results in general and as advertisers expect to compete less with their affiliate partners what does Google do? Eliminates the affiliates — and they’ve been doing this, slowly, for years now by making it harder to be a affiliate.

Let’s face it — opacity drives Google’s historic success. Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com documents this well over the years. Why did Yahoo go the route of Panama? Opacity. Opacity plus a decent set of optimization tools (free never hurts!) equals market dominance. That’s been the winning formula but for how long? A while! Should CPA affiliate marketing be running in this direction or toward transparency? Hmm. Traditional affiliate networks tend to hide data that ID’s the traffic sources and methods whenever possible. What’s the answer? Is transparency really the answer?

Comparison shopping engines lock up data too and that’s undoubtedly driven their success in the short term. I bow to Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com who has brought that to the forefront. We already see Shopping.com reacting to market pressures coming from companies like Mercent — companies that provide tremendous transparency across PPC partners. These guys are empowering advertisers to manage PPC comparison shopping engines’ inventory similar to managing/automating paid search. In fact, some of these new paid media tools tie to back-end databases allowing advertisers to set media buying rules that are triggered by how fast a product is moving, as an example. Tools exist today that allow an advertiser to “throttle” their spending based on inventory turn — automatically. As an example, an advertiser may be able to spend $0.88 per click rather than it’s typical $0.22 IF the performance partner can move it at 65+ units per day. Woah! It makes an affiliate network look like child’s play. No offense intended of course!

My point is things are changing. It’s difficult to see where the change will come but it’s clear on what’s driving success today. It’s mostly short-term stuff. It’s all about maturation. It’s all about arbitrage really… and it’s nothing new. As my friend David Dalka points out to me regularly, this has played out in other worlds (financial services) over history. Just as ’social media’ will disappear from our lexicon so will ‘affiliate marketing’ in my opinion. If you want to participate as an affiliate or a network or any kind of intermediary between customers and advertisers — and participate in growth — you’ll need to be doing something much different than what we’ve been doing for the last ten years.

Jivan: What specific examples would you point at in terms of change and where things are going? Who are the early adopters or ‘change agents’ out there? Also, how is the performance marketing industry poised to create dynamic new forms of value with the emergence of social networks, widgets, semantic behavioral targeting?

Jeff: Here are some specific examples:

Acerno is a cost-per-action network leveraging offline purchase data of consumers to drive online behavioral offers. Think about that for a minute. They’re taking data based on store and/or catalog and/or call center purchasing and using that to make better decisions on serving up CPA offers. Who’s doing that?!

Another one — Revtrax is an honestly innovative company involved in bringing affiliate marketing into stores.

Otherwise, I see growth coming from two places: micro-networks that can help large and smaller networks FOCUS. Also, the social sphere remains un-tapped but with good reason. It’s treacherous. Transparency, authenticity and trust will each play a role in growth here. In the end, customers themselves will make or break performance marketing. This is all about our ability to carefully tap into word-of-mouth recommendations and create experiences that keep people buying, referring, recommending. It’s about experiential marketing… bringing the customer an authentic, engaging (fun) experience to the Web. Video will play a role as will existing industries — namely the direct TV/infomercial industry (as a single example). Look at innovators like Honeyshed.com. They’re taking a proven model — infomercials — adding a hip/hop element, targeting their market with appropriate products and cashing in. How will affiliate marketing evolve to capitalize similarly? Will they be forced to become the retailer or will they remain a referral partner? Companies like Shopster.com have been lobbying affiliates to convert to retailers via drop-shipping partners for a few years now.

THANKS TO JEFF FOR TAKING THE TIME TO SHARE HIS THOUGHTS AND HIS PASSION WITH US!

———

Jeff Molander is CEO of performance marketing advisory firm, Molander & Associates Inc. where heprovides executive-level guidance on digital marketing and media to multi-channel retailers, entrepreneurs and investment firms. He’s also a principal of The Partner Maker LLC, a system used by affiliate managers to drive increased revenue through better affiliate management & communications. He is co-author of forthcoming book, Paying for Performance and helped found digital marketing services company, Performics Inc.; today a division of Google. He can be reached at: jeff@jeffmolander.com.

New Advaliant Affiliate Contests Site Section

New Affiliate Contests Section | Advaliant Blog: "New Affiliate Contests Section
by Peter Bordes : Sep 2, 2008

We have launched a new section of the blog and Advaliant site that is dedicated to all the affiliate contests we’re running. We’re cranking it up with great prizes, lucrative offers and outstanding service! We have already given away two trips, cash and a Honda motorcycle. We look forward to collaborating with you to come up with more innovative ways to create contests for our affiliate partners. Please feel free to submit ideas in the comment section of the blog. At Advaliant, we work hard, play hard and give back to our affiliate community!

You can find the contest section in the right hand nav of the Advaliant Blog - including links to our current green tea contest! Or, click here to see what’s going on and how to win. If you are not an affiliate yet click here to sign up!"

GRAND SLAM Affiliate Marketing Contest..The 7th Inning Stretch - Advaliant’s Got Game

Some call it the field of dreams.

We tend to think of it a field of cash and prizes.

This summer, play the Advaliant Grand Slam. Now through September 10th when you run offers on Advaliant you will have the opportunity to earn thousands in prizes!

So the way I look at it, August is the unofficial countdown to the pennant races and we aren’t going to sit in the Minor’s looking to get called up. So, between now and September 10th you have a chance to play the Advaliant Grand Slam!

With a combination of strategic plays, perseverance and some solid base running you could put your hands on MacBook Air, $1800 in Amazon cash, or even a 37″ flatscreen TV delivered in time for the World Series.

How does the Grand Slam play out? If you aren’t an affiliate of Advaliant’s yet, first thing you need to do is fill out the simple form and get approved to our premium network. If you’re already a member of Team Advaliant, log in and run the series of offers listed in the Grand Slam rules. Each base has a set of offers associated with it, and as you move around the bases, you become eligible for more prizes while earning more revenue. If you complete the requirements for all three bases the top producer will win their choice of a MacBook Air or an $1800 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

Home | 12seconds.tv (alpha)

Home | 12seconds.tv (alpha):

"12seconds.tv allows friends and family to record and share short video updates about what they are doing or where they are. You can use a webcam or a cellphone. It's a FREE, easy, and fun way to stay in touch. Join now and get started!"

10,000 Dollar Affiliate Contest - Win a 50 inch Plasma TV and More

Advaliant is blowing it up again in August with a $10,000 Affiliate Contest. Win one of these prizes & get in touch with your inner gamer-geek-self. Grand prize: $5000 gaming package that includes a 50″ plasma TV, a Bose Lifestyle 28 Series III home entertainment system & a 60 GB Playstation 3!

The August affiliate contest offers other great prizes too. The Advaliant team is giving away a whopping $10,000 worth of gear. If you’re an affiliate, sign in and get started. If you’re not an affiliate yet, join Advaliant today.

Overstock Files Lawsuit to Fight New York Tax Law - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs

A very important issue that has been gaining a head of steam and needs more involvement from our interactive marketing community. the below is a very important post from Linda Buquet at 5 Star Affiliate Programs. Please take the time to read all the information and get involved by spreading the word thru social media. So Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, post it to Facebook!

Overstock Files Lawsuit to Fight New York Tax Law - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs: "BIG Breaking News! While I gave Overstock a seriously hard time over dropping their New York affiliates - now I need to give them a HUGE thank you on behalf of the affiliate marketing industry for their latest move!

We really needed another major retailer to challenge this law as Amazon did and now we have it! Overstock just announced yesterday, they filed their own suit.

“The complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court calls upon the court to issue an injunction and to declare the law unconstitutional.”

Can’t believe I broke this story and no one in the industry has blogged it yet. Then again, I’m overly obsessed and constantly scouring the net for news on this issue. I think this could help us even more than the Amazon suit, for a variety of reasons. Hopefully I can help spread the word to let people know. I’ll get a twit and an email out to key people in the industry who I’m working with on this issue.

We are coordinating a New York Tax panel discussion for next week’s Affiliate Marketing Insider Radio show. Maybe I can get Overstock legal to be on the show and comment on their stance with affiliates and this suit.

Overstock.com Challenges Constitutionality of New York’s Internet Tax Law
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/1512/overstock-lawsuit-new-york-tax-law.html

There are other posts on RelevantlySpeaking.com about this issue and our Advaliant division of Mediatrust getting involved.

Another good link is to the Forbes article calling the New York State Amazon Tax unconstitutional.

Its important that our community collaborate on this tax and make our voice heard. This is a call to action for all to participate in any way getting this viral. Please join in!
OTHER HELPFUL LINKS:
http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/internet-retailer-on-the-ny-affiliate-tax/

5 Star Affiliate Program’s Linda Buquet proactive call to action commentary and updates (a must read)

Kevin Webster of the 72 Kilowatts blog started a post on ABestWeb, “Merchants who ALREADY collect New York Sales Tax.”

Danny Martin of iStockphoto

We talk a lot on Relevantly Speaking about how companies are using social media in nearly every form. For the purposes of this post, let’s talk about video content. Let’s say we’ve convinced you to give it a try and you’re ready to start a video series for your company. You have a camera and you’ve shot some footage, but how do you add polish to the finished product? One tool that we use here at MediaTrust is a company called iStockphoto. They have thousands of high-quality images and HD videos that you can purchase and use in your productions. Businesses are using them in their presentations, bands are using them to make low-budget videos, and filmmakers are using them to supplement the footage they can’t get on their own.

For this episode we pull out some footage from the vault. This was shot in March when Christopher and I were covering SXSW. I think you’ll find it helpful.

RelevantlySpeaking HD podcast now on AppleTV

RelevantlySpeaking HD podcasts are now available thru Apple TV. Now all we need is a Apple social network to make it complete!

Don't Underestimate the Longtail | Relevantly Speaking

Don't Underestimate the Longtail | Relevantly Speaking: "Don’t Underestimate the Longtail
by Scott Parent : May 27, 2008

One of the most powerful things about the web is the seemingly infinite archive of content. Want to see Doug Flutie’s hail mary pass on YouTube, you can. How about Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at the Superbowl? Yep, it’s all there on the web for anyone to view at anytime.

This weekend I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Starring opposite Harrison Ford is Cate Blanchett. Seeing her on-screen made me want to go online and look for some interviews. Oh yeah, we shot one for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in January. It got me thinking - how many other people go back and look for this type of content?

I started to look at some of the stats from the nine episodes we did for this year’s SBIFF. Immediately following the festival, the viewership numbers were hovering around the 1.1 million mark. In the three and a half months since, we’ve done an additional 80,000 views. Keep in mind that is without any additional promotion of the work. Those additional numbers are strictly from people that either searched for that specific type of content or happened on it randomly.

It has become ingrained in us through traditional media to look at viewer numbers at the time of broa"

MediaPost Publications - Discrepancy Revolution: IAB Issues Guidelines To Fix Online Media Buying Errors - 05/28/2008

MediaPost Publications - Discrepancy Revolution: IAB Issues Guidelines To Fix Online Media Buying Errors - 05/28/2008: "Discrepancy Revolution: IAB Issues Guidelines To Fix Online Media Buying Errors
by Joe Mandese, Wednesday, May 28, 2008 8:00 AM ET
As part of a broader push to improve the efficiency of interactive advertising campaigns, and to reduce the number of discrepancies that occur in online media buys, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tuesday released a set of recommendations for both advertising agencies and publishers. The white paper, dubbed the Interactive Campaign Setup Best Practices, may sound boring and mundane, but it is a critical first step toward the kind of processing errors that have made online media one of the industry's worst offenders when it comes to media buying discrepancies.

The paper, the third in a series of initiatives coming from the IAB's Ad Ops Council, was created with input from Madison Avenue, including input from agencies such as Avenue A/Razorfish, Digitas, MediaVest, and Horizon Interactive, and includes a detailed breakdown on recommended steps to take when creating and scheduling an online advertising campaign. On the agency side, the paper covers three crucial steps: The request for proposal (RFP) stage, the insertion order phase, and the campaign delivery process. For publishers, it covers steps to take during"

Affiliate Marketing Community Tax Issue Update

The NY affiliate tax issue has ignited several issues and initiatives. It now seems that Texas might be following along with CA. The issue has caused debate over the need for affiliate marketing association or to work with established groups such as the IAB.

We participated in the IAB public policy meeting this week on the new Can-Spam legislation. The IAB has been very focused on the privacy issues legislation and it effect on our interactive markets. In the last segment of the meeting MediaTrust’s CMO Trip Foster and ValueClick opened the affiliate tax discussion. The public policy team made several things very clear that don’t surprise me at all. The law is not very well thought out and applies a traditional retail tax model to the internet e-commerce model. It treats NY affiliates as physical store fronts, and physical store fronts have very clear limitations and physical boundaries. Interactive store fronts have no borders or boundaries. Traffic can come in from anywhere in the world at anytime. This is internet 101 NY state! You need to look at this thru a different lens and apply different model. Each state has different taxes on goods. There are no current mechanisms or the infrastructure in place to be able to handle every global transaction across every state.

So now we have a knee jerk reaction created by a knee jerk law. Merchants are either fighting this like Amazon, or walking away from 3,400 affiliates like Overstock. Others are following each of the 2 paths creating extremely alarming reactive behavior. Not Good. Do the math. If this spreads across other states. mean while we are in a economy that needs stimulation, jobs and productivity. This law is counter productive to the current economy. Affiliate marketers make a living from online marketing. These are real small businesses not hobbies. Many have affiliates have started to help counter the impact the economic contraction on their lives. Affiliate or the work at home model is an important part of the emerging long tail economy. This is a meaningful trend. With significant numbers being generated around the 8 billion mark and growing. This is a meaningful part of large companies down thru the value chain to the SMB’s and service providers that have been created thru the new interactive economy.

It is very important that the affiliate marketing community come together and have a voice. State legislation needs to take the time to work with the community, merchants, affiliate networks and affiliates to create a law that is very well thought out and applies to E-commerce. Not traditional retail. Sites and IP addresses can move. Physical stores cannot. NY state shoppers also transact on NY state affiliates sites when they are out on NY state. What is the ripple effect and impact on the interactive marketing community and the interactive economy in relationship to the bigger economic picture? Proper methodical legislation is needed that looks at the entire puzzle. Not one section of the puzzle, and this puzzle has many many pieces in all sizes, shapes and colors. It is NOT black and white.

We will be working with our community and participating in further IAB public policy around this issue and will post as the legislation moves along. We strongly encourage everyone to participate in raising awareness by being vocal and asking questions thru the forums, blogs, service providers or submitting a petition to affiliatepetition@gmail.com . Everyones voice counts no matter how big or small.

Here are some helpful links:

affiliatepetition@gmail.com is an anonymous point of contact to send in your thoughts or petition

Full text of law located here

5 Star Affiliate Program’s Linda Buquet proactive call to action commentary and updates (a must read)

Kevin Webster of the 72 Kilowatts blog started a post on ABestWeb, “Merchants who ALREADY collect New York Sales Tax.”

ABestWeb dedicated area to legal issues for New York affiliate marketers

ABW of merchants who have dropped New York affiliates.

ShareAsales Brian Littleton’s network position and thoughts commentary

Revenew’s Heather Paulson’s “Interview With Members of the NY State Tax Dept”

Shaun Collin’s Affiliate Blog commentary

The Affiliate State Tax is Not Our Friend

The power of social media demonstrates how information flows rapidly around a very new and troubling issue. There is a rising tide that the affiliate marketing community needs to pay close attention to. The New York State affiliate program tax has been quietly gaining a head of steam.

The buzz started yesterday when Overstock.com pulled its New York State affiliate marketing program. The Twitter marketing community lit up as the news traveled across the social web. I was Twittering with @affiliateTips Shaun Collins (who first picked up the story) that this was the beginning of a problematic trend. States wanting tax dollars act like herds of animals looking for food - even if it means putting small business owners out of business in these already trying economic times. Bravo Elliot Spitzer and Governor Patterson! Immediately @5StarAffiliate shot us and @techcrunch a Tweet that California is now looking to follow New York. Kiplinger has the coverage of the CA tax warning.

Overstock’s affiliate program manager Ryan Sorensen shared a link to Overstock’s response letter with more details and that he felt other large retailers were soon to follow. Amazon filed a complaint in State Supreme Court in Manhattan objecting to the new law. The problem is that the new tax kicks in on June 1st which means that online retailers can’t hold out for resolution of the Amazon complaint.

All this being said, we cannot sit around and wait to see where this goes. The very large and fragmented affiliate marketing community needs to come together and get involved to address this issue before it exceeds our grasp. We need to stand up as solutions & service providers and act on behalf of, and protect, our community and affiliates. We at MediaTrust have reached out to the IAB to see what actions are suggested. If you would like to work together as a collective on this issue, please contact MediaTrust thru the following email: affiliatepetition@gmail.com

This is an important issue that affects the livelihood of our industry. Lets join together to advance our cause.