Google announced today that they are launching the “Google Affiliate Network”. This further integrates and consolidates Performics after Google acquired DoubleClick Performics. Most importantly this is a significant validation of the effectiveness and viability of the affiliate marketing channel.

The integration marks the beginning of the next evolution in affiliate marketing through consolidation and innovation. The industry needs to evolve as performance marketing becomes a very important channel for advertisers and publishers. Additionally, current economic conditions have mandated the need for more effective spending. I think this will create a new round of industry consolidation as it moves from ad networks and exchanges into the affiliate marketing community. Accountability is king right now, and performance marketing offers the best ROI across multiple distribution channels such as email, search, display, mobile and social media.

The most important aspect of this announcement is that it moves the industry away from the “network” and closer to being platform-centric. We firmly believe the next evolution of performance marketing is about open, modular and multi dimensional platforms as we move away from one dimensional networks.

Here is the announcement from Chris Henger, group product manager for the Google Affiliate Network.

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great things together.

Sincerely,

Chris Henger

Group Product Manager
Google Affiliate Network

An affiliate marketing panel at the 2008 Internet Retailer Conference led by panel moderator George Michie from RKG allegedly turned into an unethical and irresponsible affiliate marketing bashing session. Linda Buquet at 5 Star Affiliate Programs reported in a post that about 400 merchants attended a panel session that turned into a 90 minute rant about what scum-bags affiliates are.

The session led to this video interview with Larry Joseloff, VP of content at Shop.org talking about the state of affiliate marketing, where it’s going, and how it needs to reinvent itself. He makes some valid points but for the most part seems a bit out of touch with the inner workings of the affiliate marketing channel. He also didn’t really offer any thoughts on ways to improve the channel.

This issue is nothing new to the industry and is actually one that is being addressed with the formation of the PMA “Performance Marketing Alliance”which will be working with affiliates, merchants, networks and service providers to set standards and govern this very large and valuable marketing channel.

The disturbing part of this recent event is how the panel was poorly led by its moderator George Michie -  who not only led this unethical and irresponsible style of panel moderation, but then continues to speak out of both sides of his mouth with a backhanded apology that instead re-bashed affiliate marketing without one shred of data to substantiate his rant. This not only demonstrates how a panel should not be moderated, it also demonstrates poor leadership that creates a negative image of the entire online marketing industry’s integrity. Here’s an excerpt:

Finally, I implied in my talk that most affiliates were “bad guys”. That was wrong. I apologize to those I offended. However, I do believe that the vast majority of the $3 Billion in affiliate commissions that will be paid out this year will go to cheaters, and other programs that add no value for retailers.

Does this not put him in the same ethics category as the few affiliates (out of the many) who he rants about? Is it not a moderators job to be a leader and provide an objective platform on all sides of the panel discussion? Why was there no representation from the affiliate marketing side of the business to speak about the channel? It seems that he was instead more interested in taking the opportunity to self promote his PPC channel and services.

Shawn Collins has posted a sound response on his blog “Consultants Can Fix Affiliate Marketing” that challenges and counters George Michie’s childish BS! There is also a good affiliate discussion in ABestWeb regarding the panels lack of affiliate representation. 

You can read my response in the comments HERE.

Great news from the front line of the New York State Affiliate Tax (also known as the Amazon Tax) front. After dropping their New York affiliates Overstock has turned around and joined Amazon in fighting the affiliate tax. The news was fist broken this weekend by Linda at 5 Star Affiliate Programs who along with Heather Paulson and Shawn Collins has been following the events closely and getting key information out into the affiliate community. I have to say I am impressed at how our community has collaborated through the use of social media to create a voice and ground swell against the tax issue.

I was fortunate to be speaking to our business partner Adrian from Meet Innovators who had been reading our posts and he told me he was going to interview Patric Byrne the CEO of Overstock. Adrian asked what questions would I like to have asked about the current issues. The interview just came out today and not only shows Overstock’s position that this tax is ridiculous, but also talks about how valuable (and large) Overstock’s affiliate marketing program is and that it is a very important part of their marketing initiatives. Here are a few segments from the interview:

Patrick: About 15 years ago, the Supreme Court found that you cannot hold a catalog company responsible for collecting out-of-state sales tax. There are 7,200 taxing jurisdictions in the United States. In some jurisdictions, cotton candy is candy. In some, cotton candy is food, and food and candy have different tax rates. A company in Utah, for example, cannot sit here and know the right way to tax every possible product in Paducah, Kentucky. It is impossible.

The Supreme Court wisely said that the burden cannot be put on the out-of-state retailer. Therefore, I think New York’s law is directly unconstitutional. We’re not suing the state for any money. We’re suing to enjoin them from ever acting upon this law, and we’re trying to get the Court to throw out the law.

We had to drop the affiliates because of the risk of not collecting the affiliate tax and then someday having New York win. We would get dinged for that. So we had to drop the affiliates immediately.

The decision to seek an injunction is the right long-term thing to do. We have a law firm in New York, and we’re putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into this.…….

Adrian: Do you have a large affiliate program or is most of your revenue from Super Bowl ads and type-in traffic?

Patrick: Affiliates are very nice double-digit percentage of our business. The outside sees our growth of $200 to $800 million, and it may look like it was all smooth. It really was four to five different things we found that worked. One of the big ones is the affiliate business.

We were doing less than $1 million a year in affiliate business when we discovered this was a great opportunity for us. The affiliate business is still a very healthy chunk of our business, larger than $100 million.

Last year, Amazon dealt a real blow to their affiliate program by basically saying they were going to stop paying affiliates or only pay a drastically reduced fee on a wide range of products. Our affiliates bring us value, and we have supported them. We’ve regularly won prizes such as “Merchant of the Year” and “Program of the Year” from Link Share. That is a testament that we, as a company, take our affiliate team very seriously….

The tail end of the interview speaks about how the affiliate community can get involved and help Overstock and Amazon fight the Tax. Please take the time to do something regardless of whether you are directly involved with this tax. This looks like it could spread to other states if this is not stopped dead in it’s tracks. Make your voice heard! Thank you Patrick Byrne for stepping up to the plate. Special Thanks to Adrian for getting this interview and information for us. We hope to have more news from the IAB public policy front lines.

AFFILIATE PARTICIPATION NEEDED

Peter Figueredo’s post on Revenews regarding marketing data makes me think he must have been reading my mind last week. There is far too little affiliate performance marketing research and data for such a big segment of the online marketing industry. We have been working on our new performance marketing platform that will be launching this year and have found very little data compared to other online marketing vertices’s. Our Advaliant performance marketing division has been conducting our own research and focus groups to pro-actively collect data that can be used to develop solutions for the affiliate marketing community.

Most of the existing data is skewed to the advertiser and merchant perspective. The affiliate side of the business is not properly represented in a way that can help solution and service providers be more proactive in empowering affiliates with tools to help them grow their business.

For this reason Peter’s company NETexponent has launched an affiliate marketing research case study that consists of 26 SHORT QUESTIONS (SURVEY). Those who take a few minutes to fill in the survey will be provided with a copy of the data.

The survey goal is to give the affiliate community a clear understanding of :

• How to best communicate with affiliates
• Tools and information affiliates need and find missing in the market
• a better understanding of who affiliates are and their challenges

THE SURVEY IS HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL (note to all affiliates) the survey data shared is only aggregate information.

We strongly urge everyone to participate. We know there are needs in the market that are not voiced in a way that allows companies in our community to help create value for affiliate and advertiser partners. This data helps us to help you (no i am not quoting the movie Jerry Maguire)

Other sources of affiliate data include:

• AffStat
• Jupiter Research on Affiliate Marketing
• Marketing Sherpa’s Affiliate Study
• Performics Affiliate Study

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 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 affliate 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.

This article is written by Carsten Cumbrowski.

XML (such as RSS) datafeeds and web services are the new buzzwords in affiliate marketing. Let me try to explain to the non-technical folks what all of this is, what it’s good for, and what it is not good for - and why.

Web Services Basics and Some Technical Stuff

To get a general idea about what “web services” are, take a look at this PDF. The guys from Apache did a good job explaining it in a short and simple manner.

Web services are based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language). The latter two were developed in a joint effort by Sun, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, and IBM.

Web services are “next generation.” The general technology has been around for a while, but it’s now maturing (similar to AJAX). Things come together and fall into the right place to really exploit the technology’s advantages in an easy-to-use and reliable environment.

Web Services Development

Here is a link to an excerpt from a Wrox book about open source web services using NuSOAP and PHP (PDF). You can also just search for “NuSOAP PHP WSDL” at your favorite search engine to get a good list of sites about it.

 

On the latest Microsoft platform, it is even easier. Web services are fully integrated into the current version of the .NET Framework 2.0. The MS Visual Studio 2005 Development Environment (ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#.NET, etc.), which is used by Windows developers, makes it really easy to work with web services.

The new MS SQL Server 2005 also has built-in web service support to allow: easy publication of data via web service; receipt of data; or going the whole nine yards with interactive and bidirectional communication - for an API, for example. Microsoft released its new software mentioned above at the end of last year.

If you use older technology like MS SQL Server 2000, VB6, older .NET Frameworks, etc., you need to install and use the SOAP Toolkit for Windows, which you can download here.

XML data are today mainly processed pretty “raw” via applications using tools that are based on the DOM Object Model. Today, the necessary components are included with operating systems and/or browsers so as to be a non-issue when it comes to widespread application. The whole RSS, ATOM, BLOG, AJAX usage is based on that.

Developers need to “mess around” way too much with the basics (raw XML) using that technology. Because XML allows you to do a lot of things and can become quite complicated, many things can go wrong during the send-and-receive process on either end. That’s why RSS and ATOM Standards have been established. Those are, in essence, nothing more than XML files that have a very specific definition of structure. It’s not flexible, though, and such inflexibility makes it hard to overcome problems.

A good example is product datafeeds. The information in a (generally useful) product feed goes beyond the definitions of RSS (2.0). Google Base was working around the problem by “extending” RSS and thus created a proprietary format, and we are back to square one. Web services using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) solve that problem.

Application and Use of Web Services

At this time, there are not really any “generic” plug-and-play tools for affiliate marketing available using web services, but that will change quickly, as web services are more and more commonly used.

 

Web services will not make old-fashioned datafeeds in the form of delimited (and maybe zipped) files obsolete.

If you have a lot of products and the affiliate requires having all the products in its database for special processing, a web service is probably not such a good idea. However, the question is, “Do I need all the product data in my database for what I am doing with the data?” That’s a question that can be answered “No” in most cases.

If I just want to have a little storefront or need the list of all your “widgets,’” collectibles, or your price for a specific UPC for price comparison, I don’t have to have all of the data in my database. If I can make a request, in real time, to your site/servers and get the data I need, when I need it, the process will work fine. It’s even better if I can get the information directly and in real time, because it is up to date. You can tell me availability, the current price (no more outdated prices on my site), etc.

You see where this is going and I believe that you are going to like it!

Old-fashioned Datafeeds

When it comes to “old-fashioned” file feeds, I prefer to work with delimited files. There are less errors possible, the file is smaller, and most “classic” applications and tools (Excel, MS SQL Server 2000, etc.) can work with it. XML files make sense only if you use the data to specify variations of the same product - variations that are virtually the same with only minor differences, such as different sizes and colors for clothes.

 

It is a bit tricky with delimited (two-dimensional) feeds to handle those differences.

Option 1. Use delimited data within a single record (using a different delimiter than for the general feed) e.g., the “Tab” delimited datafeed has a column “colors” which contains a comma delimited list of all available colors for the product. That gets complicated when you have combinations of properties like size and color when not all combinations are available, or when other things change for certain combinations - like price or shipping cost.

Option 2. For every unique variation of the product, send a complete product record in the feed. The disadvantage here is that it looks horrible on the affiliate site if there are no means provided to “group” the variations under a “master” SKU and avoid the seemingly duplicate items in the product listings. See a practical example.

 

XML feeds can also have more data for a simple record. The limitations for delimited files vary from platform to platform, but I think that in our business it does not really matter. I have not seen a product feed with too much product information. It is usually the other way around. I recommend taking a look at my article Merchant Product Datafeeds for Affilates 101 to learn more about datafeeds. I also suggest that you visit my Affiliate Datafeeds and Webservies Resoures Page.

There are places where you are better off with XML, but honestly, I have not seen a merchant who:

a) generates XML datafeeds because of that reason; and
b) does it properly.

I believe (but can’t prove) that most merchants today are providing XML feeds mainly so they can say that they have an XML feed (that is, using a buzzword, being trendy, modern, touting the latest technology).

 

Forget about CSV when it comes to Datafeeds

I am searching for the person who can show me the benefits of a two-dimensional (Excel Sheet Style) FILE based product datafeed over a delimited one.

 

I agree that “comma delimited” is probably not the best choice for a product datafeed, but that is because of the nature of the data in the feed. A comma in the product description can blow your whole feed if not treated properly on your side and mine.

That’s the reason I believe TAB or PIPE (|) delimited feeds are the best solution. “TAB” is a character which has no use on the web anyway (there is no TAB in HTML) and PIPE is a character which I have not seen yet as valid character in product content.

Sources of Background Information and Resources

Sources of Background Information
XML Specification at W3C - XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language
DOM Specifications at W3C - DOM stand for Document Object Model
SOAP Specifications at W3C - SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol
WSDL 1.1 Specifications at W3C - WSDL stands for Web Services Description Language

 

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML and is nothing new; it was previously known as “remote scripting.” Microsoft’s Remote Scripting (or MSRS) was introduced in 1998. The term ‘Ajax’ was coined on 2/18/2005 by Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path.

To make it easy to find public web services, IBM, Microsoft, and Ariba started the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) project. See details at the project’s official website.

The passport authentication system is one of the web services in Microsoft’s .NET initiative, and is available without charge at the moment, so developers can use passport authentication within their own sites.

RSS-Extensions from Google (used for Google Base, for example), Microsoft and Buy.com
Microsoft’s Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML.
Google Data APIs Protocol (GData)
Buy.com RSS 2.0 Product Module Definition Version 1.0
Also interesting: Web Services article at AListApart.com.

Additional Information and Resources
APIs and Web Services Resources - Website Development, APIs and Web Services Resources, Tools and Articles
XML For Everyone - SQL Server Standard Magazine (eMag and Print), 09/2006 Issue
Webservices.XML.com - Articles and News dedicated exclusively to Web Services.
“Webservices” at XML.com - Keyword Search Results Listing.

 

This is one of the most basic laws of the universe based on Karma. “What comes around goes around”. This applies to our everyday lives AND our business practices. I think too many people forget about this principle in creating business partnerships and building teams. Trust me, I have seen this law affect companies that we all know (and shall remain nameless), and they have felt the pain of this invisible law. It is essential to embed this thinking into our company cultures.

There’s an old folk song about a thirsty traveler who comes across a pump in the desert. An attached note explains that there’s a jar of water buried nearby to prime the pump. You’ve got to give before you get, the note says. It is up to the traveler to decide whether to drink the water from the jar or take a chance that the small amount of water invested will result in an unlimited supply of cold, clear water. You’ve got to go the extra mile. You’ve got to give before you get. You cannot expect to receive generous rewards and then decide what to give in return. You must give freely and have faith that the rewards will eventually come. As clergyman Frank Crain once said, “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.”

This positive message is brought to you by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Visit them at http://www.naphill.org.

 

Have you ever wondered what the blogoshere looked like? 

Discover Magazine published an article about Matthew Hurst’s study on visualizing and mapping of the blogosphere.

Discover Magazine says “The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you’ll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that’s about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange”.

The visual study plot s the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere from collected link data over a period of six weeks. Green links represent one-way links (that is, blog A links to blog B), and blue links indicate reciprocal links (blog B returns the favor).

1 - On the map, white dots represent individual blogs, sized according to number of links. This one in particular represents DailyKos which is visited by 500,000 people every day.
2 - The popular site Boingboing, a “Directory of Wonderful Things”.
3 - LiveJournal users (an isolated, close-knit online community of bloggers).
4 - The blue blob represents a balanced sociopolitical discourse (most links are reciprocal).
5 - An outlying island of blue represents the linked-up world of bloggers who traffic in the latest news and gossip from the world of pornography.
6 - A group of sports enthusiasts in the outskirts, many of whom, unlike the lonely pornographers, have links back to the central hot spot of the blogosphere.

This thought of the day is a core attribute of MediaTrusts culture. Going the extra mile can give you insight and a good reputation, both of which attract opportunity. Many obvious opportunities are found in places no one else has bothered to venture. If you put in the extra effort to make a good project an even better one, or you get to know your equipment better than anyone else on your shift, you will see things others overlook and be in a position to make use of them. Leaders who need a job done think first of people they know who will do it well. If other people respect you for the quantity and the quality of your work, you will find yourself advancing past others who regard their jobs as drudgery. For all the extra service that you’ve rendered, you’ll find yourself more than amply compensated by opportunities others never grasp.

the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Visit us at http://www.naphill.org.