Make Money Online

A new study out by the Pew Internet and American Life Project tells us how consumers get their news. No surprise: 92 percent of Americans use multiple platforms (television, newspapers, radio, the Internet) to get news on a typical day. But the real story, of course, is the impact of the Internet and the fundamental ways it is changing consumer behavior.

The Internet is now third in popularity for news, behind only local television and national television news. But here are some key findings that go a lot deeper:

• Most people use between two and five online news sources
• 65 percent say they do not have a single favorite website for news
• 33 percent of cell phone owners access news on their cell phones
• 37 percent of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter
• 50 percent of American news consumers say they rely to some degree on people around them to tell them the news they need to know
• More than 80 percent of online news consumers get or share links in emails.
• 70 percent of Americans think “the amount of news and information available from different sources today is overwhelming.”

What can online marketers learn from these statistics?

1.    It appears that the Internet has replaced traditional newspapers and news magazines, but it has also encouraged news-hopping, so to speak. If consumers are using multiple news sources rather than a single source, clearly no one media outlet has garnered their loyalty. Are consumers not getting an objective perspective from a single source? Or do they get different kinds of news from different sites? Maybe consumers are more discriminating than they’re often given credit for and they like a story to be validated by more than one source. Whatever the reason, it means online marketers shouldn’t commit all of their ad dollars to just one online news source.

2.    Consumers will likely rely more and more on their cell phones to get online information and news. As I wrote in a previous post, 2010 could become a banner year for mobile usage, so online marketers need to plan now to get their fair share of this marketplace.

3.    The old news paradigm seems to be crumbling. It used to be that authoritative figures delivered the news via traditional media channels. Newspaper reporters’ stories and columnists’ commentaries carried weight. Television anchors were respected. The news was the news.

The new news paradigm is very different. Professional journalists are being replaced with citizen journalists and bloggers. While amateur journalism may not always be a good thing, it does represent a much broader spectrum of observation and opinion. Media outlets like CNN encourage consumers to send in their video reports. Over a third of consumers are taking a participatory role in the news now, and that’s likely to increase. They’re sharing the news with friends and acquaintances, discussing it online, and not just accepting news at face value. For the most part, online marketers already recognize the consumers’ collaborative power. That’s why they are building in opportunities for social interaction and feedback into their marketing programs.

4.    It may not be surprising that the majority of news consumers are overwhelmed by information. Television channels have proliferated and the Internet has opened up more informational opportunities than any consumer could ever handle. But this may suggest another opportunity: What if an online marketer could help the consumer cut through the clutter? It’s already being done by organizations such as SmartBrief, a media company that hand-picks relevant news, summarizes it, and delivers it with links to the original stories in e-mail newsletters tailored to 25 different industries.

We all recognize that the Internet has fundamentally changed the manner in which people consume information. As marketers, we need to also recognize what each of us can do to help solve information overload – and to become such a vital resource that a consumer will choose the information we provide over someone else’s.

See more here:
4 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From How Consumers Get Their News

AOL Inc. has sold its affiliate marketing business, Buy.at, for an undisclosed price to Digital Window Ltd., which runs AffiliateWindow and ShopWindow.  Digitial Window claims that the purchase of Buy.at will make them the largest “performance-based marketing” group in the UK, a place believed to be currently held by TradeDoubler.

AOL, which separated from Time Warner Inc. late last year, bought Buy.at in 2008 for a reported $150 million,  a price unconfirmed by the company. The plan was to integrate it with the ambitious Platform-A, its ad platform designed to cover every market and niche for its own properties and its ad network.  Platform-A has been renamed AOL Advertising.

If anyone has more news on the transaction, please let us know.

More:

The Winter Olympics kicked off just days ago in Vancouver, Canada. As always, the primary media coverage is traditional television, but there’s a new and essential spin this year – social media.

As Alexandra Samuel points out in her blog for Harvard Business Review,  the Winter Olympics is “a living social media experiment.” While social media was used during the Summer Games in Beijing, “this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime,” says Samuel.

Social media is having an impact that goes beyond the Olympics Games themselves. For example, the city of Vancouver became a hotbed of social media activity well before the games even started. Vancouver’s local media coverage of the Olympics has also changed dramatically, according to Samuel. Citizen journalists, she says, “have provided an alternate – and often critical – take on the Games.” Linda Solomon, publisher of the Vancouver Observer, an online news magazine that recruited over 150 contributors, tells Samuel, “It’s not about crafting a story anymore, which is an art that takes many years to master. It’s about telling what you see and think, something anybody can do. This levels the playing field.”

Another area that is depending heavily on social media is the “Cultural Olympiad” – an entire series of multi-disciplinary festivals running before, during, and after the Games. The Cultural Olympiad showcases Canadian and international music, dance, theatre, visual arts, and film.

In addition to making early use of Twitter and Facebook, the Cultural Olympiad launched Canada CODE, a giant digital project that, for a year before the Olympics, provided Canadians with an online platform for “connecting, creating and collaborating” with the people of the world to present “an ever-evolving portrait” of Canadians. The culmination of CODE is an invitation to enter the “Virtual Stadium” and upload a personal photo for a chance to be a virtual part of the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

The International Olympics Committee has had to deal with the impact of social media by establishing regulations for its use. The IOC allows athletes to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools as well as blogs, but requires that they limit any posts to personal experiences. “You can’t act as a journalist if you aren’t,” said Bob Condron, director of media services for the United States Olympic Committee. “You need to do things in a first person way.” Athletes are also forbidden to reference any sponsor or advertiser that is not an official Olympic partner. Condron told Wired, “These are going to be the Twitter Olympics.”

Whatever happens during the Olympics, it seems clear that social media has changed the ground rules. Says Samuel, “On the one hand, the Olympic narrative of global community seems like a natural fit for social media… On the other hand the complexity and business model behind the Games make the prospect of grassroots storytelling a huge challenge.”

Read the rest here:
Winter Olympics a Test Case for Power of Social Media

Apparently, the newspaper industry has finally had enough – or at least the New York Times has. Word came out on Wednesday that the New York Times would start charging for its online content.
The Times has tweaked its model from all-everything or all-free with a model that will only charge its most avid users. But that’s significant, given the fact that the media as a whole tends to follow the lead of the Times in how business is done.
For the past few years, the newspaper business has tried to stop its collective bleeding. Blaming everyone from unpaid bloggers to Google, much of the consternation stemmed from regret over not charging for access from the early days of the Web.
With the Times moving ahead and pulling the trigger, look for many other newspapers to follow suit. The media has argued that it wants to benefit financially from the giant traffic stream that Google brings to its sites, but that argument may be flawed.
While it’s true that readers are going to search engines as their first place for news, they might not be biting on the hook that newspaper web sites are offering. According to a new study, 44 percent of people who scan headlines on Google don’t click through to newspaper Web sites.
When the paywall slams down around the Web there’s going to be a much tighter atmosphere for the information that fuels aggregating sites and search engines. If The Huffington Post can’t excerpt the Times as often, how does that impact the value of HuffPost?
The year of the paywall will cause ripples across the Web and force users to answer the question of whether they are willing to pay for information just like they pay for apps and music.

Originally posted here:
2010: The Year The Paywall Comes Down

In October I wrote a post about the fact that the majority of newspaper and magazine publishers were entertaining the idea of charging for online content. The biggest problem for all publishers of online content is finding a magic bullet, not yet identified, to get consumers to pay for access to that content. The latest reports by the New York Times, in what ironically are subscription required articles, indicate that 2010 may be the year of big change.

But what kind of change will it be? It seems less likely that it will be a year of paid content, and more likely to be a year of moving in a different technological direction.

Newspaper and magazine closings in 2009 continued to shrink the traditional print category. The double whammy for such publications has been the simultaneous loss of print subscribers and advertising revenue. Book publishers are starting to panic, too, as they saw the beginnings of a stronger movement to e-books, fueled by Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book readers.

That’s why it is likely that some kind of significant change for print publications will occur in 2010. They simply cannot survive current business conditions much longer.

Interestingly, magazines, newspapers and books are only representative of a larger media revolution that all of us have been living for quite some time. Look what digital media has done to the music business. First records and now CDs are becoming obsolete as digital downloads spread. We have become the iTunes generation.

Movies and television are not far behind. The entertainment industry is currently looking at ways to prevent itself from a similar digital death. Ben Weinberger’s recent Video Insider blog gives us a taste of things to come in 2010:

• Disney’s “Keychest” will enable consumers to “unlock” digital content across media formats
• Best Buy in partnership with CinemaNow will provide customers with the ability to download premium content and watch it on multiple screens
• Time Warner, Comcast, and other cable providers will offer “TV Everywhere” multi-platform access to their cable programming.

Will 2010 be the year of paid content – or will it be the year we see magazines and newspapers producing interactive digital editions? Magazines like Esquire and GQ already offer iPhone versions of their magazines. Esquire’s iPhone version, available next month for a $2.99 monthly subscription, offers scrollable articles and video.

Will 2010 be the year of the Apple tablet, rumored to be named “iSlate”? Essentially a touchscreen that’s standard page size, a tablet computer may offer print publications a new lease on life. Publication executives have supposedly met with Apple, and the result is that several magazines are creating tablet versions that allow readers to interact with articles, rearrange content, and access content unavailable in print versions. The tablet could provide a hybrid platform that brings together the best of computer and online technology. And publishers swoon to think that tablets can also provide data capture that makes ads measurable.

Whatever 2010 will bring for print publishers, it will be a year in which they will undoubtedly begin to reinvent themselves.

See more here:
What will 2010 Bring for Print Publishers?

Ever since we launched real-time and streaming quotes on Google Finance last year, we’ve heard from users how vital that up-to-date information has been. Especially in today’s volatile financial environment, current information can be the difference between a seizing an opportunity and missing it. Today, we’ve taken a big step towards improving access to current financial information: streaming financial and market news on Google Finance.

Streaming keeps information fresh

Streaming real-time quotes eliminates the 15- and 20-minute delays often associated with pricing data. Streaming the quotes keeps information on the page up to date, without having to reload.

Now, by streaming news as well, you’ll see stories appear on Google Finance as they develop minute by minute, throughout the day. You can view news on the Google Finance homepage, or the dedicated news page. Updated news items will appear automatically in the News section. News will be streamed from 8am-5:30pm ET, 90 minutes before and after U.S. trading hours.

Up-to-date information across the site

As we deliver more information, we’ve worked to improve the way we display it. In the last few months, we’ve released a few other improvements to Google Finance designed to make financial information easier to access and more usable:

• As you navigate throughout Google Finance, your recent quotes are streamed live in the left-navigation bar, so you don’t need to keep checking the same tickers.
• On company pages, all stock prices, index and sector comparisons as well as the interactive chart are streamed during market hours.
• The new interactive Related companies page lets customize a table that compares companies along the dimensions you specify.

Financial information doesn’t exist in a vacuum. News can stimulate trades, and trades of one stock can have broad market effects. Figuring how to organize all of that information and make it useful is crucial — and that’s what we’re working on.

There is still a long way to go, so stay tuned for more updates.

Posted by Andre Lebedev, Software Engineer and Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

More here:
Now on Google Finance: streaming news

If the Federal Trade Commission had the intention to spark off a wave of sometimes worried, sometimes angry and often indignant blog posts and forum chatter with their “Final Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”, they’ve certainly succeeded.

About a week ago, ReveNews contributor Andrew M. Baer, Esq, wrote “FTC Regulates Blogger, Viral Marketing Relationships: Analysis and compliance tips” stating why he’s not concerned about the FTC intentions.

The guides which come into force on 1st December, are aimed at addressing endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, with the intention of holding bloggers or other “word of mouth” marketers accountable, with the enforcement mechanism of a possible $11,000 fine.

As short-sighted and ambiguous as some bloggers have painted the guides to be, many bloggers’  objections have been equal in the fear, uncertainty, and doubt camp as they accuse their detractors. Many blogs painting worst-case scenarios and posting what-if scenarios with $11,000 fines for receiving cheap paperbacks as a freebie in the mail, writing a positive review and linking it to an Amazon affiliate link.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which comprises more than 375 leading media and technology companies is responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States and includes organizations like:
* AOL Advertising
* AT&T Internet Services
* BBC Worldwide
* Google Inc
* Microsoft Advertising
* Yahoo! Inc
* Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc
* Harvard Business Review
* CNN.com
* FOX Interactive Media
* Nokia Inc

and other technology/internet/news heavyweights in its membership roster. IAB has come out swinging off the ropes with IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg firing off an open letter to FTC chairman, Jon Leibowitz, published on the IAB website and the Huffington Post, expressing his disagreement with the guides on the basis that they are unconstitutional and should be retracted.

In case you’re wondering if the IAB is shooting from the hip, take note that the organization has attempted to start a dialogue with the FTC since March this year, with correspondence detailing(pdf) feedback on the proposed guides. The attempt to have the industry self-regulate appears to have failed, given that the FTC has expressed its intention to keep an eye and active hand in the industry.

In a FTC arranged media call on 14th October to address reporter’s inquiries on the guides, FTC’s Bureau Consumer Protection’s Associate Director for Advertising Practices, Mary Engle, stated:

Although the [Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)] contends the FTC’s Endorsement Guides are unconstitutional, the Guides apply only to marketing and they attempt to illustrate some of the factors relevant to distinguishing advertising from editorial content,” says Mary Engle, the FTC’s director of the division of advertising practices, in an email statement released today. “If particular communications do not in fact constitute advertising, as the IAB appears to be suggesting, then the Guides do not apply. Where the message is advertising, however, disseminators have an obligation to ensure it is not misleading. This includes, when it is not otherwise clear from the context, identifying when the endorser has been paid for the endorsement. Although IAB may disagree with the policy, nothing in this approach is unconstitutional,” .

From FTC’s Engle terse reply, it’s unlikely to halt the IAB’s attempt to rescind the FTC’s guides.

Even with the FTC contention that the primary targets are advertisers, rather than bloggers, have failed to assuage Rothenberg.

IAB’s Rothenberg contends that even with the FTC’s intention to go after advertisers, rather than bloggers, doesn’t mean that bloggers are off the hook. By it’s “social” nature, bloggers and their blogs are the advertising medium, hence they could still be looking at $11,000 fines.

How will this play out as the December 1st enforcement date draws near?

It’s unlikely that the FTC or IAB are going to back down at the moment, but the IAB’s Washington DC Public Policy office will be keeping very busy till then.

Continued here:

I culled through the this years Inc 5000 Advertising and Marketing list to try to pick out companies primarily focused on performance marketing and broke them into 3 categories.  Here are the top Affiliates, Affiliate OPMs, and Affiliate / CPA networks in the Inc 5000 for 2009 based on Revenue Growth from 2005 to 2008.  If I missed any companies, I appologize, it’s not always easy to identify performance marketing companies by their descriptions on inc.com  and their websites.

Here is the list:

Affiliates in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Affiliate OPMs in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Affiliate Networks in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Excerpted from:
2009 Top Performance Marketing Companies in the Inc 5000

There are few events that knock an 800 lb. gorilla off its particular perch. Sometimes laziness, atrophy, the lack of ability to adapt will do the beast in. Sometimes a competing gorilla that is younger, more aggressive, has access to better technology will usurp the spot. On rare occasion two 800 lb. gorillas will meet and marriage will do the trick.

Such is the case with Amazon’s purchase of Zappos.

A Tale of Two Gorillas

Amazon’s marketplace is a juggernaut. In Q1 of 2009 Amazon posted $4.89 billion in net sales an increase of 18% over Q1 of 2008 which should be considered an epic feat in a down economy.

Amazon not only owns the book vertical but seeks to replicate Google’s clout in search within the online retail space. Thus it has aggressively gone after every leader in a retail vertical: Ebay, Buy.com, Overstock, and of course Barnes and Noble. Amazon has paired its aggressive strategy with the production of cutting edge consumer products like the Kindle and a near zealous acquisition of numerous patents (they own the patents to 1-click checkout and 404 error pages).

Now in its 10th year Zappos owns the shoe vertical with over $1 billion in sales reported in 2008. Think about that; $1 billion dollars on a product where fit is crucial. You don’t just wear shoes one size too large “just around the house”.  Zappos achieved such growth through two key tactics: 1) aggressive purchasing of product lines from shoe manufacturers; 2) unique approach to customer service keenly focused on repeat sales.

On the purchasing side of the business Zappos buyers are often known to buy whole lines of popular products from shoe manufacturers or at least all the most common sizes of a particular shoe line.  On the customer end Zappos alleviates the worry about fit by offering free shipping both ways and unheard of 365 day return policy. More importantly personal touches as the recent BoxBreak promotion with Magnify.com, earn customer loyalty. According to a BrandWeek interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, approximately 75% of sales come from repeat customers.

Driving Forces behind the Purchase

Amazon was able to smother many competitors like Ebay’s Half.com or outright buy them like AbeBooks, but; they were never able to make much of an in-road into the shoe vertical.  Zappos’ presence was just part of the issue. The shoe vertical is a very competitive and crowded space where consumers often have a hard time differentiating between retailers (Shoes.com and Onlineshoes.com for instance).

Amazon amplified their effort with the launch of Endless.com in 2007. Boasting a far more elegant site than either Zappos or Amazon, Endless featured a UI design that made it feel like an upscale boutique. Endless also launched with a tactic right from Hsieh’s playbook, free overnight shipping on all orders. The tactic was designed to gauge into some of Zappos’ market share.

The result? While it did prompt competitors in the vertical to  redesign their own sites to improve the browsing experience for their customers, Endless gained relatively little market share. .

The problem was that Amazon now had skin in the game and the costs associated with building and advertising Endless were not cheap. It was perhaps Endless’ failure to dethrone Zappos that  made Amazon think of buying. What’s more, Zappos made themselves an appealing target because they were not just beating Amazon at selling shoes; Zappos was beating them in creating buzz.

Zappos had become the corporate darling in the Web2.0 world of transparency. The company had almost co-opted Twitter with hundreds of Zappos employees actively participating in conversations about themselves and the corporate brand. Hsieh was like a rockstar at the forefront of the media blitz from SXSW to Affiliate Summit. Hsieh even started a consultancy targeting the Fortune 1 Million  to teach other corporations the benefits of developing an open corporate culture. Best Buy, Southwest Airlines and dozens of others got in line.

What buzz did Amazon have going? Well they did earn tremendous growth in ‘09 but most of the media focus seemed to be on iterations of the Kindle or on the various affiliate nexus laws, nicknamed the Amazon Tax.

What a Deal

According to TechCrunch,  Amazon brokered a deal with Zappos consisting of $880 million in shares with an additional $40 million in cash. Now $920 million may sound like a lot of money but really is quite a deal with Zappos having posted sales of $1 billion in ‘08. Now Amazon President Jeff Bezos and Hsieh may have struck a meeting of the minds when they met earlier in the year as Mashable claims, but; even so why wasn’t the purchase price significantly higher?

Well, it comes back to those tactics key to Zappos’ customer success. The fact is free shipping both ways and a 365 day return policy, as Hsieh puts it mildly in the BrandWeek interview “gets very expensive”. It’s been long rumored among Zappos’ competitors that the company must be hemorrhaging money. Whether that’s true it is apparent that Zappos’ net earnings were significantly lower than its’ $1 billion gross sales.

Perhaps the biggest winners are the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Venture Frogs whose investment in Zappos’ “quirky” strategy paid off.

Potential Impact on the Affiliate Channel

Initial outlook of the deal indicates that things will remain the same in many ways. Zappos will remain in its Henderson, NV headquarters with its brand, operating methods and leadership intact.

Both companies can credit a large portion of their growth to the affiliate channel. Zappos has had an affiliate program as part of the Commission Junction network since 2000 and has consistently been one of CJ’s top merchants. Amazon Associates is one of the first and largest affiliate programs claiming 900,000 members world-wide.

Lately Amazon seems to be systematically chipping away at the channel that helped it achieve its growth. In fact Amazon hasn’t been overly friendly to its affiliates as of late, from cutting commissions, to terminating referral fees for search, and most recently eliminating credit to affiliates using url shorteners in general with Twitter specifically as a target.

Amazon is also at the epicenter of the affiliate tax nexus debate  playing out in legislatures across the country. It has even used affiliates as leverage by preemptively terminating affiliates in some states  in anticipation of new tax legislation.

Zappos meanwhile has enjoyed a fairly positive relationship with its affiliates. The question is if  Zappos will begin to mimic Amazon’s actions in the affiliate channel? Will Zappos leave CJ and run an internal affiliate program like Amazon currently does? How will this impact the Endless affiliate program which is also currently live on CJ?

Final Questions

As with any such blockbuster merger the playing field will change significantly upon completion. There are practical questions to be addressed. Will Endless remain in business or be absorbed? Will Endless become the high end product retailer and Zappos the low end retailer as mandated by their respective UIs? How will they coordinate differing plans and messaging?

Then there are slightly more existential questions. As people, Bezos is very different from Hsieh and in the same way the cultures of their two companies are very different. Amazon is not used to being as transparent as Zappos or, at times, as human. Which culture will survive? Will they be able to incorporate each other’s strengths or wallow under each others’ weaknesses? Management is a big part of this and for the short term Hsieh is staying. After a year under Amazon’s corporate coils will he leave for some other business where he can be “quirky” again?

The fallout will be interesting.

See original here:
Endless Two-Step: Real reason Amazon bought Zappos

Commission Junction released some data today that goes a long way to show that having an affiliate program helps you grow your business compared to competitors without programs. In the most recent Internet Retailer Top 500 guide, they look at the Office Supply category which is listed as one of the top three growth areas last year.

The Office Supply category is listed with a 14% year over year growth in online sales, but that is only half the story. Splitting the Top 500 merchants into those with affiliate programs and those without has surprising results. Just over half the group have a program and they saw a 36% year over year growth. Those of you with a better than average grasp of math should realize that to balance that figure out requires that the other half experience a decline in online sales.

And for those of you who may be ValueClick stockholders or just want to know what else they are proud of, CJ also announced today that for the fourth consecutive year it is the leading choice of performance marketing solutions for more of America’s largest retail Web sites. 62 percent of the retailers listed in The 2009 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide who work with third-party affiliate marketing partners choose Commission Junction. CJ’s 62 percent market share shows growth over last year, when it claimed 53 percent of the Internet Retailer Top 500 market share.

Affiliate Marketing Helps Companies Grow Even in a Tough Economy

After the first day of ad:tech I thought things were going pretty well for the industry.  Day two gave me time to make some more sessions (I live twittered them) and spend some time on the two levels of the exhibit hall.  Many booths were noticeably smaller (Google) or missing (Yahoo!), the tchotchkes were noticeably minimal if they even had them, and the parties were quite often cash bar.

Years past the trip through the show floor for goodies yielded a plethora of cool, weird, and boring items (SF2007, SF 2007, NY 2008) to tempt you to stop by the booth.  This year there were a few worthwhile things like the purple octopus, but it was moslty pens and handouts.

It looked like there were a ton of parties (eight Tuesday night that I knew of), but very few were open bar.  In the past, every party I was invited to (and as press I get invited to most) was open bar. Companies are still spending the money to get their name out there and make a splash, but they seemingly can’t afford the extra outlay for the alcohol. Not all parties were cash.  The beer was flowing freely in the Beer Grden at the Affiliate Summit Networking party Tuesday evening.

There were some positives. ad:tech added a new part of the show called ADSPACE, dedicated to “contextual advertising.” I have to put it in quotes because there were a number of sessions that lightly touched on contextual ads and got into ad serving, performance marketing, metrics, affiliate programs, etc.

One session was titled “Beyond Text Ads: In Text, Affiliate, Led-Gen, eBay and More!”  This alone shows that ad:tech is expanding and growing into a show that covers all the ways people monetize their sites.  The performance based industry was well represented and every mention I heard talked about how the ROI was superior to other channels.  There was some great discussion on tracking multiple channels and that dollars are being shifted to the channel because it is measureable and performs so well. Real issues such as fraud were brought up, but it was discussed rationally and affiliates were not painted negatively with a broad brush.

I think the addition of the new ADSPACE track and exhibit area was a great idea and will help improve ad:tech as well as the performance marketing industry as w whole.

Read more from the original source:

ad:tech moved to Moscone West this year which I didn’t notice until I walked into RSA and worried that I had the wrong week for ad:tech. A short walk and I was Moscone West a new three storey convention hall.  The first floor was jam packed with people.

If you thought the line at AffiliateSummit was bad in Vegas, you would be amazed.  There were 12,000 people registered and it looked like most of them were in line waiting for their registration material. Luckily I had a press pass and headed inside past the waiting throngs. As with AffiliateSummit, they were forced to tell everyone to just head upstairs and go to sessions without passes.

Talking with ad:tech staff I found that registrations were slightly lower than last year, but you really can’t tel with the show split over three floors.  The exhibit hall is two floors, and all the sessions are on the top floor. The ones I went to were pretty full and the enthusiasm was still abundant.

The ad market is still alive.  Numbers are interesting.  Talking with Frank Addante of Rubicon about the market he sees that while CPMs might be dropping, inventory is growing at a pace that publishers are making about the same money from their growing inventory.  He ses this continuing a bit more, but he also sees more money coming into online with a net gain as time goes on.

Of course, the highlight of the show was the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden.

Excerpted from:
ad:tech Day One: Recesssion? What Recesssion?

ad:tech moved to Moscone West this year which I didn’t notice until I walked into RSA and worried that I had the wrong week for ad:tech. A short walk and I was Moscone West a new three story convention hall.  The first floor was jam packed with people.

If you thought the line at AffiliateSummit was bad in Vegas, you would be amazed.  There were 12,000 people registered and it looked like most of them were in line waiting for their registration material. Luckily I had a press pass and headed inside past the waiting throngs. As with AffiliateSummit, they were forced to tell everyone to just head upstairs and go to sessions without passes.

Talking with ad:tech staff I found that registrations were slightly lower than last year, but you really can’t tel with the show split over three floors.  The exhibit hall is two floors, and all the sessions are on the top floor. The ones I went to were pretty full and the enthusiasm was still abundant.

The ad market is still alive.  Numbers are interesting.  Talking with Frank Addante of Rubicon about the market he sees that while CPMs might be dropping, inventory is growing at a pace that publishers are making about the same money from their growing inventory.  He ses this continuing a bit more, but he also sees more money coming into online with a net gain as time goes on.

Of course, the highlight of the show was the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden.

Read the rest here:
ad:tech Day One: Recesssion? What Recession?

Unless you have been living under a rock, you are aware of California (and other) states efforts to copy New York and collect sales tax on affiliate initiated transactions. Collection of sales tax is important, and states are right to be concerned about taxes that are owed to them and not being collected.  But this is the wrong way to go about collecting this money and can easily cause more harm than good.

The California bill is Assembly Bill 178 sponsored by Assembly Member Nancy Skinner. The hearing date on Bill 178 has been scheduled for April 13, 2009.

We all learned a hard lesson in New York.  Luckily that lesson is being applied right now in California.  Action needs to be taken now while the bill is still in committee.

The PMA’s Stance

The Performance Marketing Alliance has formed a committee led by the experienced Beth Kirsch who has done lobbying at the federal level.  She has been working with a coalition led by the Chamber of Commence and the California Taxpayer’s Association that includes the big players in the Tech space. This coalition has had success with similar bills in the past. With companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay, and CJ all based here, there are a lot of big companies with vested interests that are taking actions either as part of this coalition or on their own.

The PMA is a valuable addition to this coalition because we can put a face on the issue.  We can get real people with real stories to talk about what this bill can do to them.  As such, the PMA is leading a grass-roots effort to spread the word about this to as many people in this industry as possible.  They have more in the works as well, with details coming out as they develop.  There are some more meetings today, and strategizing over the weekend.  After that, I expect to see plan laid out.

Likely there will be a need for people who can go to Sacramento, people to make appointments for in-person visits with their own representative, letter writers, and press outreach. If you can help with any of that, please contact the PMA to see how you can help.

Other Resources to Help Combat the Bill

There are other resources to check out as well. CAaffiliates.com is an ABestWeb forum for the discussion of the bill. Both Mark Welch and Scott Jangro have written excellent letter’s on the matter (Mark’s letter (pdf) and Scott’s letter) which I encourage you to read.

How Can You Help?

Discuss the bill with people. Let them know why it’s a bad idea, inform them. If you have a blog, make a post.  If you are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. use them to spread the word and link to places where this is being talked about. Create discussion and make your voice be heard.

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Affiliate Taxation – Time to Fight Back

There are merchant programs that have been with certain affiliate networks for so long you think of them almost as growing old together. Today one of those relationships ended. After seven years Overstock.com and LinkShare have split.

Not since Barnes and Noble left BeFree in 2007 has there been such general reaction of surprise from the affiliate industry. Some affiliates in forums over on ABestWeb even made the comparison that Overstock and LinkShare went together like peanut butter and jelly. So after seven years what happened?

According to the press release by LinkShare the network was resigning the engagement with Overstock due to “mutual differences” that “could not be overcome” despite a long period of negotiations. The release itself doesn’t offer much else in the way of insight into why the relationship ended.

To shed some light on the situation I talked to Mark Kirschner, Chief Marketing Officer at LinkShare and Geoff Atkinson, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Overstock.

Laying Rumors to Rest

As with any breakup there are bound to be rumors in the community. Let’s lay those to rest. The split between LinkShare and Overstock was not due to:

1. New York Amazon Tax Concerns: As Kirschner pointed out the New York Department of Taxation and Finance clarified that “…the location of the affiliate network service provider makes no difference in determining whether the seller is presumed to be a vendor under Tax Law section 1101(b)(8)(vi).”
2. Pressure from OneCause Flap: While LinkShare sees OneCause as a completely separate entity to itself the fact that LinkShare’s parent company Rakuten owns this particular affiliate business has put a lot of pressure on LinkShare in affiliate forums. This again was not a point of contention.
3. Diversification of Overstock’s Online Initiatives: As Overstock has grown, $255 million in revenue during Q4 of 2008, it has also diversified from traditional retail moving into such wide categories as automobile sales, real estate, and auctions. Each of these is diverse and arguably could be seen by a network as worthy of separate service fees. Atkinson stated that although such growth posed a variety of challenges it alone was not something that couldn’t have been overcome.

Reasons for the Split

According to Kirschner, LinkShare decided to move forward with the announcement when it became obvious to them that the differences between the two sides could not be satisfactorily bridged. He also said that the language of the press release, including the term “resigns”, was pretty common in traditional agency-client business and that LinkShare had decided it was time move on.

When asked how such a huge merchant leaving will impact LinkShare and its publishers, Kirschner responded that LinkShare is healthy and there is a large array of retailers, including many Inc 500 companies, in the network ready and willing to fill any gap.

While LinkShare’s press release states it was “clear to all involved” that the differences were insurmountable, the tone of the release reads like a preemptive move on LinkShare’s part. It certainly seems that way since no coordinated announcement occurred between the two companies. In fact Atkinson confided that the move caught Overstock by surprise. “We are just as shocked as the rest of the industry at the way the announcement was delivered,” he said.

On Overstock’s part, Atkinson says that Overstock was “getting the lay of the land” when it came to network options but implied that the process was simply a matter of due diligence.

Moving Forward

One of the big questions is how the transition will be handled. Both parties pledged to make the transition as smooth as possible for involved publishers. According to Atkinson Overstock is committed to insuring that its affiliate partners receive prompt and accurate payments during this transition. He says Overstock plans to release more details about exactly what form that transition will take early next week. Overstock affiliates who have questions or concerns are encouraged to email: affiliategroup@overstock.com

Of course the bigger question is what Overstock will now do with its affiliate program. Since Atkinson was quick to assure that Overstock was committed to its publishers, there seem to be only two options:

1. Move to a New Affiliate Network: I once said that Zappos could move to a network as small as ShareASale and it wouldn’t matter because affiliates would follow the brand. The same goes for Overstock: where ever they move affiliates will most likely follow. The main option seems to be Commission Junction.

What about Google you ask? Well I did take the time to contact Google and Commission Junction for this story. In almost a comic situation, as I was gathering information for this story I was contacted by a Google representative wanting to know if there was any indication where Overstock might move. Commission Junction had no comment.

2. Bring the Program In-House: There are plenty of cases of merchants having a successful affiliate program managed in-house; Amazon is the most successful example of this. Despite their initial mishandling of the New York Amazon Tax law issue, Overstock has maintained a large array of excellent resources for its publishers. They even have a yearly conference of their own for top affiliates. It wouldn’t take much organization to bring the tracking services a network provides internally.

Traditionally the transition phase of a program lasts about thirty days. Hopefully both parties will keep their promises to keep that process smooth for the sake of the publishers involved. Here’s to the split going off without a messy divorce.

This is the type of story that is dynamic and evolving. As more events unfold and news is announced we will keep updating here.

More:
Overstock and LinkShare Part Ways: Insights into the Split