Yanik Silver is without a doubt one of the most innovative and creative copywriters and marketers working today, no one argues that. But his recent Underground 4 Conference had an unusual theme based around the TV Show “24”. I can honestly say I have never been to, or spoken at a conference like that before (or probably ever again). Mostly the Mini Kiss band tipped it in for me.

It wasn’t just the theme that made it fun, but the opportunity to hear some really intelligent marketers map out how they achieve greater and greater success every day blew me away at points.

Best Example. The keynote speaker was Tony Hsieh, CEO of online shoe reseller Zappos.com. From selling pizzas in college to getting Microsoft to buy LinkExchange for large coin in the 90’s, to building one of the most fanatically loyal customer databases online, Tony is someone who should be listened to when he speaks. His philosophy of creating the proper corporate culture from shipping clerk to CEO is going to bullet Zappos past $1B in sales this year. Tony was one of the most personable and approachable of the speakers, and even took part in the Spy Hunt that Yanik concocted on the streets and hotels lobbies of LA. You can easily see why people line up to work there. They create a Culture book, every year and it is their bible to how the company if focused and run. You can purchase it here. A Brilliant Guy building and even more brilliant empire in the online retail space. Definitely one to watch. I mean, when I was getting on the plane at LAX back to Chicago, there was an insert in the security trays you put your computer and shoes into with Zappos sponsoring it. Now that’s good.

Another Example: The panel that featured Declan Dunn, Jonathon Mizel, Ryan Deiss, Stephen Mahaney, Marlon Sanders and Joel Comm. This looked like a Boulder conference of 2000, except at that time, Joel, Ryan, Yanik and I were in the audience just learning from these legends (of course Cory Rudl was also onstage at the time as well) riff off of one another for hours straight on how to increase any offers ability to make money. I do not believe a more seasoned bunch of early adopter internet marketers have graced the stage at once since. Their insight into where today’s markets are headed was worth way more than the price of admission. And that was only the sideshow.

Another Example: John Carter and Hubert Senters, who have to be the funniest duo on the financial news scene. Raw and uncut they explained in detail how they are building an online army of subscribers to their www.tradethemarkets.com and www.tradeforexbusiness.com sites. Both are experienced traders who have spent their entire careers perfecting their skills, which it seems they have made millions doing it. Their step by step, show you the exact tools they use and how they put their video’s, podcasts, newsletters and site content together was extremely in-depth. Even for someone who consults clients regularly on subscription site revenue enhancement, I took away several excellent additions to my toolbelt. I believe they have a training course that they give to others who want to learn their ways. I suggest anyone who is serious about financially focused subscription sites (and those are hot offers in CPA networks now) take their course or enlist their guidance.

Another Example: Dr. Joe Mercola, owner or Mercola.com, the largest health site (except for WebMD) in the US. I have known Dr. Joe for a while now, but never really got to spend the kind of time that I do when I am at Yanik’s Underground’s. Dr. Joe and I are both from Chicago, but beyond that we had a really wonderful discussion on health marketing and expanding the consciousness of the US consumer to begin shunning many pharmaceuticals and start looking at more homeopathic and natural healing methods. His research has uncovered some amazing truths that are not going to be getting him Xmas cards from Merck or Wyeth anytime soon. As a marketer, Dr. Joe has very few rivals, considering his site is Alexa ranked at 8,964. He also let loose with some excellent gems like the always fun www.Blabberize.com, www.Mindmeister.com (a free collaborative Mind Mapping software), and www.sitespect.com (analytics for dynamic sites, the ones Goggle Analytics doesn’t handle).

There were other examples of speakers who gave insights into their success. Such as my old friend Jody Colvard whose gave the straight skinny on being a talk show host online. I walked away thinking even I could do a show (unfortunately I have the looks for radio). Make sure to check out FMGtv.com, excellent example of an online video channel. As Jody and I both agree, the aggregators of video content online into clear verticals (like cable TV does) will be the clear winners.

There was also Barry Dunlop and Dean Hunt from BuzzProfits.com. These guys know buzz better than Cheech and Chong. I have to admit, that many of the techniques they espoused were foreign to me as I do not have any recent experience with buzz marketing (we did have 500 radio stations airing free content which generated 100K uniques a day to Mr Skin.com, I mean lately). A bit of it was review and the rest just pointing out the obvious, which I sometimes actually find refreshing as I often forget the little things that can make all the difference to a campaign. They were both entertaining, and Barry has a great stage presence. I believe they are offering a course as well that pretty much guarantees you will get the word out on your product.

Then there was Mike Hill, whom I have known for nearly a decade. Mike is one of the most brilliant media buyers out there today and worked with Declan Dunne when he ran the web’s first ad agency, AdNet (now defunct). Mike’s Risk Free Trial model, that he walked everyone through is a formula for success every time. And in the arena Mike likes to travel in (mostly behavioral pops/contextual/banners) he is cashing in big time for his clients. Although I am not a fan of Zango’s methods with regards to the cookie hi-jacking allegations, other networks who have tighter standards and less name changes have pulled excellent results for me in the past. Mike is one of the best and it is always good to see him back speaking again.

Even Andrew Lock got into the game, by reviewing some of the resources he uses to get an incredible amount of work done every day. The guy is a machine and soon we will be launching his newest eBay Product. Watch for it, it will be big.

Eben Pagan, author of Altitude and Double Your Dating also spoke along with Headsets.com CEO Mike Faith. Both of which were well received by those in attendance, but really never seemed to create a buzz.

I also spoke at the Underground 4 this year, which makes me the only speaker to have been invited to speak 3 times in the history of the event. My particular topic was Winning The CPA Game and the strategies I have used to help my clients to be successful in that ultra competitive environment. The PowerPoint alone was 145 slides and I found myself rushing to fit in all of the points, but I still got a lot of positive feedback and have several new “students” starting soon in the Traffic Tactics One On One Coaching Program. This is very exciting because it is the most fun for me to take a new offer and craft it for publisher distribution through testing and publisher relationships. Then when it takes off and really starts paying off in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a month range, the response is priceless and always the same, “How did you do that?”

If you feel you or your company or agency for that matter, would benefit from the tactics I and the entire Traffic Tactics Team can guide you to, please fill out our online form and I will give you our exclusive Media Buying Secrets Revealed for free, just for visiting the page. If you send me an email to jim.lillig at traffictactics. com I will schedule you for a free 25 minute no obligation consultation with myself and the Traffic tactics team. There are only a limited number of spots we can do, so send me an email and let us review your business and what the Mass Traffic system can do for your profits.

The conference is always fun, but this year with the addition of several new faces and the return of many old friends, Underground 4 was my hands down winner for the best overall conference of 2008 for both content and circus’. If you didn’t attend, plan to next year, you will be more than glad you did. I will see you there.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I have a new job.

VP Business Development for Traffic Tactics. A full service online advertising agency specializing in Online Media buying, affiliate management, CPA Network offer management, offer shaping and a host of online advertising and educational services that can skyrocket an advertiser’s ROI.

Affiliate Classroom Certified. Now this is what every affiliate and merchant dreams of; the perfect affiliate manager. A well trained organized affiliate manager that listens to affiliates and implements their innovative ideas on the one hand and on the other manages to keep the merchants’ margins and brand intact online. Can it be done?

According to Anik “Don’t Call Me Yanik” Singal, Founder and President of Affiliate Classroom, the path to enlightenment is through training and support. The Affiliate Classroom Certification Program is an attempt to bring some modicum of standardization to the Performance (Affiliate) Marketing arena.

Since hiring Rachel Honoway, who I had the pleasure of working closely with when she headed up Kowabunga, Affiliate Classroom has taken a more global look at the industry and apparently noticed what most veterans already knew. There is a lack of trained people in this business who can actually competently cover the position of Affiliate Manager.

If I were building my ideal AM, it would probably look something along the lines of this:

One Part Salesperson. (Not some wimpy “I’ll get back to you on that” milk toast, but a true let’s get this traffic moving motivator who knows how to motivate a publisher to send qualified traffic. That is not to say force a round peg into a square hole. Savvy enough to know what will be a good fit, and when to run to the merchant/advertiser to get marketing materials that are a tighter fit with a particular publisher’s site (or class of publisher sites). Mental toughness to know that “NO” only means they don’t “know” enough about how they can be making money from the particular offers.)

One Part Negotiator. (I mean some publishers would make even The Donald look like a patsy with the way they are able to leverage their traffic on a poor unsuspecting rookie AM. This potentially can be the difference between making targeted ROI and not, and also making the AM have to be smart enough to encourage the merchant to better monetize their post transactional activities so the front end margin isn’t the only measurement of a program’s success. That isn’t to say that an AM should just lay down in the face of overwhelming publisher pressure, but look for ways to enhance conversion, lessening the need to increase payout levels. In essence, they have to satisfy both their merchant’s margins and the publisher’s need for increasing their ECPM.)

One Part Private Investigator. (The best AM’s get that way because they do their homework and they know who they want to promote their offers. They do this through thorough research and getting behind what is driving the offer’s sales. Then reaching out to those publishers that will best maximize this with their traffic. Half the battle is prospecting for the “core” super-affiliates that will make the program 80% of affiliate commission revenues. Until the AM can assemble a loyal (as loyal as publishers can afford to be) core group and really service their needs for marketing resources, the program will not have a stable foundation of monthly revenue. The rule is always true: 20% of your affiliates will make you 80% or more of the revenue. I believe it is more skewed toward 10/90 but every program has its differences.)

One Part Marketing Manager: (Affiliate Managers need to understand each merchant’s unique market and the factors that affect sales. Merchant sales cycles are affected by many things. Seasonality is probably the largest factor (Christmas, Mother’s Day), followed closely by occasion based buying (weddings, birthdays). It branches off into various life situation solutions (buying a house, going back to school, need for short term credit). The AM needs to prompt their merchant with schedules for campaigns and creatives so they can be timely in their release of marketing materials to publishers. So many times sales opportunities are missed because an AM has no organized way of tracking their offer’s unique marketing opportunities. Their function is to keep their merchants campaigns fresh, distinctive, updated and converting. Not an easy task.)

One Part Communicator/Schmoozer: (Newsletters and Alerts may not seem like they get read a whole lot, but the truth is, the ones that read it are the ones who perform. An AM needs to have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. It isn’t easy sometimes to write something interesting about the same program (like say the BidFuel eBay offers that have the same landing pages just different names) again and again, but there is an art to good copy and keeping it real. Great AM’s try to help their publishers succeed by giving them knowledge on the latest technology, software or techniques that they can use to increase their business. The poor ones simply send out the same tired copy and do nothing to increase a publisher’s knowledge base. The Schmoozer part is the actual out from behind the computer personality that generally likes people. If you don’t like people, don’t be an AM. I close more deals at the bar than any other place at a conference. It is usually where the action is and the smack is being talked about, but it is also a great place to bet introduced to the underground affiliates (e-mailers & seo guys mostly) that show up at events and keep a low profile. Those are usually the most productive and long term relationships.)

In all they have to be superhuman and possess all the traits that even a Lee Iacoca couldn’t live up to. But having all of this being laid out to a newbie (or even a crusty veteran like myself) makes it easier to get a sense that it isn’t an insurmountable task. That with some guidance and the proper tools and attitude, almost any offer can have success in the performance marketing arena.

This is what Anik and his team at Affiliate Classroom have tried to do with the AC Certified Program. I have worked with Anik since his first product launch a few years ago and even supplied him with an hour or two of original material for the Affiliate Manager Bootcamp training videos. Some of which is contained in the latest course.

The Certification training and testing gives any AM a head start in making good choices with the offers that they are entrusted with promoting. It isn’t going to miraculously change an unmotivated slacker into the next Joel Comm, but it will instill the confidence new and veteran managers need to be successful. I also like the way that Anik is moving in channels that will make this a de facto standard in the industry and that will help legitimize the otherwise “Wild West” stigma that performance marketing has been saddled with.

Networks displaying the AC Certified logo will be showing both merchants and publishers that they are not just about volume of offers and flipping from one vertical to the next adding no real value for their cut of the pie. The AC Certification will stand for a dedication to a standard that hopefully will be adopted much like the ISO9000 stands for the highest quality training and service delivery in industrial verticals. Those networks or merchants not sending their AM’s for certification will be conspicuous by their non participation and support of creating a higher standard for our own industry. Or those would be AM candidates that have not taken it upon themselves to get the training on their own will lose out on the best paying positions because they have not had the baseline knowledge transfer that a certified professional does.

In my work with Project Blackbook, I have also strived to apply a higher standard of measurement to transparency in our niche of the online marketing space. To report on how deep and wide the reach and footprint is of performance marketing in today’s US and International markets. Creating these types of industry wide initiatives that can move the entire space forward is really what I see our industry needing if we are to take advantage of the massive shift in ad dollars from TV, Radio and Print that is coming in the next 3 years. Keeping the “Wild West” image is only eroding what confidence we have been able to garner with truly large ad budget brands. The AC Certification is a step in that direction to eliminate the lack of trust the advertising community has in general with the performance niche.

The Affiliate Classroom Career Center is an initiative that will hook up certified AM’s with programs that need to have the best trained people on board. As I understand it, from now until the end of April, all postings will be free of charge to introduce the Career Center to Merchants and Networks. After April, the cost will be $300 per month per posting. All AM resumes will be posted for free. To get your free listing, simply click here.

Below is the Press Release for the launch of the Career Center from Rachel.

College Park, MD – March 11-, 2008 – The Affiliate Classroom, a leading publisher of educational tools for the interactive advertising industry, is offering employers the chance to post their open Affiliate Manager positions in the company’s AC Certified Career Center at no charge on March 14th, 2008.

As previously announced, Affiliate Classroom launched an innovative training and certification program for professional Affiliate Managers called “AC Certified.” Through the AC Certified program, new and veteran affiliate managers can receive an education in managing affiliate programs, earn their Affiliate Manager Certification and pursue an affiliate management career.

The company will be launching the Career Center portion of the program on April 1st, 2008. Employers who are seeking Affiliate Management staff can begin posting open positions on Friday, March 14th.

All job listings added on March 14th will be shown throughout the month of April free of charge. Employers can continue to add jobs to the Career Center after the 14th at a rate of $300/month for each job.

“In these trying economic times, it’s encouraging to see that Affiliate Marketing continues to grow and that retailers, advertisers, networks and agencies are continuing to hire for well-compensated Affiliate Manager Positions,” says the company’s VP of Marketing, Rachel Honoway. “While other jobs are being cut back, companies are struggling to fill open Affiliate Management positions. We see AC Certified and its Career Center bridging this gap and highlighting the strength that this industry shows in its ability develop and succeed despite an economic downturn.”

According to The AffStat 2008 Report (www.AffStat.com), which compiles results of an annual affiliate marketing benchmarks survey produced by Shawn Collins, 2/3 of Affiliate Managers earn between $40,000 and $120,000 per year in salary or a combination of salary and commission. The $50,000 to $60,000 range saw the largest number of respondents, accounting for 22% of the total while 16% of the respondents reported annual earnings over $100,000.

More information about the AC Certified Career Center can be found here.

About Affiliate Classroom, Inc.
Established in October of 2004 as a private company, Affiliate Classroom is a leading publisher of educational tools for interactive marketers. The growing product suite includes courses, books, live seminars, digital magazines and online forums for affiliates, merchants and advertisers participating in the affiliate marketing industry, as well as materials for PPC (pay per click) search marketing.

.

Joel Comm, the perennial innovator and host of the Next Internet Millionaire, has done it again. He is unleashing what is akin to all out war on the cell phone companies monopoly on cell phone advertising.

Any company that has dabbled in mobile marketing knows that the process is long (up to 8 weeks) and convoluted. Joel’s latest venture, TextCastLive aims to streamline the mobile marketing solution with an all inclusive opt in messaging solution designed for marketers.

At Affiliate Summit West I had the chance to test drive the system and see it in action. It is simple. All you do is give your customers a phone number that they text a short message to OR (and this is the best) TextCastLive will give you a form for your site that collects their mobile number and then sends them a message to their phone that asks them to 2X opt in.

Once you have them agreed, the fun begins. You see, mobile marketing is different, it gets read. I know this from working with dating sites that use mobile very effectively to convert trial members into paying members. Here’s how one online dating company I know does it. The site sends its members and trial members profiles of hot singles in their immediate area directly to their cell phone. The message directs them to a mobile site where they can see pictures (if available) as well as a phone number to leave a message for the person highlighted (like a voice mailbox). It converts Free Trial members 10X better than any email can and almost 3X better than a phone room.

Here’s what I came up with in the way of a few mobile campaigns that would increase revenues and/or conversions.

Mobile couponing…Send your subscribers coupons directly to their phone, to be used at an event or at a retail location.

Mobile contests…Engage your list in a game that they text the answers back and progressively attain more points. Like the trivia games in bars. But the smart marketer would try to extract a bit more about the user through the questions they ask – so they can target them tighter in other mediums such as direct mail, outbound calls or email.

Additional Subscription Benefit…All paid subscription sites need to look at one metric above all, Stick Rate. Mobile messaging is a unique and extremely personal way of bonding with a subscriber. Create a series of daily messaging items such as horoscopes, sports news, daily inspirations, whatever fits with your content. Try to find a way to break it into 160 character bits and feed it out as manna for the masses.

Trade Show Buzz…As Joel and his team did at Affiliate Summit West, build your list from trade show attendees (have your booth bunnies collect cell numbers) and then periodically offer prizes for them to return to the booth. You can make it for a single prize or multiple prizes. I can even imagine that one could also make it progressive. You could also use it to announce a location of a secret party for only VIP attendees (your booth’s visitors). If you are driving visitors back to your booth it is a good idea to have some sort of promotion for them when they get there, such as a new product roll out or additional service enhancement. Just don’t make them come back only for the prize, get them to take an action and commit to using you or at least get them to agree to be followed up on. (NOTE: Another way to make this work for trade shows is to send out a text message after the show alerting them to extended show only pricing.)

In addition to these above there are also a number of location based solutions that mall stores and outdoor companies have been testing, but I do not believe these are part of the TextCastLive offering.

The takeaway here is simple. If you are not using mobile marketing in your business you are probably missing out on sales that can be easily converted with a modicum of effort. Everyone carries their cell phone with them and most look at the messages sent to it, so long as they are not intrusive and welcomed. Offer your visitors and subscribers the chance to interact with your company and your products/services in a whole new way and you will definitely see an increase in revenue.

Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas. Love that town. Not only does it offer endless ways to get in trouble (not unlike performance marketing) but it is the only place I know of where almost every BLT is fantastic. It’s like Elvis looked down from wherever he might look down from and hath created the perfect haven for BLT lovers. Much in the same way NY is a corned beef Mecca and is hallowed ground to those of us who have a hankerin’ for a Reuben the size of a newborn.

But I digress. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward always put on a class affair, and this year it has swelled to unheard of attendance. I believe it was over 2000 registered. Lots of old faces but more surprising more new than old.

What was new? 2 things that really left an impression on me.

The first was www.AffSpy.com. An idea I had been floating for a year or two myself but never acted on it. Now Stephen Gill and his crew at AffSpy seem to have locked into the whole CPA transparency model as a way of driving publisher traffic. Essentially, AffSpy is the same as OfferVault.com which is now free. The one area that AffSpy will have initially that I cannot seem to find on OfferVault.com is an area for a network to tell about themselves. Right now the AffSpy beta is elegant but bare bones. The bigger goal is to provide a one stop source to review various CPA networks’ profiles and to be able to view the offers that they have on their rolls. This has been needed for a long time. (NOTE: Both of these sites make money from being a 2nd tier to the network when they sign up a new publisher from their sites.)

I applaud these companies for moving the industry forward as this is the sort of truth in offers that publishers do not always get to see. For the AffSpy beta I previewed, the only way they could get the offers was to scrape them (much along the lines of what we did at AffTrack). I was surprised to learn that the CPA Networks as a whole do not have API’s for their offers. You would think that since “offers” is a network’s stock and trade, they might treat them more as products on a shelf to be distributed to relevant audiences of publishers. As it stands, you pretty much have to join and login to see any networks offers (save a few).

AffSpy initially only displays payouts and creatives, but does not report EPC as this is a bit trickier to “genericize” or “vanillaize” each networks numbers into a apples to apples comparison. This will be the eventual breakthrough for the site, when they are able to accurately show that one network over another performs better on an offer all things being equal. This will then allow networks, by vertical, to rise to the top and attract the most loyal and productive publishers.

I think in the next 12 months we will see several variations of the AffSpy and OfferVault models, all of which will be driving more transparency into the performance marketing sector, which will in turn allow larger well funded advertisers to feel better about allocating budgets here. Why? Because all large media buys are based on statistics and media plan goals. Direct offers to consumers or direct to business has always been the realm of direct marketers. And direct mail marketers in particular have very closely watched metrics that everyone in the game is familiar with. Performance marketing lacks these clear metrics and vision into the ad marketplace which holds back large advertisers from making decisions. The advent of AffSpy and other “transparent” agents will usher in a new model for performance advertising.

Namely the “verticalization” of their catalog of offers. The margin busters (those networks who rep offers at street payouts that are inconsistent across several networks) will be called out by the AffSpy’s of our space and eventually will cause payout parity across all networks. This will force networks to prove up that they can add value to both the advertiser and the publisher relationship. Those that do not will most likely fold their traffic into someone else’s and call it a good experiment. AffSpy, OfferVault and the inevitable trail of look alike’s may contribute to performance marketing getting a bigger share of the $24B US Internet Ad Spend pie, but also help usher in a larger slice of the $800B ($370B in US alone) that is spent worldwide on advertising each year. (For those of you who haven’t put the math on paper, Internet gets only 6.5% of US advertiser’s budgets.)

In my next post I am looking forward to bringing you the next mobile app you will likely find a way to use.

As many of you know, I am involved on a daily basis with many large CPA Networks.  And in my workings with them I have noticed a trend that is only now beginning to emerge, but am hoping that it continues to catch fire.

In my conversation with one network regarding their “exit” strategy, I reminded my good friend that CPA networks do not (for the most part) have any physical assets other than the relationships they have with their publishers and advertisers.  To this he agreed, and then went on again about how someone would be willing to pay 6+ figures for their network based on the strength of those relationships.

And this set me to thinking about what exactly could raise the value of a CPA Network?  CommissionJunction, LinkShare and even Kowabunga have attracted buyers who have seen value in their business models, network reach, proprietary software and both publisher and merchant relationships.  But where is the value for a CPA Network?  Aren’t CPA Networks just (to use Rosalind Gardner’s word) super-affiliates, on steroids?

Think about it.  A network has collected all of these downlines (publishers/affiliates) by making the process of finding relevant offers easier for them by aggregating them by verticals into their site.  Giving the publisher (at least the newer ones) a sense of security that the Network has negotiated the best deal they can with the advertiser/merchant and that the publisher, and should they want to go to the advertiser or merchant directly; they would get no better deal.  Furthermore, the network will pay them faster than the merchant would in many cases. (that is a whole other blog post).  So in essence, this is the value they initially bring to the publisher.  And, if you think about it, this is what a super-affiliate does, except for the payments.

But, there are some changes afoot.  There is proprietary software in the future for a few networks.  THINK Partnership, Kowabunga’s new owner and already a player in the CPA network world with Primary Ads, has opened a new division that aims at servicing merchants better.  The service is called SecondBite and it sniffs out cart jumpers and either emails them or calls them to see what went wrong and close the sale.  They have even taken one rate for organic, non Affiliate ID associated traffic, and another rate for when an AID is present.  This is a start to begin to offer something more than a great party and quick payouts.

There are also those networks who have been built from the strength of their own proprietary offers, Matt Frary at ROI Rocket is one of those.  He built Survey Club and then attracted a large number of affiliates based on that program.  He then built out a few other offers and his then affiliates began promoting those as well, and so it grew organically from them owning several of the offers that they promoted.  In addition, they also have a ready email base because they own the offers and are able to help advertisers identify strengths (and weaknesses) as well as test offer copy and creatives with it.  That goes a bit beyond your typical “data management” agreement with most networks.

There are others signs of hope.  Some networks are giving themselves an “exclusive only” makeover.  Jennine Rexon at RexTopia has gone to running only all exclusive offers.  Rextopia is only accepting offers that will run exclusively on their network.  For that, Jennine feels she can offer advertisers more loyal affiliates and attract a better class of affiliate/publisher.

These strategies are hedges against the networks who still feel that arbitrage is their best option.  Unbridled arbitrage is often more of a merchant/advertiser driven phenomena than the networks themselves, in as much as the merchant/advertiser allows the offer to be placed on several networks rolls at the same time with no hard “street” price level set.  Without penalties built into Insertion Orders for networks who offer the lead or sale above the “set” street price, arbitrage will continue to rule the day and offer no incentive to networks to become better liaison’s between the publisher/affiliate and the merchant/advertiser.  What will happen (IMHO) is that CPA Network margins will erode and eventually the network will not be able to meet overhead and come to rest comfortably in the cease to exist/this URL is for Sale file.

So why is niching the networks going to make all of this different?  It isn’t going to overnight, that is for sure, but what it will do is force CPA Networks to provide value to both sides of the equation.  By making their offerings more niched and identifying with particular verticals, a network gains distinct advantages over those which do not.  These include:
-    increased number of affiliates that have expertise in that vertical
-    increased market knowledge of that particular vertical’s unique marketing tactics and successes’
-    increased ability to work with exclusive advertisers because the merchant can feel that the network is attracting all of the truly relevant publishers
-    increased data management contracts that allow for greater cross promoting of the offers they have on the network

All of these benefit both the advertiser and the publisher by giving both more access to better targeted campaigns.  The advertiser will be willing to pay more if they know the leads or sales from this network will stick better than the arbitrager’s network.  The advertiser will also continue to give exclusive blessing if the network consistently delivers.  With a hodge podge of offers a network can only get so deep into any one vertical before they have to concentrate on their entire portfolio.

As I said at the beginning, this is just an emerging trend.  One that I hope will continue and eventually help to add more legitimacy to performance marketing.

After I spoke with Steve Iser, I got hooked on Facebook. His latest book, Ready. Aim. Wired is a great starting place for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of marketing done well in social marketing. Now I am testing out some campaigns in Facebook’s Social Ads. My biggest surprise is their stringent policies regarding approving ads. Below are the ads I have created.

As you can see I am only batting 25% on approvals. The Facebook Social Ads Guidelines are wrtten so a narrow path must be chosen if you are going to get approved. It seems that the process is very subjective to the whims of the editor. I was surprised also at the speed with which approvals (or non-approvals) are sent back. It took only 10 minutes for me to know whether my ad passed the muster or not. I will be ging into more detail on this as I play around in their system, stay tuned…

Mouse over the ads below to see which got approved and which didn’t).

It was very simple to create the ads, and took less than 10 minutes in all to get started. The images I did myself, and is optional. The image size is 110×80, so not much room to work with. I was able to target my ads pretty tightly. Here are the targeting specifics for the Bachelor Ad 1:

“You are targeting liberal, moderate, and conservative men between 18 and 65 years old who are single, in a relationship, or engaged in the United States who graduated from college.”

The results are not all that encouraging though, but I am still in the first week of playing with the system. As of this writing I still hadn’t made a sale. In the first 6 days I have had 39,674 impressions, but only 33 clicks with an average per click cost of $0.25.

You can select how you want to pay for your campaign, either Pay Per Click or a CPM basis. I have chosen to test the PPC method first.I started off at $0.01 and have been moving it up and down to see what this does to the amount of PPC traffic delivered. The most I bid was $0.35 and that increased the amount of impressions drastically. So it performs as the other PPC platforms, in that if you increase your bid, your ad is shown in more places.

As of today I do not see Facebook users acting as buyers, but the testing will continue and hopefully I will be able to crack this space and start to see some real results. From this screenshot, you can see the results aren’t too encouraging, but hey I have only spent $7.00 so far. I’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, buy Steve Iser’s book, Ready. Aim. Wired. You will not be disappointed.

The Tasini Six, opened the door to a brighter future for writers and creators of content as it applies to their works life outside of the Television screen. Today’s writers strike seems to be an extension of the 1999 Tasini vs. New York Times Co. in which the Supreme Court decided the Times had infringed various copyrights by putting individual articles previously published in periodicals on electronic databases.

The two cases are very similar. The current Hollywood writers strike revolves around giving writers more money from the sale of Internet distribution as well as delivery of the content they create being displayed on cell phones and other digital platforms. At stake is the writers ability to continue to profit from their work, far into the future. Which isn’t such a far fetched concept, considering when a writer publishes a book, they continue to receive royalties from sales until there are no further printings.

The Tasini Six ruling made it clear where this strike is heading, straight back to court. The Times answer to the ruling? They announced plans to remove more than 115,000 freelance articles from its database unless the authors of those articles agreed to let them remain in the database without additional payment, and freelancers were threatened with never getting another assignment if they didn’t sign a draconian new all-rights contract. Evenutally lawsuits made them change their policies.

Copyright is tricky in the digital age because the opportunity for distribution seems to change and be appended every 6 months. My guess is that the issue of continuing rights in works will become a tracking issue. The Tasini opinion written by Chief Justice Ginsburg specifically noted that nobody was demanding removal of articles and that there are “more than enough licensing precedents to establish mechanisms for paying extra fees for additional use”. ASCAP, the system which pays royalties to songwriters whenever their songs are played, is an example.

So what does it all mean, well if you want my opinion, it simply means writers will either have to accept “all-rights” or “work for hire” agreement to continue to practice their craft, or get on the bandwagon for copyright reform at the legislative issue.

If you want to learn more, watch this video by Lawrence Lessig. In it he cuts to the heart of the matter that both the Tasini Six and the Hollywood writers have in common, that today’s media environment is about the creative having a life of its own that may not always be under the control of the author directly nor of its previous leasee’s. The issue is not going to go away, but merely litigated into a settlement but no real change will be effected until the corpse of Walt Disney turns over in his grave and US Copyright Laws look a lot like Creative Commons licenses.

What is it that Facebook has that MySpace doesn’t? Applications.

Not for long, as MySpace is now a unit of News. Corp. it is under more pressure to deliver revenue from their sizeable audience. Becoming more developer friendly is how many news articles put it, I like to think it is becoming “app happy”. MySpace adding user driven applications is only the first step is what I see as a spiral downward for the once giant among the High School crowd.

My daughter of 15 tells me MySpace is not as cool as it used to be and that Facebook has way cooler features (applications) that allow her and her friends to connect in “funner” ways (her words not mine). It would seem that News Corp. placed it’s bets on a dying supernova unless they can find a way to attract an online buying audience that will respond to their advertising and now applications. In short, they need to attract an older audience as Facebook is starting to do. I should mention that Facebook is only 1/3rd the size of registered users that MySpace has with 20M and 60M respectively.

So why Free Condoms? As a happily married guy with a vasectomy, my need for free condoms, or condoms at all is nill. But a very socially networked friend of mine, Steven Iser (whose Birthday was yesterday), tipped me off. Now Steven is a unique person, at 21 he does more in 1 day than most of us can accomplish in a week. When he told me about Free Condoms, he interrupted his videotaping of a JV club post he was doing while driving. To be sure, you will want to follow the launch of his new Social Networking Marketing Course which I have had the privilege to see in action and it is far and away the most intelligent social marketing plan you can implement. Check out www.readyaimwired.com to get updated on the launch. (I will be blogging about this more when it out on the 30th).

Free Condoms is the first application I have seen for Facebook that includes an element of pure direct marketing, albeit wrapped in a thin veil of social responsibility. For those who do not have a Facebook site, the applications I am speaking of (of which there are 3000+ and growing) are simple plug ins that a Facebook user can have listed on their page and usually have some element of linking people together or taking some action such as asking a question to a group or taking a quiz, then everyone who you have as friends can also be invited to join you in your endeavor. Free Condoms ties in a points system for completing offers. The same way the Free iPod offers for The Useful and others have used a points system for completing offers. In Free Condoms a user earns Banging Bucks for completing the offers (mainly ringtones, FASTweb, Blockbuster Online and toolbars). To online performance marketers, the offers included are somewhat tired but to the younger Facebook crowd (the major users of condoms) they seem to work.

What doesn’t work, as I came to understand from reading the Free Condoms Community page, is that these offers do not post points back in real time and often take days and weeks to assign accurate Banging Bucks (bb’s) to the appropriate user, The Free Condom developer, Alex Page, has done a nice job of manning their Community board and explaining the discrepancies and what they are doing to address them. I give her a lot of credit for taking on such a fickle community. The Community pages are awash with posts from folks who have not received their bb’s and cannot get their free raincoats, and they are not happy about it. There are however, the evangelists, which seem to come to the rescue organically of the developers and seem to balance out the negative comments with posts that they received their shipments and got their bb’s with no issue. If you are going to have a Community, you have to get them involved in a positive way to ensure trust and ultimately success it would appear.

The main takeaway form Free Condoms (and BTW, they have shipped over 2M condoms to date) is that social networks can be a place to play for performance marketers who are willing to put in the time. Free Condoms is not revolutionary in its execution, since the affinity model is as old as retail. What is important is this, social networking hasn’t rejected this as a marketing ploy to get their data as well as get revenue from the offers that the user completes. Last time I checked the going rate for FlyCell was down around $12 per signup. A Flycelll signup is worth 90 bb’s, far more than the store’s lowest price item, The Basics Package (an assortment of 10 condoms, some lubricant and a Free Condoms sticker) that only takes 15 bb’s to redeem. So the shipping and cost of condoms must be lower than $5 to $6 for them to make a profit, unless they are using the data they get to market to them via e-mail or offline direct marketing. They have their mailing address.

So a smart marketer might look at this, like say Proctor and Gamble, and devise a way to get people to fill out survey information for free samples. Take more surveys the more samples you get, the more friends you invite, the better the samples and freebies. Or another take on this could be from an affiliate point of view (which is essentially what the Free Condoms developers are in relation to the offers they are promoting) and do a magazine rack application. One would build up points by receiving different magazines which they could redeem for Amazon gift certificates or other Gift Card offers, like from Restaurant.com. The possibilities are endless.

The formula is just emerging and Free Condoms is leading the way. Who’s to say what Facebook’s editorial policy, or even MySpace when they get into the applications game, but you can be sure that they will be wary of these types of applications since they, like the original Free iPod offers, were slow to come across with the goods and the social backlash can be a nightmare to fix. So far Free Condoms has been able to successfuly satisfy a good portion of their user base and will probably just get better at it through simple trial and error over time. Those getting into this type of campaign may want to ensure they have the goods and deliver promptly and when possible with documentation (think Publishers Clearinghouse and how they publicize the winners of sweepstakes to build legitimacy as well as buzz) in the form of pictures, video and positive user comments, which have become the currency of trust in the Social Networking world today.

So in the words of the Partridge Family, “Let’s all get App Happy”.

For those you you without a Facebook page (you really should get one), here are some screenshots to help you better understand how the application is set up.

Here is the initial page you are brought to when you add the application or access it through the links that are placed on the right hand navigation when you install the application on your Facebook page. It is essentially an offer wall.

Here is the Free Condoms store.

Acxiom, the data giant with over 133 Million households worth of data on American’s lifestyle and buying habits, announced on Wed. that it has a new product - Relevance-X. The Relevance-X offering should allow online publishers to make more from even the most fragmented sections of the population.

Essentially what this new approach is doing is placing cookies on users sites who click on ads that Acxiom partners with. Once a user clicks on an ad, the Acxiom offline database is accessed and their “cluster, gender and zip are set in the cookie. When the user returns to another Acxiom partnered site, the cookie is read and the appropriate ad for the zip, gender and cluster is displayed. In effect, doing the same thing that direct marketers have done for years with catalogs and direct mail. Only now the same offline data that is used to determine whether or not I get a Brookstone catalog or a Warshawsky catalog (neither of which I have ever bought from) is being used online. Essentially taking the legwork out of going to the mailbox and retrieving my junk mail, now it is being served on the web page I am visiting.

Axciom isn’t the only one jumping into the game. Q Interactive has teamed with Alliant Data to offer the same functionality. Q Interactive’s list of sites includes, About.com, Weather.com, iVillage and CoolSavings.com to name a few, all collect data from users online. In fact, Q Interactive is the web’s largest lead generation-focused advertising network in the industry.\

Privacy concerns are an issue. Chief Marketing and Strategy Office for Acxiom, Rich Howe put it well, “…most consumers likely do not know who is using the data. The majority of individuals do not know a lot about it”. Just like Direct Marketing. You don’t know what you are going to get when you open your mailbox, but someone paid to put it there. The same is now going to be true of your online surfing experience.

Of course, I have to point out the obvious, that the impending $3.1B sale of Doubleclick to Google (pending regulators approval) will most likely usher in a major shift in search advertising as the “cluster” mentality sets in. So not only will display and video ads be targeted with the help of hybrid online/offline data, text ads will also benefit as well. I expect that by user, different AdWords ads will be displayed depending on the “cluster” you are associated with.

You’ll also see AOL’s Advertising.com (which just purchased Tacoda) and Microsoft (who bought Aquantive) get into the game. And what a game it is going to be. eMarketer estimates that this year advertisers will spend $575M on behaviorally targeted ads, and that by 2011, nearly $B will be spent annualy, an 8X increase in just 4 years. Expect to see offline data companies either getting swallowed up by some of these companies or at the very least strategically partnering to be able to get a foothold in the game.

My own company, Consumer Base LLC is a leader in behavioral data and maintains a database of over 70 Million households. Partnering with a platform provider to take advantage of the phenomenal growth is certainly an option that will be weighed heavily over the next several months. As the space for behaviorally targeted web advertisements grows it will be interesting to see which companies are able to best manage the privacy issues with the ability to deliver higher and higher ROI for the advertisers that take advantage of this avenue

I think there is actually a fun game we can play. I will ask my good friend and resident reverse link engineering guru, Brandon Shalton of T3Report.com, to see if he can find what the Acxiom cookie looks like on your computer and where you can get one (which sites you need to visit). Then I would like to crack how to find out which “cluster” I am in. Maybe I can move up from being in the After Boomers to become a Turbo Boomer.

So this is my first blog post. I thought it would feel a lot different.

Hi, I’m Jim Lillig. This is the place where I intend on spilling my guts regarding performance marketing (and whatever else that comes to mind). In the 10+years spent as an online marketer and entrepreneur, I have had occasion to have been both an affiliate and a merchant, to work with CPANetworks and to experience affiliate marketing management on a largescale. So I get what it takes to keep an affiliate happy, andI also get that a merchant has to make a buck to stay in business.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Performance Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been the red-headed stepchild of the onlinemarketing space for many years (no offense to red-headed stepchildren, it’s just a saying). Just recently has it been able to shed it’s stigma as the wild western frontier of the marketing landscape online. This has been ushered in by events such as Datran securing $60M in fundingin 2005 and more recently the exorbitant acquisitions in the online advertising space including: Yahoo!’s $680M purchase of RightMedia and their$300M purchase of Blue Lithium, ValueClick’s $58M acquisition of Commission Junction, Google throwing their hat in the Pay Per Action text link and banner
market as well as paying $3.1B for Doubleclick, Linkshare being acquired by Japan’s largest e-commerce company Rakuten (who also own Infoseek.com/Go.com), Aquantive being acquired for $6B by Microsoft, and the list will continue to grow.

The“web-sizing” of the ad market is predictable given the fragmentation of the advertising audience in today’s markets. And what is driving advertising dollars into the web?

I believe engagement is to blame. The final frontier of advertising is to connect a product (and ultimately a brand) with truly interested consumers in a relevant, meaningful and
lasting way at a time when they have the propensity to purchase or consider a purchase. And how did this creep into marketers consciousness? Well, for me, I believe it has a lot to do with A.C. Nielsen’s People Meter.

This standard of the radio & TV advertising industry for over 60 years, which essentially has single-handedly determined the fate of TV ad rates in June of 2006 announced a sweeping plan to revamp its entire methodology to include all types of media viewing in its sample. This essentially was saying “ooopps, we thought the data was good, turns out it wasn’t. Sorry.”

Couple this with faster Internet speeds and the onslaught of convergence (having your TV signal come in over digital or fiber optic internet lines) makes for more consumers watching less TV and spending more time using the Internet for their entertainment choices. TV on the web has finally grown up. And the more it looks like TV and feels like TV, the faster it will be adopted. Because the Internet experience can involve many more elements to engage the user, it is only logical that advertisers will shift their TV budgets to online advertising (as well as those of their ad agencies as well), to a venue where they can better know who is interested in their products and services than completely throwing their budgets into TV advertising on the national or even regional campaign levels. I wrote an article on this subject for a now defunct Marketing Journal startup called Project BlackBook, The title is The Case For Transparency and Truth in Online Advertising.

So this is where Performance (or sometime called Affiliate) Marketing is now. Waiting for big advertisers to realize that spending on CPM buys is not always the best use of their ad dollar. Affiliate marketing that pays out only when a sale is made is a simple enough concept that has been practiced in the offline world since the day money became important. The future will be a much more complicated landscape to navigate with new choices for advertisers popping up almost weekly it seems. Advertisers will find, I believe, that performance marketing will become a logical piece of their overall Internet advertising strategy (as the size of the acquisitions above hint at).

Sharing The Love

This being my first post, I want to thank a few people who have made me realize that this
isn’t that hard (yeah right) and encouraged me to share some of my ideas with the world. Seems somewhat lofty when you put it like that.

Yanik Silver, master copywriter, entrepreneur and showman and a friend who has always encouraged me to shoot for a higher target.
Jim Kukral, who is always inspiring to bounce ideas off of.
Wayne Porter, who taught me never to trust anything online.
Anik Singal, whose AffiliateClassroom was my 2nd speaking engagement.
Lisa Picarelle, who has forged a new attitude for Revenue Magazine. (She is one of the most intelligent people I know).

Rosalind Gardner, who is always an inspiration and has always helped me to focus my efforts.
Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, for allowing me to speak at Affiliate Summit.
Declan Dunn, who was the first person I met in Internet Marketing who thought my ideas were any good. He is also one of the early pioneer of affiliate marketing.
Jon Keel, the Godfather of SEO, who is a constant mentor to me for SEO and life in general.
Jim McBride, for doing what he loves to do and letting me be a part of history with him.
Corey Rudl, as it was his Internet Super Highway course and the Boulder Summit of 2000 that pointed me in the direction I am headed in today.

I look forward to hearing your comments and blog article suggestions; please post often as it is hard to know if there is anyoneout there sometimes.