Its always a good way to start you day with a cup of java and a little inspiration. We have many aspiring entrepreneurs in affiliate performance marketing, and entrepreneurs can always use a good dose of mentorship & insights. Here is a great video from the BBC interviewing Max Levchin who founded PayPal and Slide which just sold to Google for $182 Million. I highly recommend watching this interview with Max talking about his journey and lessons learned in how PayPal and Slide came to be… Happy Friday all! here’s Max’s Twitter
IdentityEdge provides a complete set of tools to help customers protect their identities, including a $1 million identity theft insurance policy*. With a $1 30-day trial, this campaign is the premier product amongst its competitors. Initial testing is returning EPC’s over $2/click.
How common is Identity Theft?
3 Million cases of Identity Theft occur each year
1 in 5 Households will fall victim to an incident
Average cost per incident of fraud: $6,000
Average time spent fixing fraud: 32 hours
In extreme cases, victims spend years rebuilding their credit scores
With all good affiliate marketing trade show gatherings come the list of events to keep you out all night! Here’s the official list of the evenings shenanigans via Shawn Collins on the Affiliate Summit event blog. A great place to keep up with everything Affiliate Summit as well as the ASE Twitter . This is going to be the biggest ASE so far and promises to be fast, furious and with some late nights in New York City.Don’t forget to visit us at Meet Market table #64 and help the Gulf Oil Spill relief fund. Everyone who give us their card and takes a picture on the MediaTrust red carpet will have us donate money on our industries behalf “Help Humanity, Feed Your Vanity at Affiliate Summit East”.
Please note: As some of the parties are “by invitation only”, we suggest you contact the company directly for more information.
The MediaTrust family is getting bigger with our newest family member in our Los Angeles office. Heather Shanley just relocated from San Francisco to Los Angeles. After 4 years of 50 degree summers and couple grand in cumulative parking tickets, she was ready to return to her roots in Social. During her stint in the bay area Heather worked at salesforce.com (lived and breathed in the application so any questions come to her) and then moved over to Yahoo! Hotjobs where she sold recruitment based media to hospitals, education, and various healthcare organizations in addition to core recruitment products. Her experience at Yahoo! made her realize how much she enjoyed the online media space and was ready to further her career in the industry. So we are thrilled to have her join our affiliate publisher partnership team.
In her spare time Heather enjoys pilates, running, sewing, concerts, cooking and hiking. You can find her on Linkedin and Facebook . Hope to get her on Twitter one of these days!
If you’re attending LeadsCon this week in NYC, make sure to RSVP for Meetup202 “Happy Hour.” Every year, Meetup202 gathers interesting leaders from the affiliate performance marketing & Internet marketing industry, and organizes a fantastic evening event. This is the first NYC event since Wes Mahler has taken over the reigns at Tracking202, one of our favorite PPC marketing platforms. Congrats again Wes!
As our performance marketing industry evolves and uses more sophisticated systems its important that affiliates, publisher and advertisers stay up to speed on the FTC ad target front. If you are in the ad exchanges and using behavioral for traffic and re-targeting for marketing games and down loads , or own a website oriented towards kids. Then you need to start paying attention to the latest from the FTC.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau is asking the FTC to refrain from broadening regulations regarding children’s online privacy. If the Federal Trade Commission moves forward with rules to expand behavioral-targeting rules that would classify IP addresses as personal data, websites would be unable to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The Act stipulates that parents must give their OK for a site to obtain personal data from children under 13, according to an IAB filing. The IAB also cautioned against the FTC using COPPA for mobile and other emerging platforms such as interactive TV and interactive gaming. Saying that trying to impose the rules in those contexts would “present technological challenges.”(and then some)
“If the definition of ‘personal information’ were expanded to include anonymous data obtained through behavioral advertising, third parties would be forced to collect individually identifiable information about the user in order to effectuate the verifiable parental consent notice requirements,” states the letter, signed by IAB vice-president for public policy Mike Zaneis. “In other words, the data that ad networks collect would have to be significantly broadened.”
The IAB is pushing for the industry to impose self regulation that make sense so that any new guidelines do not represent significant hurdles that damage existing user experience. that online behavioral targeting ad serving ads to computer users based on sites visited is anonymous.
This is a very important survey by Econsultancy (one of our favorite blogs) that is ending today. This data is vital to helping us all understand the industry better so we can improve and evolve.The Performance Marketing Association is partnering with Econsultancy to help the affiliate marketing industry participate. Please take the time to complete this. Participants get a copy of the research. We guarantee it will help you to better understand your business and how it relates to the future of our digital marketing industries growth.
Complete the 5-minute survey and get the results report FREE (a $250 value).
Deadline for completion: Friday June 18, 2010
Are you harnessing the potential of online lead generation?
What are the most effective methods for generating consumer leads?
This is an Econsultancy survey and is relevant for advertisers, agencies and publishers and for all international markets.
The research is being supported by the IAB and the Performance Marketing Association.
The survey takes 5 minutes to complete and includes questions about the use of lead generation, its benefits and its budgets.
Those taking part in the research will get access to a free, advance copy of the full research report.
PMA Supporter : If you’re involved in Lead Generation, as an advertiser, publisher, OPM or solution provider, then the Econsultancy survey is for you. I’m sure relevant information on your space is important to your business decisions, so participating in this survey will not only contribute your position to this study, but you will receive a copy of the results report if you participate.
The new Razorfish Outlook Report launched this morning. Shiv Singh’s Going Social Now blog had some of the highlights of the report which include insight into how brand and direct response are an important area of focus in the economic downturn. The proliferation of direct response is directly related to the performance marketing industry and the vital role we play in helping build brands…this role is vital to our industry’s growth.
Downturn or no downturn. Brands are about building sustainable long term business models and partnerships that are accretive to the brand (both of which we need to focus on to grow our own industry!). Make sure to read this report. I have found it to be one of the most useful research reports in context to where our markets are heading. Here are Shiv’s highlights.
There was a recovery in spending in 2009 over 2008, albeit a small one. The average client media spend increased 4% in 2009, as opposed to decreasing 13% in 2008. This mirrors broader industry metrics as far as the recovery is concerned.
Other interesting factoids. We bought media on over 900 properties in 2009 but 45% of the total spending went to the four major portals (MSN, Google, AOL and Yahoo!). Over 50% of media dollars went towards highly efficient channels such as search and ad exchanges. Around 20% of our clients are testing ad verification systems, local advertising is seen to grow and emerging ad formats are seen to gain prominence in 2010.
Social media, which has exploded in popularity over the past few years, still only garners 4% of average client media spend. However, much of the cost of social media comes in the form of labor, not ad space – an important distinction when analyzing and planning media budgets. It is worth noting that the people costs aren’t included in our numbers. Also, the spending does vary based on industry and clients dramatically.
Clients continued to experiment with new media. Digital out-of-home in particular experienced significant growth, along with ad exchanges, data brokers and social media. I fully expect us to see more digital out-of-home and mobile spending in 2010. This spending will still be a fraction of marketing budgets but it will grow dramatically. In the case of mobile spending, it is worth noting that some of it takes the form of application development which is not reflected in our media numbers.
Contrary to popular belief, not every brand shifted its advertising focus to direct response as a result of reduced consumer spending. In fact, 60% of clients who did switch the approach of their ads actually moved to a more brand-focused message. To me this represents the fact that more marketers are recognizing that investing in one’s brand in a downturn is one of the best ways to prepare for a recovery. The investments produce a greater ROI in the long term as long as the pressure to maintain sales (think direct response advertising) isn’t too strong.
Affiliate Summit is trying something new and it makes a difference if you participate or not. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward have moved to a new model that leverages the wisdom of crowds to decide what panels are important. The sad thing is that there are barley any votes ( less than 1000 out of 1,00000′s of affiliates, merchants, marketers & networks) compared to how large the industry is! Whats up with that affiliate marketing community? Take 60 seconds and help shape the content that’s an integral part of the most important trade show that affects your lively hoods. Your vote and participation is important and makes a difference in which panels at ASWE10 are relevant.
We’ve posted the 100+ speaker proposals we’ve received and we need your help.
The speaker proposals have been pared down to the titles, speakers, descriptions, and classifications (experience level and main subject).
You can vote for submissions you’d like to see at Affiliate Summit East 2010 by clicking the arrow next to the proposed session. You may vote for as many sessions as you’d like. Voting will be open through May 14, 2010.
We have two panels we are involved with. Take a look and vote on them if you feel so inclined. Most importantly JUST VOTE on all the ones you feel are important. Here are our two.
Session Description: Explore the scope and consequences of affiliate fraud, and learn how we can help clean up the perception of the industry, attract more brand advertisers and boost payouts for those who play fair.
Session Speaker: Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
E.J. Hilbert, President, Online Intelligence
Keith Kochberg, CEO, iMarketing Ltd
Session Classification: Intermediate, Networks, Fraud
Session Description: Marketers behind the Snuggie know the power of TV to drive online sales. They have big budgets and are more focused than ever on driving online sales. Discover more about this giant opportunity. Session Speaker: Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director, Performance Marketing Association
Peter Bordes, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board, MediaTrust
Ron C. Pruett, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Mercury Media Session Classification: Advanced, Affiliates/Publishers, Infommercial
NOT the way I want to start my TGIF today after a long week. This crap gets my blood boiling when I see it because its such a blatantly open unethical slap in our industry’s face. The issue is this behavior soliciting affiliate network accounts on MediaTrust, ClickBooth and CX Interactive. Make no mistake, this is a fraud ring buying accounts to run scams. Is everyone else as disturbed by this behavior that needs to be stopped in its tracks? This is how our industry gets damaged. These fraud rings are at the the root of some of the major the issues confronting legitimate networks, affiliate and advertisers who are building long term businesses and value. As an industry, he legitimate firms are fighting things like this to defend the advertisers, publishers, and consumers in our ecosystem . We all need to be working closer together to squash affiliate rings by sharing information and openly calling this out by publicly leveraging social media when we see it and stop o stop it in its tracks. Please join the fight to stop these activities by posting in your own blog, Tweeting, and Facebooking this post out…. tweet this:
Fraudster @cebu_istorya is using @freelancer to buy #affiliate network accounts http://tinyurl.com/2vpw2vl for credit card #fraud STOP THEM
Here’s what I found this morning:
My Tweetdeck picked up this Tweet asking for approval to buy accounts on CX Digital , ClickBooth & MediaTrust by http://www.twitter.com/cebu_istorya
When you click on the link it takes you to a page on FreeLancer.com a site for bidding on free lance work. The buyer clearly does not speak English ( seems Russian ) based on their inability to spell. The most disturbing part is having the nerve say in their solicitation: “6), You should be honest,trustworthy and work seriously.” when they are doing something that is beyond dishonest & shady. You will see in the link section that there are several of these going on in the site.
The best way to stop this is to get involved and take the time to pass this along. Report this to Twitter and FreeLancer.com. The more chatter and transparency everyone makes the faster this gets stopped. Please add any further info in the comments of this post re other places like this that need to get outed and i will post and tweet it.
MediaTrust is an innovative market leader that provides trusted pay-for-performance digital advertising and publishing solutions. MediaTrust is headquartered in New York City with offices in Toronto and Santa Barbara.
The 2 of you need to connect re @Twylah . @kabaim & @AmyVernon it gives me great pleasure 2 connect 2 social media thought leaders we admire 6 days ago
