This week we’re talking about the launch of a great new Twitter client called Twylah. Right off the bat I know what you’re probably thinking – great, another Twitter client. I thought the same thing when I heard about it. After using it for a couple of weeks though, I’ve found Twylah to be very useful.

Check out MediaTrust’s Twylah page.

Twylah will create a personally branded site made up of highly topical and contextual SEO-optimized pages around your tweets. The site carries your personal brand and is composed entirely of  your tweets, insuring easy location outside the world of Twitter apps and clients.

Tweets are organized into a topically organized mini-blog so that readers can better interact with you or your brand. You can even mix postings longer than 140 characters with shorter postings to create a hybrid mini-blog. Additionally, each of your tweets carries a reply/comment section, so all replies to posts are viewable inline with tweets and posts.

One of my favorite features of Twylah is the way you can browse through users tweets based only on topics that you’re interested in. It automatically organizes any Twitter stream into topical sections, so you can more easily navigate what someone is saying without having to look through all their tweets. This means clearing through the clutter faster and lessening the noise levels.

Still not convinced? Listen to our interview with Twylah founder Eric Kim.

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I talk to a lot of business owners each week and they’re always looking for a way to differentiate themselves from their competition. In addition to blogging, I always try to educate on the benefits of audio and video podcasting.

This week we’re talking to performance marketing vet, Trisha Lyn Fawver about using podcasting to build your brand and spread thought leadership. It’s fairly simple to implement and the rewards can be significant.

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Today we’re stepping away from the online world and sitting down in your living room. We’re talking to Jeff Reine about Popbox. Imagine being able to get all your various forms of media from any computer in your house right on one easy-to-use box that interacts with your TV. Now imagine the types of campaigns that brands can deploy around an interactive television experience. This technology opens a whole new stream of revenue for advertisers.

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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.

This week we have an interview that reminds why I love my job. I got a chance to speak with the SEO Coordinator for CNN, Topher Kohan. CNN is one of the most popular sites on the planet, so you can imagine that formulating and executing a sound SEO strategy is no small task.

During our chat Topher and I spoke about a variety of topics including the impact that social media has on CNN’s content, the SEO challenges around properly tagging and indexing video and audio and the day-to-day challenges of SEO on such dynamic content.

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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.

Create an account now at http://affiliatesummit.slinkset.com/ and start voting.

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.

Fight Fraud, Win Respect: Attracting Brand Advertisers

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

The New Frontier for Infommercials: Affiliate Marketing!

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

Stop reading this sentence and start voting!

On this episode of Relevantly Speaking we’re tackling the growing practice of outsourcing. Brian Williams of WiseWilliams.com is a strong believer in the practice. Does it make sense from a cost perspective or does the quality of your work suffer? I’m sort of up in the air on this one and would love your perspective.

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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.

It seems like yesterday that I was employed by one of the pioneers in the CPA space and we were among only 3-5 other performance based ad networks.  With just a handful of employees, we were profitably generating $60 million/year in revenue with no end in sight. My have those times changed. In just 5 years, the CPA industry has endured intense competition with the launch of hundreds of networks, has been exposed to more intense litigation, has encountered more fraud, has commoditized its technologies, enjoyed new sources of traffic, invented fake blogs, experienced bankruptcies and got drunk on a hell of a lot of weight loss tea and acai diet pills.

Much like the early days of the auto industry, we are now moving rapidly from hyper growth with many players to one of survival. One difference with the auto industry is that this is all happening a lot faster. From inception to some semblance of maturity in less than 8 years is truly remarkable. It’s no surprise that a tidal wave of consolidation is happening making the stand alone CPA network a relic of the past. This is what happens in an industry plagued with thinning margins, high competition, low barriers to entry, little technological investment, unskilled managers, and an increasing difficulty in trying to differentiate and step out from the noise.  Those that remain alone and do not diversify, are destined to fail.

As an advertiser or publisher, I recommend working with networks with an established reputation, value-added services and rock solid foundation.  The network’s existing advertiser base is also indicative of its stability and traffic quality – so pay close attention to the calibre of their advertisers. If all of their advertisers are diet or anti-aging skin cream continuity guys, be careful. With higher tier brands that deliver true value to consumers, publishers are offered stability and long-term revenue streams. There are really only about 5-10 trusted networks these days, so leverage impartial sources like Blue Book and other industry trade resources for direction.

Even with all of its challenges, the performance marketing industry is well positioned to enjoy a bright future. There are increasing signs that larger brands are starting to embrace affiliate marketing, as these advertisers relinquish more brand control and the industry becomes more respected and transparent.  The convergence of DRTV with online performance marketing continues its growth, new lead gen markets targeting the aging population continue to open up, and new opportunities in international markets are on the rise. Ultimately, I still believe in the value proposition, the idea of advertisers paying for performance, and if history tells us anything, performance marketing will continue to grow and evolve for many years to come.

Stay tuned.

Julian Mossanen

I came across an interesting post on the Affiliate Summit blog that asked a rather important question. Yet it lay untouched, un-commented, and ignored. Which I thought odd as it was very relevant to all the conversations at the Performance Marketing Leadership Summit at ad:tech (yes, I do owe a post summit update).

The issue is over the title of the tradeshow, however, the debate symbolic of something larger. Should our industry evolve to becoming the “performance marketing industry” of which “affiliate marketing” becomes a major channel? Many comments have been made of late regarding the use of the term “affiliate” and moving the terminology to “publisher” or “media partner”. (that whole issue is another post altogether!). I think the discussion that Shawn brings up is an important one that  we need to address. Read below and join in his comments to discuss. The link to the original post is below.

Shawn posted This: