This week the show is packed full of Peter Figueredo of NETexponent. We normally try to keep our segments between 2-3 minutes, but during our talk with Peter, there was so much great insight and information that we had to keep the camera rolling. I found it especially interesting to get Peter’s take on how much he thinks affiliate marketing is evolving.

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A New Era in Performance Marketing

Happy new year to all! Earlier this month at MediaTrust, during our first weekly Sales Team meeting of 2010, we reflected back on 2009 for what it was, what made it successful, pitfalls to avoid and the lessons learned. Having been involved in the CPA industry for 5 years now, I have seen a number of significant changes and trends that have taken place in performance marketing — yet nothing compares to the volatility and instability our industry is currently experiencing. As Director of Publisher Management, one of the observations I communicated to my team is that our industry is in a “new era of change”.

The new era of our industry is driven by a desire for sustainability with new regulatory and compliance guidelines impacting the majority of business practices (especially for third tier advertisers that are involved in continuity programs otherwise known as “negative billing”). These rebill-oriented free-trial campaigns reached their peak in 2009 in terms of its dominance and overall volume on most CPA networks. Much has already been written about the driving force behind all that demand, and the reasons for its popularity and success in the consumer marketplace – as well as the risks associated if left unchecked. All the players involved including; Advertisers, Networks, Affiliates (and their traffic sources) each created their own ethical boundaries by which to operate, however the amount of profit and increasing competitive pressure eventually fueled a tipping point.

From a Network standpoint, the risks associated with assuming that business models are up to standard (or ignoring potential liabilities) are simply too high. The payment structure of most networks – weekly payouts to performing Affiliates and collecting monthly or semi-monthly payments from advertisers have resulted in millions of dollars in outstanding payments from advertisers. Add to that costly litigation which can end up including Affiliates, damaging even more relationships, and the risk factor is further multiplied.

On the Publisher side, a major shift in mindset and strategy is taking place as forward thinking Affiliates re-evaluate how and what they promote. Attending Affiliate Summit West in Vegas last week was a confirmation of this as many discussions revolved around such topics such as how to realign and thrive in a climate of increasing regulation and enhanced T&C’s. Most seem to agree that many of the fundamentals are the same and that it is about seeking realistic, value-add opportunities – with the potential for scalability and healthy ROI (It was refreshing to see this new kind of eagerness and determination to work together and seek out these opportunities).

Focusing on future opportunity in 2010 looks extremely promising if we understand the drivers for change. Expect MediaTrust to be on the forefront of the latest trends and to lead the charge through significant investment in our technology and people. We are aggressively hunting for new advertising opportunities in the existing CPA pool while also swimming upstream. Our growth strategy includes selecting new and unique campaigns in niches that have high growth potential in all forms of acquisitions – CPA, Lead Gen and Rev Share. Our philosophy is that in order to be an industry leader, one must lead by example, continuously adapt and innovate in order to dominate. We highly value our partnerships but we are also selective about where and with whom we align. For those willing to adapt and innovate along the way, the future is exciting and the path to continued success is being paved with opportunity. If you are at that stage of building your business and are open to new ideas about how to grow, we invite you to have a conversation with us.

At long last, we have a winner in our Amazon Kindle Contest. We had hundreds of people enter the contest and we have chosen our winner. Anthony Kirlew is from Phoenix and he entered our contest on January 5th.

How did we choose the winner? We tried to make it as fair and simple as possible. First, we compiled the number of entries in list form. Then we used a random number generator to pick a number between the parameters set. We then counted down the list until we hit that entrant. We checked to make sure that he was following us and that he had tweeted the appropriate phrase. Anthony had met both of those criteria.

Anthony, please send an email to sparent AT mediatrust DOT com and provide your mailing address so we can ship your prize. Over the next week or so we’ll be purchasing the Kindle and loading it up with our picks for the Top 10 Marketing Books of 2009!

Congrats on winning and thank you to all those that entered!

This year’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) will have a free affiliate track. The link to the agenda is here.

The folks that run the event (same guys that publish ClickZ) tell us that they are stepping up their coverage of the affiliate performance channel to make sure that the channel is better understood and more deeply covered by the press.

This is great news for the industry as it means that more tier 2 and tier 1 advertisers will be exposed to the efficacy of the performance channel and learn how to properly leverage pay-for-results marketing.

To register for the event, head on over to the site

We look forward to seeing you at the show!

Today we released a mobile version of our blog for populat phones like the iPhone and Blackberry. That means that you can check out our great content while you’re on the go or maybe at a conference. The mobile version formats the blog in an easy to read and easy to browse format for most popular mobile devices.

We know that this isn’t earth-shattering in terms of technological advances, but it’s another way for us to create a better user experience while you interact with MediaTrust and our content.

Because we just released it, it should be considered Beta and there may be some kinks we’ve yet to find. If you notice any funkiness on your mobile device, please let us know in the comments.

Have a great weekend!

“Buddy, let me take you to nice strip club. The girls are clean, you will have good time, no joke. Trust me. Free ride.”

This shady and slightly aggressive offer from my cab driver was the first thing I heard after arriving in Vegas for Affiliate Summit West last week. I declined, but I heard the offer again – multiple times from multiple drivers. Fed up, I finally asked a driver why this was so common. He kept his mouth shut at first, but a $10 “donation” was enough to get him talking. I came to a vivid conclusion after our conversation: These guys are affiliate marketers!

Let me explain. The drivers (affiliates) all work for larger taxi companies (CPA networks) who have long running deals with Vegas gentlemen’s clubs (merchants). Every time a a tourist (customer) is brought to a club (conversion), an attendant (tracking link) marks down the driver’s license plate (referral code). The driver is awarded a certain number of points (commission) based on how much money the tourist is worth (eCPC). Once the driver earns a certain amount of points, the taxi network and the driver both receive a kickback. Cab drivers who bring in a high volume of clients (super affiliates) are rewarded with all sorts of extra benefits, including cash bonuses and private dances (private dances).

This point system shares many qualities with CPA networks. The amount of money a driver earns is based on factors like distance from the hotel and quality of the strip club, traits that affect the conversion rate. The more difficult it is for a driver to convert a tourist into a degenerate club goer, the higher his payout is. A club that is further away from hotels is willing to pay more for a conversion, since these locations save money on real estate costs and have a harder time attracting average tourists. High end gentlemen’s clubs pay drivers more, since they attract a more lucrative client. However, if a cab driver continuously brings dead beat tourists or college kids to high end clubs for a higher payout, he may lose his job or his legs — this is the system’s method of preventing fraud.

Why does Vegas use this system? Gentlemen’s clubs recognize that their biggest hurdle is their distance from the highly populated Vegas Strip, so they created their own affiliate marketing system to overcome the issue. Online merchants who have trouble reaching their audience do the same thing when developing affiliate campaigns. While the online climate may not be as vice-ridden as Sin City, we can learn a thing about the evolution of online marketing by taking a quick look at the real world.

Now who ever said affiliate marketing was boring?

Win an Amazon Kindle Pre-Loaded with the Top 10 Marketing Books of 2009!

Earlier today we published our picks for the Top 10 Marketing books of 2009. We believe that reading any, or all, of these books will help you to elevate your business to the next level. That said, you can go out and buy them yourself, or you can enter our swanky little contest to win an Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with these books.

You only have to do two things to enter:

1. Make sure you are following us on Twitter.

2. Tweet out the following: Attendance at ASW + @MediaTrust list of Top 10 Marketing books of ‘09 = becoming a better marketer! Details: http://bit.ly/4qIYl1 #ASW10

Because we believe in the value of education in our industry, we want to reward those that are taking the next step to expand their knowledge of Performance Marketing by attending Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. After you follow the instructions above to enter our contest, make sure you stop by the MediaTrust Meet Market Table #34 to drop your business card off for an extra chance to win. To be clear, you don’t have to attend ASW to enter, but it could help your chances.

We’ll be picking a winner on February 1st, so you have until then to enter. Good luck!

UPDATE: We’ve had a few inquiries, so I wanted to be clear that this contest is open to entries worldwide. So get in there and Tweet from far and wide!

Today, our publisher partners will be getting a quiet (but very significant) upgrade. (Think iPhone 3G vs. iPhone 3GS)

Our engineering and product teams have been busy optimizing our Publisher site so that the MediaTrust experience is even faster and smoother.

Marc Tibbitts, our VP of Engineering commented: “With this release, we have made huge improvements in performance across the entire application. This will mean that publishers will be more productive on the MediaTrust Platform and can spend more time earning!”

Here are some of the details of the upgrade:

Increased speed: We have reduced HTML “payload” by making use of cachable libraries so pages load even faster. We have also reduced the number of lines of code by 8x.

Even more productive user experience: We have streamlined the user interface and simplified our URLs.

We hope our publishers enjoy the upgrade! As always, we look forward to your input on further suggestions for features or improvements. Please email product@mediatrust.com with your ideas.

We’re back from Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. While we were there, we shot 14 interviews with some pretty amazing people. I’m excited to say that the first in that series is a doozy. Todd Crawford is a legend in the affiliate space. He is one of the true pioneers dating back to being on the founding team of Commission Junction in 1998. Not content to rest on past accomplishments, Todd has launched a new venture called Impact Radius. We’re talking to him about why this venture is so timely.

Also, don’t forget – there’s still time to enter our Amazon Kindle contest. By following us on Twitter and simply retweeting a phrase, you are entered to win a Kindle pre-loaded with our Top 10 Marketing books of 2009. Hurry, the winner will be announced on February 1st.

Finally, I wanted to draw your attention to a post by Jordan Kravitz called “Affiliate Marketing Version 2.010″ . It’s a call to action to get your business booming in 2010.

Download or watch using Quicktime: iPod | Hi-Definition

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Headline: Social Networking usage WAY up. (Duh)

Details: Twitter and Facebook usage is way up year over year. Neilsen’s latest report outlines the numbers in deeper detail, here are the highlights:

1. People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites, with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year

2. Average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009.

3. Year-over-year growth in average time spent by U.S. users, for both Facebook and Twitter, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively.

4. Among, the top five U.S. social networking sites, Twitter.com continued its reign as the fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009.

So what does this mean to affiliate publishers? Simple and obvious: these platforms are a huge DESTINATION and SOURCE of traffic, so if you arent already doing so, we highly recommend leveraging these tools into your campaigns to attain broader reach. NOTE: We recently leveraged twitter with one of our own internal brand campaigns so you can see an example here of how cheaply and effectively use the channel.