Archives for October 2007

Larry Adams, Affiliate Product Manager at DoubleClick Performics, has announced a redesign to their links interface for affiliates.

The new Get Links interface enables affiliates to use links right away, rather than generating the links before using them.

In order to avoid any disruption during the holiday season, the new interface is being made available concurrently with Performics’ legacy links interface.

To view the new affiliate interface, select Get Links from the top navigation and choose Get Links Beta from the action list drop-down for any of your approved advertisers.

Performics expects the interface will be in beta for the next two to three months.

Affiliates are encouraged to e-mail affiliate@performics.com and/or comment on the DoubleClick Performics Blog with input and ideas.

Google AdSense may be coming to Facebook applications, according to Steve Rubel of the Micro Persuasion blog.

Steve referred to a quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in AdAge …

“How will those developers get paid for those services? We would like to have our ads in those applications.”

While Google would certainly like to have penetration on every square pixel of the Internet, I think Facebook and the developers can figure this out on their own.

In some cases, like the Ask Affiliate Summit app, we don’t want ads polluting the landscape. It’s meant to be a branding exercise.

Other Facebook applications are using direct and indirect means to gather leads, as well as leveraging affiliate marketing in various ways, such as the Chitika, Shopping Bargains, and other affiliate apps.

I think the world will be OK if Google doesn’t save the day here.

I enjoy many social networks and find value from them in various ways. But there are too many out there, and I have no interest in joining most of them.

But don’t tell that to somebody who I will call Lisa S.

I first got to know her when she invited me to be her friend at Multiply earlier this year. I searched my brain and Google Desktop and nothing turned up for this stranger.

Soon after, she invited me to join her on bebo. This time she invited me with two different e-mails that I use.

A few days passed and she invited me to PerfSpot.com. Again with both e-mails – this would be a trend that carried on from there.

And then there was friendster. This time there was a breakthrough – her Hotmail address was in the invite, rather than just a corporate no-reply e-mail.

I sent a note asking her to stop with the invitations. No response. No let up with the invites.

Next up was a request to join her at radiusIM, followed by a request from me for her to please go away.

By now, the reminders from the previous invites were kicking in (friendster sends a lot of them!).

Then it was quiet for a couple of days. False hope, my inbox was then graced with a Kaboodle invite. I did a little digging and found some information on her – she apparently belonged to every social network I ever heard of, as well as 7,283 others.

I managed to find her Skype account and sent a message asking her to stop the madness. She responded the only way she knew how – she invited me to Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network.

That was today and I’m completely fed up – she never even invites me to private betas or anything. Just clown stuff that anybody can join.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m into friending folks I don’t know, but who have like interests, mutual colleagues, etc. But this serial social networking – it’s a tragic waste of human spirit.

I was unfazed by the controversial 2 girls 1 cup video, but these constant spamvites make my stomach turn.

For anybody out there that has even a little Lisa S. in them – turn off your computer tomorrow and get some sun. Stop the madness, if just for one day.

The Amazon Associates program has announced that affiliates can now earn 20% in referral fees on Amazon MP3 Downloads.

Amazon MP3 boasts Earth’s biggest selection of a la carte, DRM-free MP3 music downloads with over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels.

All songs and albums on Amazon MP3 are available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software, so Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device, organize their music using any music management application, and burn songs to CDs.

Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 best-selling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.

Every song on Amazon MP3 is encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size.

Now to the money part for affiliates. Amazon affiliates are eligible to earn 20% on all MP3 referrals (up to $1.50 per item) through December 31, 2007.

Beginning January 1, 2008 the referral fees will be 10%. There is no limit to the number of items on which referral fees are earned.

The Apple iTunes affiliate program pays 5% commission on all goods. So Amazon is paying significantly more than iTunes, but are people willing to change their habits in the way they purchase MP3s?

I always buy from iTunes, but I’m going to give Amazon MP3 Downloads a shot to see how smooth it is. Then, I’ll see if this service has the potential to be an iTunes killer.

More details on the Amazon MP3 Getting Started page.

Antitrust experts predict Google’s purchase of DoubleClick (part of DoubleClick Performics) for $3.1 billion will be approved by U.S. regulators, despite strong opposition from Microsoft and Yahoo, according to Reuters.

While Google’s rivals argue that the merger poses antitrust and privacy concerns, experts say advertising remains a big market and Internet advertising is wide open for new entrants. Privacy, they add, is not a core antitrust concern and regulators were unlikely to consider it when evaluating the merger.

Mark Kovner, an antitrust lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis, said the Federal Trade Commission was not inclined to block vertical mergers, which are usually the combination of two companies producing different goods or services for the same product.

“The agencies have been looking at head-to-head competition,” Kovner said, adding that putting search engine advertising into a separate market “seems like a jury-rigged market definition. To the outside observer it seems like advertising is a big wide open field.”

More details at Reuters: Google-Doubleclick deal seen winning approval.