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Mobile In-Store Tools’ Functionality Makes All the Difference

By
Pesach Lattin
-
1

A trend that has been seen quite frequently in recent months is the use of brands’ mobile technology by everyday consumers while they are physically in the stores of these brands. They do this usually for deals and promotions that are being offered by the brands, or to do a bit more research on the items that they are interested in buying in person. For brands, this is a pretty great marketing opportunity, allowing them to appeal to customers while they, themselves are looking to buy. Many brands already utilize their mobile presence as an effective marketing tool while consumers are in stores, but there are still brands that do not pay much attention to it. It is understandable, as it is only a small area to work with, but it is happening more and more as days pass. So, maybe it is something worth looking into.

I say this only because of a recent study that was reported by eMarketer today. The study was conducted by a branding solutions provider, G2 USA alongside the marketing research company Savitz Research. The study was based on the experience of consumers while in store, focusing on their use of brands’ mobile tools during store visits. Here is one of the more interesting results from the study, as reported by eMarketer:

The most prevalent attitude toward in-store mobile technology among all age groups was that when mobile technology didn’t work, consumers blamed the brand. US shoppers between the ages of 18 to 34 were the most likely to feel this way, at 57%.

Apparently, in-store mobile technology failures have become a pretty decent sized issue with consumers. There are many brand marketers that often fail to recognize how important the functionality of these tools is, as consumer interaction has to be smooth and efficient. If it is not, then it becomes an issue for the brand, because consumers have nobody else to blame. The fact that reputation means everything still holds true in this sense, because there are many times when a consumer will find one unfavorable issue with a certain brand, and put it out of sight forever.

Now, maybe I have overdramatized the importance of in-store mobile tools, but they surely cannot be taken for granted. In their article, eMarketer explains this idea:

The onus is then on brands to make sure that not only are they putting mobile technology out there to lead consumers down the purchase funnel, they are making double sure consumers have an easy time using that technology and aren’t just wasting their time loading and tapping—time they could be spending shopping and buying.

Although a good chunk of shopping does take place on the internet in today’s world, there is always going to be a lot of consumers who prefer to visit a store in person. These consumers can still be reached while they are ready to buy, but effective in-store tools are a necessity to do so. Otherwise, the entire shopping experience is out of brands’ hands.

The Zota One Page Marketing Bible

By
Gabriel Zota
-
20

I made my first article to be about networks, I saw  that as vital for an affiliate. It’s who you are working with and who you trust.

It delivered a fair point, don’t look at metrics, look at the end total money in your pocket. Don’t get “too nerd” and lose yourself in the fuzz.

You can’t pay a restaurant bill in conversions and your girlfriend has no idea what are you talking about when you tell her she’s the best EPC you’ve ever seen (I mean it baby).

How to Get The actual Money
What I’m asked the most is: What do you do, What are your verticals, What is your traffic source, What do you test, Where do you get your hosting, What other things do you get rich from, Mentor me you da man, Are you ignoring me.

Below is the answer to pretty much all of your doubts.

1) Starting (New guys)
Ask your network for their best converting offers and a traffic source that they know these offers already work on.
If you have traffic, get testing

2) What to test so you get actual New money.
Every single thing that can impact your visitor’s behavior.
That will be  your ad, your landing page,  the time the tracking in between these two takes to load.
For Mobile add the following to the list: operating system, device type, carrier, connection type, resolution size.

That’s pretty much all you want to care about, everything else you’ll learn it when necessary. You don’t have to test all of the things too, stop until you reach a profitable state, continue if you want more ROI.

Let’s get into the actual details.

Your Ad – It has to attract clicks (high CTR) and create a need for anyone clicking, to get what you claim to have. You have to basically tease them. You would pick the best ads out of a few you made, based on which one has the best ROI (return on investment), not CTR or CVR – but these two combined – ROI. Ctr, Cvr are good only initially for a first look, when weeding out  the obviously bad ads.

Your Landing Page – It should be appealing at first then create trust. It should do so by delivering points that target your visitor’s most important  values in life:

–          Intimate Encounters  – Relationships
–          Money
–          Beauty
–          Services that they use every day such as Insurance for their cars, Loans, Daily Deals.

The integrity behind anything you say has to be out of the question, because it will be questioned before action is taken.

Your goal would be giving people the final, definitive, unquestionable solution to one of their problems listed above – that is simple for them to execute in 5 minutes.

They need to be absolutely hooked, sold.

Sounds a lot like a “crack” game, but most people are more addicted to their desires than most of the drug abusers I’d know (if I was to ever know such people) – It’s built into our genetics.

Your Tracking –  It has to allow you to track everything technically, it would be the popular CPVLab, Prosper202 or ImobiTrax. I think MrGreen.am has a plug-in for Prosper202 (to add mobile capabilities).

Testing Methodology

This is important.

Your testing and ways of work cannot be all over the place, you will have to keep your creative mind grounded to reality and test what you can actually keep track of at one time. Make two landing pages and don’t touch them after, just place them in rotation.

Focus on ads, run 4-5 ad copies entirely different while you rotate these two LPs. Pick the best ad. While you test ads, if one LP is completely trash remove it, don’t lose money that you don’t need to.

Take your winning ad and winning LP. Now focus on your LP.

What makes a Kickass LP a Kickass LP

I had advertisers behind very known offers tell me I have the absolute highest quality (low low complaints) they have ever seen out of all the affs.

I was very aware of it to say the least because I built my LPs so that I pretty much take a customer by the hand, make them sign up and make them to enjoy his/her’s new stuff and love it (because of the need built).

They’ll never complain – I don’t have to deceive them, I am even able to tell them they will pay a stratosferic ammount without it affecting my EPCs, ask your favourite traffic source’s Account Manager to confirm such statement. Landing Pages are more magic than anything due to all the elements on.

For you to profit stick to your business mindset though, don’t start believing into magic because I’ll bazooka your Harry Potter wand faster than you can say Dumbledore, better believe that, it’s a long name.

So test all the separate elements on your LP as you normally do for everything, then give a complete look at your LP as 1 thing – Not the separate elements.
Your visitors could care less about your H1 tags and your buttons, the feeling of it as whole has to be right and make them take action.

There are lots of services to test elements on pages for a/b testing, can’t mention too many or we’ll have to start getting deals. There are many and they all do the same thing.

You could even just have two separate pages, change just 1 thing, run for enough volume of sign-ups and pick the best page, then move on your next page test with a new element.

When Too much is Too much

I’ll never say too much money is too much, but too much work can be too much. You need to be smart money not blind money.

You need to understand that you will never convince 100% of your visitors, you will never convince a % of your visitors that has one mindset without losing everyone else. It’s reality and I know it crushes what you may have heard before. Even politicians can’t do that and man I wish I had one mentor me (hit a young business man up).

It is statistically impossible to achieve 100% CVR as it is statistically impossible to offer  the highest EPCs on the planet without one guy getting greedy and bringing it back to normal EPC.

So keep your campaigns profitable and learn your traffic.

 My writing style may not be impeccable (I doubt that), the flow of it may be questionable, but what it does is it delivers and that’s my only goal. A percentage of Sales men and Marketers will succeed no matter what, now you might have just got yourself a Big edge on everyone else. Consider this a Marketing and Sales Middleman Bible, share the love with other affiliates or your own affiliates so they can profit.

All material is Copyrighted so if you see it sold or Re-formatted with no credits please hit me up I love lawsuits it’s quick money.

Affiliates Should Run The Industry

By
Gabriel Zota
-
32

Options  – Do you have options. If you are an affiliate, you do have options.

What does that mean for  You? – It means Power. Yes, your position is now Powerful.

So what are these options I’m talking about and why would a middle man like you have any power. You have options for networks, you have options for traffic sources, you have options for services that help you connect these two dots.

Cool ha?

That’s Powerful,  notice my  uppercase. You see… there are tens of them as it should be but just one of you – They are all fighting for your business.

So I’m going to tell you How to Leverage that Power. You can be sure someone already is, you better be doing so yourself.

Let’s get down to what will make the biggest difference in your revenue out of all these options you have – that would be Networks. Your new actions after today will result in the new guys (known to pay) getting a chance and the industry improving heavly as a whole. I’m know to start this kind of stuff.

In this process your ass will get a lot richer, probably 30 -40% richer, also your mindset shifting a lot.

Let’s get to Biz:

More or less, all of the Networks carry the same offers, that’s out of the equation now.
More or less, all of them offer weeklies right off the start if you have enough volume, that’s out of the picture now too.

How can you even choose?

Forget Payouts. Yes – Forget Payouts.
Forget EPCs. Yes – Forget EPCs.

Why should I forget these things Zota?
Payouts are irrelevant, so it would come down to EPC. EPC is irrelevant too – Click shaving was created and the ways around to do it that are Infinite.

 So how do you know which network is Best for you?

Split their links – 50/50, 33/33/33, 25/25/25/25 whatever percentage depending on how many links you rotate, basically just make sure all links get the same amount of love. Run that for a while (to ensure your earnings don’t just drop after a few days). Run say for a week.While you run for that week weed out the worse performing guys, the guys that give you less $ (total ammount $ earned). Not conversions, not EPC or what you’re used to look at.

Compare total earnings of each Network in the same timeframe, being it 3 days for the very bad ones, then the whole week.

Ps: Make sure you get paid, or all I just mentioned above is you being another (fairly good now) entrepreneur thrown out the window. Have a cool day,

This Group Can Kill Email Marketers

By
James Carner
-
4

Wikipedia defines news.admin.net-abuse.email, NANAE, as a Usenet newsgroup devoted to the discussion of the abuse of email systems, specifically through spam and similar attacks. According to a timeline compiled by Keith Lynch, NANAE was the first widely available electronic forum for discussing spam. The group was officially proposed by Tim Skirvin in 1996 alongside a number of other groups in order to reduce the load on two net abuse groups at that time, news.admin.net-abuse.announce and news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Later, it was proposed that a subgroup, news.admin.net-abuse.email.blocklists be created.

Some of the largest anti-spam activists share blacklists, discuss security protocols, expose hackers and target alleged spammers on NANAE. Over the years, they have coined many useful phrases like white hat, grey hat & black hat that are still in use today. All three terms are used to define an ISP and the level to which they tolerate spammers on their networks. They are extremely useful, but have accused many publishers of spamming whether they were guilty or not.

If a publisher is blacklisted, often times the only alternative is to appeal their case to this forum with hopes of getting their IPs delisted. Such was the case with SPEWS before 2006. SPEWS is no longer active, but is still being used by some mail networks. The Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) was an anonymous service that maintained a list of IP address ranges belonging to Internet service providers (ISPs) that host spammers and take little action to prevent their abuse of other networks’ resources (black hat).  Internet sites used SPEWS as an additional source of information about the senders of unsolicited bulk email, better known as spam. However, the odds of a publisher appealing and getting delisted from SPEWS through NANAE proved quite difficult.

According to William (Bill) K. Cole, founder of Solid Clues Consulting (http://scconsult.com, who worked for the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), and a self proclaimed anti-spam activist, “In the case of some blacklistings, notably a listing in SPEWS, the only communication channel to the blacklist maintainer is via public spam discussion fora, primarily news.admin.net-abuse.email (a.k.a. NANAE) and SPAM-L .” SPAM-L was shut down as of May 11th, 2009 and replaced with https://spammers.dontlike.us or SDLU.

From the perspective of the person with listed address space, the problem with this is that both of the aforementioned have more than their share of hecklers, fools, fanatics, trolls, script-kiddies, and fanboys. If you post to either about your listing, you can expect a lot of responses. Most are useless. Some are not. You can also expect responses in the form of probes into your system. If you are not familiar with the Usenet cultural flavor (and SPAM-L largely shares that…) you may find it hard to keep your cool in these places.

Keep in mind that a discussion forum is not a unitary group. There are kooks and fools there but there are also some very sharp and sane people. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Just remember that many people taking part in these discussions have been highly radicalized on the issue of spam. Many are essentially impotent with regards to spam, but possess the power to write scathing things about anyone they perceive being connected to spammers in any way. For example, you will find people who have never run a mail system in their life and have no means of using SPEWS, applauding a SPEWS listing that includes non-spammers. Growing a thick skin can help.

A blacklisting may result in your chance to encounter examples of disturbingly abnormal psychology.  A posting to a public forum to deal with a SPEWS listing is almost sure to result in some rabid email and possibly unauthorized security probing activity aimed at your systems. Assuming that the former doesn’t actually include threats and the latter doesn’t actually breach your security, both of which are suitable to report to the proper law enforcement agencies, you should not respond to either one. You may find it helpful to block both from your systems, but even though they may be the result of announcing your situation in a public forum, there’s no point in posting the accusations to the same forum unless you have a smoking gun implicating a specific participant.

Keep in mind that anyone can read a newsgroup and a lot of the worst kooks reading NANAE never post. As a longtime NANAE user, I know that many of my fellow users would benefit from medication and counseling that they are likely to never get. And, those are just the ones who post. There isn’t a gatekeeper for NANAE and only a very permissive one for SPAM-L, so keep in mind that the worst kooks are probably mostly disliked by the other regulars who have no means other than a killfile to avoid them.”

Corresponding to an anonymous blog started by a team of disgruntled marketers who have been victims of the over-aggressive spam fighters that frequent NANAE on Usenet, “NANAE is a destructive group of internet criminals that spend day and night attacking people on the web for nothing more than to feel the power of virtual authority. They are anonymous and like to expose people that oppose them by reporting falsehoods to damage their credibility online. This is a dangerous game they are playing and it’s best to make sure their identities are also exposed.

The above statement is an opinion, but not the first to surface from other disgruntled mailers who try and appeal to NANAE. Ken Magill, creator of The Magill Report who openly admits he is on the ROKSO list was a recent victim in a personal attack on his family by the Usenet newsgroup. “NANAE is the online discussion-group equivalent of poo-flinging monkeys. When someone disagrees with them, they don’t debate. They name-call and they smear.” A member of NANAE quickly responded, “…Yes I am a NANAE regular. And I find some of the attacks on Mr. Stephens, especially those that drag his family into the fray, to be rather distasteful. But he is, as you correctly pointed out, hardly innocent in that department himself either.”

The war between bulk mailers and anti-spammers has been going on since the inception of spam. Bulk mailers use the First Amendment’s “Freedom of Speech” as an argument to continue sending bulk mail and anti-spammers use logic, law and reasoning to counter attack the issue and occasionally slander. Not to say that an accused spammer isn’t guilty of slander or starting the riff. Both sides commonly engage in heated arguments and stab each other with words.

Regardless of the slander, NANAE has its usefulness and should be taken seriously. The original pioneers of anti-spam belong to NANAE, including Steve Linford, the founder of The Spamhaus Project. It’s safe to say you should monitor and study this Usenet newsgroup as a tool for learning about proper mailing procedures, communication etiquette, delisting techniques and a place to suppress new and old spamtraps, domains and IPs.

Page Notifications Grow Audience Reach on Facebook

By
Pesach Lattin
-
2

Facebook has the huge user base and constant traffic that marketers love to see when putting their faith into a social media network. Trusting Facebook with social presence and advertising so far has been easy for marketers, since they usually see decent user engagement levels. However, there has apparently been some problems that marketers have been facing, and one of them is the reach that their pages have. Brands especially struggle with the reach that Facebook lends, since they rely heavily on their Facebook pages to inform consumers and potential customers of the newest and most exciting on-goings of their companies. Now, Facebook has apparently taken a step toward a solution.

In an article from Marketing Land, the company tells of a new feature that Facebook has been working on for a while now. The new feature is called Page Notifications, and it works in a similar way to the Close Friends feature that Facebook has seen good attitudes toward recently.

Even if a user likes a page, it does not mean that every post made by that brand’s page will be seen, and that is part of what is hurting the reach of brand pages on the network. After all, what good is a page fan if they do not see any of the content? Now, with Page Notifications, users can opt in to receive notifications any time a brand page posts anything. That way, nothing will be missed by users who opt in to Page Notifications.

The feature is not only allowed for use with brand pages, as users can get notifications from any page, but the feature will help brands most out of anyone. Here is the statement that Facebook made to Marketing Land regarding the new Page Notifications function,

“We are currently rolling out the ability for people to receive notifications from specific pages, friends or public figures that they are connected to. This feature will help people keep up with the people and things that they care about most.”

The company has also included something that Mark Cuban wrote regarding the weakening of Facebook’s user reach. The Maverick’s owner seems to think that Facebook is going downhill with their marketing efforts, due to their poor reach. Here is his post from Twitter,

FB is blowing it ? This is the first step.. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new Myspace as primary site twitter.com/mcuban/status/…

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) October 27, 2012

Facebook may look bad these days, but the truth is that marketers need the network, as no other social media platform brings in the traffic that Facebook does. Also, the company’s mobile platform beats out those from other social media networks, and mobile continues to grow fast. So, although Cuban may be right about the mistakes that Facebook seems to make repeatedly, there are far too many benefits that Facebook lends to give it up entirely. Plus, this new feature could very well fix the reach issues that brands are seeing with the company’s reach. So, I guess it’s a case of perfect timing.

eMarketer: Video Sharing Looks Good for 2012

By
Pesach Lattin
-
0

Kind of a combination of two marketing tactics, video sharing can be an extremely important part of any digital marketers entire campaign. Video ads have grown in popularity and effectiveness greatly since they started actually being used, and social media marketing is today’s big ticket marketing method. So, if you sort of mush the two together, you essentially come out with YouTube. YouTube has been marketers’ go to place to use social video, as it often is the type of video marketing that sees satisfactory results. Recently, eMarketer has released some information that pertains to social video sharing, and here is their grand introduction to the results,

The power of social video represents an evolution in digital advertising, according to a new eMarketer report, “Social Video: The Next Wave in Digital Advertising.” Marketers are starting to move past the interruptive model of the 15- or 30-second pre-roll ad and toward a broader strategy that includes longer opt-in videos with built-in sharing capabilities. This branded content is designed to be consumed and shared on the social web, driving earned media and raising the potential for viral success.

Social video ad views for the entire globe have seen quite a substantial growth in 2012, as can be seen in eMarketer’s bar graph. The graph shows that in Q1 of 2011, there were 773.4 million social video ad views, while in Q1 of 2012, the number had skyrocketed to an astounding 1.32 billion.

Of the online video properties that marketers have shown interest in, YouTube sits at the very top, which should come as no surprise to anyone. However, what is interesting is that in August of 2012, YouTube had attracted up to 150.2 million unique viewers. At that time the site contained 13.77 billion videos, and the average time that viewers spent on the site for the month was a whopping 443.4 minutes. These statistics are what put the company at the top.

What I want to focus on here though, is that YouTube is a place where internet using consumers go to see videos, as well as share them. So, not only are a lot of people viewing these ads on YouTube but they are also sharing them, which is exactly what marketers look for when advertising with the Google owned video property. Of course, the numbers show that 72.2% of videos shared in the late summer of 2012 were shared on Facebook, with email coming in second place with only 8.5%.

Not many marketers see how important of a connection there is between Facebook and YouTube when using YouTube’s video advertising features. Since video sharing is now becoming a very important player in the video advertising world, it is good to see that it is on the up, and that Facebook is the place where consumers make it happen. Facebook users share things constantly on their Facebook pages, including these YouTube videos. Attached to these videos are YouTube ads, and every time a video is shared, so is the ad. Paying attention to this fact might help to bring in more video ad shares.

The full report from eMarketer is here.

Affiliate Marketers will Vote Romney

By
Pesach Lattin
-
8

According to a survey done by Performance Marketing Insider it seems that marketers are overwhelmingly going to vote for Mitt Romney for President. The survey, in which over 300 marketers responded, shows a significant lead for Romney at 53% vs. 29.3% for Barack Obama. This survey was targeted mainly to professionals within the industry via linkedin.

Interestingly enough 12.1% of the marketers replied that they would vote for someone else instead of the two main candidates. While they did not specify whot hey were going to vote for, it is possible they would consider Gary Johnson, a Libertarian Party candidate, who is the former governor of New Mexico. However, considering the humorous side of the industry, its possible they will vote for Rosanne Barr. Both independent candidates favor legalizing marijuana… and I think Rosanne actual favors making marijuana usage compulsory.

We tried to get answers from those who replied on why they were voting one way or another, but most of them were not willing to go public on their voting reasons. However, Kevin De Vincenzi, the CEO of XY7.com was willing to go on the record on why he was going to vote for Mitt Romney. According to De Vincenzi, he believed that “we need a business man to run the country and not some socialist.” We are pretty sure he meant it.

Paul Angles, an Internet marketing Consultant on the other hand is going to vote for Obama.  He made it clear that he is a staunch supporter of Obama because he has seen Democrat Presidents fix the economy, and according to him with Obama in office , “the economy has been pulled back from the abyss, the private sector has taken off, Wall Street has boomed, and the deficit is down.” He thinks that if you vote for Romney, you are making a huge mistake because “Romney wants to double-down on Bush’s policies.  Obama wants to double-down on Clinton’s.  I’ll take what clearly works over what clearly fails.”

Should be noted that 1% of the poll said they weren’t going to vote and 4% wasn’t sure who they were going to vote.

Should ad:tech NYC be canceled?

By
Pesach Lattin
-
24

Despite this week ad:tech officials telling people that they were planning to go on with the show, insiders have told PMI that they are considering canceling the show. Several sponsors personally called me, telling me that they have already asked for refunds on their sponsorships – plus more than a few exhibitors saying there are serious problems in the show continuing.

While still saying the show must go on, officials at ad:tech have sent a limited survey to people asking about their attendance.  Clearly they are considering what the next steps should be in regards to adtech, and need to come to a decision today.

 Here are some of the issues that exhibitors and attendees are having:

–    Hotels have refused to confirm when they are opening, and will some will not assure reservations at this time.
–     One of the warehouses that have many of the exhibits is still underwater, and there is no way to know the extent of the damage.  More than likely the exhibits are somewhat destroyed by salt water and unusable.
–     Those who need to ship exhibits have been told there is limited availability to ship by the shipping companies, including some companies that have told them they wont be able to get the exhibits in for over a week because of backups.
–     No one can guarantee transportation into Manhattan from the airport. One airport is just opening today, and all airports have limited ability still.
–     Flights cannot be confirmed for the next week by many of the major airlines.

As someone who spent the majority of their life in NYC, I fully support having events after the disaster. NYC will survive, and always be a great place. However, maybe its not a good idea when there are still parts of the city being forced to give out water, and with almost no way to currently easily get into NYC, to cancel the event. I understand the revenue implications, but the industry might appreciate some leadership – and perhaps ask companies to use the money to go to charity and those affected by Sandy.

We have been unable to reach anyone at ad:tech for comment, and all calls and extensions that we’ve tried have gone unanswered to us. I have however changed the title to “should” adtech be canceled. Although they are still having a survey about if you are attending or not, and why. http://na.ad-tech.com/ny/ad-tech-ny-survey/

Update 4:55PST: adtech sent out the following message

We’d like to confirm that next week’s ad:tech New York event WILL TAKE PLACE as planned Nov 7-8th, 2012. We just heard that the marathon has been cancelled so want to reconfirm that our show is going ahead as scheduled.

Our team has made a full assessment of the situation at Javits. We’ve seen the extraordinary measures the Javits Center staff is making. We’ve also witnessed the heroic measures the City of New York is taking to get the city running again and keep New York City open for business. We asked you, the members of the digital marketing community—exhibitors, delegates, speakers—and overwhelmingly you said the same thing: the show must go on. Contrary to the rumors circulating on the web WE’RE RE-CONFIRMING: the ad:tech New York 2012 show is a GO.

New York is a resilient city, and its people and businesses have endured hardships before. Each and every time they’ve come back stronger. Mayor Bloomberg has made a point of encouraging businesses to get back to work as soon as they’re able and we feel an obligation to keep our commitments to the industry, the city and the ad:tech eco-system—hotels, taxis, restaurants and other venues and vendors—that benefit from the show. Thank you for your patience and persistence.

Since ad:tech is happening so closely on the heels of Sandy it should be expected there will be some logistical challenges. But given that our show takes place entirely within Javits, we feel we should go ahead. New York and the greater ad:tech community are incredibly supportive, and we’re sure we’ll see that spirit displayed throughout what we know will be an amazing show.

See you in New York next week!
-the ad:tech team

Since this was originally written its been announced that a major storm will be hitting the NY area again. While it’s not going to be a hurricane, it’s going to be a severe cold front to NYC when so many New Yorkers still don’t have power for heat. Considering much of the area is still suffering, people don’t have gas, water, electricity, ways to get to work, many people have pointed out this may not be a good time for having a conference for humanitarian reasons.

Networks Need to Stop Competing with Their Affiliates

By
Lyndsie Ezell
-
17

Would you ever choose to put your most important business decisions in the hands of your direct competition? The clear answer should be a resounding no, but unfortunately this is exactly what a staggering number of affiliates do every single day when they choose to work with an Affiliate Network that competes with their own affiliates. A good affiliate network will always put their affiliates first and never compete with them for business, and these networks, while rare, do exist! Still, the practice of networks competing with their affiliates has become extremely common and almost “accepted” within the industry.

As an affiliate you should never “accept” this practice or settle for working with a network that will compete with you. In case your network has convinced you otherwise, here are the top 5 reasons you should absolutely never work with a network that will compete with you.

Top 5 Reasons Affiliates Lose When Their Own Networks Compete with Them

 Objectivity – A network that is competing with you cannot and will not remain objective when recommending offers. In a good network your affiliate manager will always recommend the best offer available, because the success of your business is their top priority. If your network is running their own internal traffic they will always be running the best offer and giving you the 2nd or 3rd best option because you are NOT the priority, their own affiliate business is.

 Testing – When a network is competing with their affiliates they are using them as a testing ground. As an affiliate in a network that competes, you must assume that any testing suggestions the network gives you are a means of testing their own internal traffic. Essentially, they are using your money and resources to learn and implement what will work best for them, NOT necessarily you.

 Cannibalizing Traffic Sources – A network that is running the same traffic sources will always beat you out for traffic. Because they are one step closer to the advertisers, they have the advantage and are able to run slimmer margins allowing them to cannibalize your traffic, keywords, etc and essentially be stealing placements from you.

 Cap Space – In our industry, top offers, the most successful offers that everyone wants to be running, are capped to limit available space. If your network is competing with you, the majority, if not all of those top offers will be filled by your network. If there is only space on a top offer for 100 leads a day, you can bet your network will grab at least 80, stealing the valuable space and leaving you, the affiliate, with the “leftovers”.

 Core Business Growth – As an affiliate, your overall goal is to grow your core business. Networks competing are not focused on growing affiliates’ businesses, instead they are actually making their affiliates expendable while focusing on growing their own business. A good network will be investing their money and resources into supporting their affiliates with things like higher payouts, faster support and new and original promotional ideas, NOT competing with and succeeding over their affiliates businesses.

Bottom line, an Affiliate Network should be focused on being a network so you, the affiliate, can be focused on being an affiliate. The performance based marketing industry is highly competitive and a network is suppose to be the support that makes an affiliate’s life easier. A network that is willing to compete with you loses objectivity when it comes to supporting your business, cannibalizes traffic sources, steals valuable cap space, will use your traffic as a testing ground for their own traffic and overall cannot be trusted to have your best interests in mind. A good network will be focused on finding the best solutions for your business to help you succeed and grow. Do your homework when choosing a network and don’t risk your business with an affiliate network that competes.

Google $100 Million Per Day in Advertising

By
Pesach Lattin
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4

Another interesting infographic was released today, revealing just how powerful Google has become in the digital marketing realm of the web. The information in the graphic comes from WordStream, a search marketing software provider. It tells us that Google is currently making more than $100 million with search advertising each and every day. As we have all known for some time, Google truly is the name in search advertising, despite Bing’s constant claims at consumer preference. Google has been successfully running search advertising for some time now, and they are now reaching records that are chart shattering. What better way to display these record highs to the world than in an infographic?

The infographic from WordStream displays the “Key Google Advertising Metrics for Q3,” starting with how Google is making this much each day. The company receives 5.6 billion ad impressions per day on their search ads and 24.2 billion from their Display Ad Network.

The top of the infographic is broken down in that way, between search ads and the Display Ad Network. In Q3 of this year, Google’s search ads received 193.2 million clicks daily, while their Display Ad Network ads received a daily average of 44.7 million clicks. As for conversions per day, the company’s search ads received 10.9 million conversions per day and the Display Ad Network received 2.1 million conversions.

As for the verticals that can be credited with these clicks, impressions and conversions, the infographic lists them in order of impact, describing the impact each has had. Here is the list, in order of highest contribution.

  1. Finance
  2. Travel
  3. Shopping
  4. Jobs and Education
  5. Internet and Telecom
  6. Computers and Electronics
  7. Business and Industrial
  8. Home and Garden
  9. Autos and Vehicles
  10. Beauty and Fitness

In finance, Google search had 617 million ad impressions daily, and the Display Ad Network had 5.32 billion. The click through rate for Google search ads regarding finance was 3.67% while it was only at .10% for the Display Ad Network. What is really interesting is that Google’s search ads accounted for 1.39 million completed sales per day, which is the most out of any industry. Google’s top industry was finance for a reason, as companies like State Farm, Geico, Quicken Loans, Capital One, and Bank of America rely heavily on the company’s advertising services. These companies are the top 5 advertisers in finance with Google.

The rest of the industries listed present astounding numbers as well, as you can see upon viewing the infographic yourself. Google’s numbers have always been high, but the fact that they continue to crawl upward steadily is what struck me. Google is taking over digital advertising as we know it, even though their social media platform was not quite as successful as they hoped. For a closer look at Google’s astonishing numbers from Q3 2012, take a look at the infographic and look closely at the results from each industry.

The infographic can be found here.

Are Sponsored Stories in Facebook Bad?

By
Pesach Lattin
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0

Facebook has got a pretty well formed method of advertising to their billions of active users. For a while now, there has been a separation between social advertising and the traditional marketplace ads on Facebook that has been working quite effectively. The separation between the two ad types has always been very evident, which is part of the reason it has worked so successfully. Now, Facebook is apparently testing these traditional marketplace ads in the News Feed setting, alongside the social ads, or suggested and recommended posts, that already reside there. They come up in the News Feed under the title of “Pages You May Like.”

If you have been on Facebook in the past week or so, you have probably seen them. These marketplace ads or “Pages You May Like,” traditionally appeared in the right-hand side bar of a user’s main Facebook page, beside their News Feed.

The “Pages You May Like,” module has existed for some time now on the mobile version of the network, but there have been some major changes. Originally, these ads could only reach friends of fans, similar to recommended pages. They show the page, a few lines of text, friends that like the page, and then the total number of likes the page has. Now, though, the “Pages You May Like,” ads do not have to have any particular connection to a user in order for them to appear in their News Feed.

This is what Facebook said:

“We are currently running a small test that makes other ad units eligible to appear in News Feed. This is just a test; we have no further details to share at this time.”

So, why is the company bothering with essentially moving Sponsored Stories from the sidebar into the social area of the page? You would think that the social ads that exist in the News Feed already would be the ones that work best in a social setting, but InsideFacebook writes;

Although Sponsored Stories about what friends are interested in seem like they would be the most relevant ads because of social context, there are actually times when well-targeted marketplace or page post ads might be better.

This may be true, but these “well-targeted marketplace or page post ads,” were already doing quite well when placed on the right-hand side of page. Moving these to the News Feed where many ads already appear could potentially have some big effects. Already people are beginning to notice the significant growth in number of ads that appear alongside their friends’ statuses and photos in the News Feed, and adding more to the equation may clutter things. Of course, these “Pages You May Like,” will quite possibly see a lot more engagement when placed alongside social content, but people may start getting annoyed by the constant advertisements that are appearing. Currently, with Sponsored Stories on the side, Facebook has a pretty level balance of advertising and social content, and it will be interesting to see how straying from that will result.

Video Bad for Clicks but Great for Visitors?

By
Pesach Lattin
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0

Like most forms of digital marketing that exist today, the use of video marketing is still growing more and more each day. Marketers are continuously realizing the potential that video ads have in bringing in fantastic results. However, even though video ads are quite successful, it may be in ways that you did not know of. Video ads are not simply getting the word out these days, but they are bringing consumers to other places. A recent eMarketer study shows just what consumers are doing after watching these video ads that have spread across the web. It appears that videos are not simply made for clicks anymore.

In a simple, but effective pie chart that eMarketer has created, they show where video ads are taking consumers upon viewing. The common idea that everyone has is that upon completing a view of a video ad, consumers will simply click the ad and be redirected to the company or brand website. Although that may have been the old trend, it is not what is happening anymore. According to the chart, only about 28% of those viewing an ad will click to be brought to the site. The largest percentage of viewers, which is 31%, of respondents finish viewing an ad and then go to a brand’s page on Facebook. After that, 21% of viewers immediately replay the video after viewing. Another 17% visit the brand’s Youtube page rather than their Facebook page. Of the remaining 2%, 1% visit Twitter and 1% communicate with the brand through email.

This information, which comes from Jun Group, an opt-in video serving company, shows how important social media has become in marketing. It is now affecting all types of digital marketing and has become intertwined with them. As for the performance of video ads themselves however, this is what eMarketer writes;

Overall, engagement rates with video ads hovered between just under 3% and 4.5%, with videos between 30 and 60 seconds long performing best. Videos both shorter and longer than that sweet spot had lower engagement rates, though the shortest videos had the highest completion rates.

The company said it best by describing it as the “sweet spot.” If a video is too short, consumers do not even get a chance to understand the ad or learn anything that they might be interested in from it. On the other hand, many consumers’ attention spans are limited and a video that is too long will easily outstay its welcome.

Videos have always been a great form of marketing, and now they are becoming better in the way of branding. This is greatly due to the prominence of social media in marketing today, judging based on the numbers presented by eMarketer. It appears that as a brand, if you have a presence on any of the more popular social media networks first, and then expand your marketing efforts after, you will be better off. Social media seems to be the more popular and trusted end point for consumers that are looking into brands.

Clicks are Up on Mobile!

By
Pesach Lattin
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1

There is one thing that all internet marketers are looking for or have looked for at some point during their careers, and that is clicks. Clicks are pretty much a form of currency around these parts, and the more there are, the merrier. Now, though, these clicks are coming through in various ways, be they the traditional clicking of the mouse button or the tapping of a mobile screen. Either way, clicks are the things that make it possible for marketers to see results, and they are well sought after. According to a new study, there has continuing growth in overall clicks since last year, and they are now being seen more in certain places that they were not seen much before.

The report that I am referring to is entitled, “State of Paid Search Report,” and it comes from The Search Agency, a search marketing company, and it reports data from Q3 of 2012. In the report we see that, overall, click traffic has risen 27% since this time last year over the entire globe, and for the US it has grown upwards of 21%. Although those numbers are not the huge numbers that everyone would have loved to have seen, they are not what were most significant about the report. The significant data that is shown is regarding where these clicks are coming from.

As everyone knows, we have entered into an entirely new type of society, where technological innovation is fresh in the air. Everything today is becoming more digital and more concise. With this, computers have gotten smaller and smaller, until they fit into the palms of our hands and we started making calls on them. Smartphones are in the hands of most Americans now, and it is where most people do a good chunk of their internet browsing these days.

It is because of that fact that mobile has seen such a significant jump in in clicks. Here are the numbers from the report.

Smartphone and tablets continue to drive overall growth in paid search clicks. Smartphone click traffic increased by 105% YoY, with a 13% increase in CPC. For tablets, click traffic increased 339% YoY with flat CPCs.

Clearly, mobile has not reached its peak yet, as a 105% growth does not show any signs of a slowing down, nor does a 339% growth. Tablets seem to be becoming a huge contributor to total clicks, based on the sheer immensity of the growth of click traffic year over year.

Even if you are not interested in how much growth in clicks mobile platforms have been seeing, overall clicks are on the up, which is never bad news. But one cannot overlook how important mobile devices are becoming to the online marketing community. Soon, mobile devices will be a very precious gem, and mobile advertising will not be able to be ignored. Things are continuing to go mobile, and it shows no signs of stopping any time soon. However, clicks are clicks no matter where they come from, so whether mobile is growing or desktop platforms are growing, marketers are benefitting.

How Email Marketing Works for Both Brands and Consumers

By
Pesach Lattin
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2

A new survey from Blue Kangaroo, a company that notifies consumers of deals and promotions from thousands of brands, gives some fantastic insight into just how consumers feel about the email marketing that they receive on a day to day basis. The survey was comprised of twelve questions, each pertaining to a different aspect of marketing emails. The sample that the survey was conducted with was composed of 1,090 U.S. adults from ages 18 to 64, which covers pretty much all bases meaning that the results of the survey are quite balanced. It seems that people feel a lot better about receiving marketing emails than some may think.

The first question, which to me seems like one of the more important asks, “Generally how interested are you in hearing on the Web about deals related to your shopping interests?” The highest percentage, 35%, said that they were very interested in hearing about deals on the internet. After that, 30% showed high interest, and 27% showed moderate interest. So clearly email marketing is not annoying consumers, as it is a way for them to receive promotional deals, and everyone likes to save money.

The second question dealt with where these marketing emails ended up, and 78% responded with “Mainly to my primary personal email account, displayed alongside my personal emails.” This is good news to email marketers, as this is where people will see and open marketing emails most often.

It is question three that is really important. It asked, “How do you feel about managing the marketing emails coming into your personal inbox each week?” A total of 40% of the respondents said that they enjoyed receiving a lot of marketing emails from some of their favorite brands and deal services. Many people said that email marketing was very soon going to fall far behind things like search and social media. However, the fact that people actually enjoy and, often sign up to receive marketing emails tells me that it will be sticking around. This is even more evident in question five, when over half of the respondents said that the amount of email marketing they receive feels “about right.”

Here are some more of the important insight that can be gained from the survey:

  • 37% said that they spend 10 to 30 minutes viewing marketing emails per week
  • 42% said that they actually open and read most of their marketing emails
  • 48% said that spending time reading these emails is only sometimes worth the effort, while 32% said that it was mostly enjoyable and productive
  • 35% said that the last time they used a deal or coupon received in an email was as recent as within the last week.

According to Blue Kangaroo’s survey, email marketing is still a very prominent source of marketing today, and it is working for both brands and consumers. Any marketing that the consumer enjoys engaging with or that consumers also benefit from is bound to perform quite well, and email marketing is the perfect example.

The full Blue Kangaroo survey can be found here.

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