If you have ever bought media online, you have more than likely dealt with an ad network. Sometimes it is a relatively simple affair. For example, I am a brand advertiser and I want to reach women 35 to 55 online who are mainly housewives. So I go to Martha Stewart and I buy a few million impressions. I send out a pool of creative that I want rotated in the ad spots, shoot off the linking code and sit back and watch the results.

But sometimes, buying media online through ad networks can be a crap shoot, particularly if you are using secondary-market ad networks. These are the networks that buy inventory across hundreds (or thousands) of sites and resell it to their clients in bulk.

The difference usually is cost when it comes to transparency of knowing where your campaign is being run. The more you pay, the more visibility you have to see where and who is running your creatives and links. The farther down the chain, the less you see.

Jay Friedman, of Goodway Group has written one of the best worded explanations of how ad networks work, and how you can work with them to achieve maximum results. Jay should know, he runs three very targeted ad networks: Beep! Automotive, IvyPixel, and Sway Political Network. I highly suggest you read his Demystifying The World of Ad Networks article. Once you know what your dealing with, it makes it a lot easier to sort through the chaffe to get to the wheat.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26934.asp

The following interviews were conducted as a run up to the Offervault Performance Marketing Leadership Summit.  They were hosted by Jim Lillig, The Director of Business Development of Offervault.com.  The Leadership Summit brought together the top leaders in the Performance marketing Industry to discuss the issues that are vital for the industry to survive in the competitive online marketing arena.  Each interviewee was asked the same question, “What do you see as the single biggest obstacle to growth in Cost per Action Marketing over the next 6 to 12 months?”  Their answers are not what you would expect.

Todd Crawford Interview
Todd Crawford, co-founder of Impact Radius.

A recognizable veteran, Todd Crawford brings to Impact Radius a passion for performance advertising and a commitment to its growth. As a co-founder, he evangelizes the opportunities presented by a multi-channel approach to the performance model. Prior to Impact Radius, he served as vice president of sales and business development for Digital River’s affiliate network, oneNetworkDirect. Todd also contributed to the founding team at Commission Junction in 1998 and led its business and sales development efforts as vice president for more than seven years.

In 2007, Todd won the Affiliate Marketing Legend Award at the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards in Las Vegas. He holds a bachelor of arts at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities.

Listen to his interview here.

Tom Cohn Interview
Thomas A. Cohn – Of Counsel – Venable LLP

Thomas Cohn advises clients on the legal and practical aspects of compliance with FTC and other federal and state consumer regulations and industry selfregulation programs, as well as representing clients during investigations and enforcement actions. His clients include a wide variety of online and offline advertisers and marketers, in many different subject matter areas. His practice covers all federal and state consumer protection and privacy laws and regulations, including newer ones such as the FTC’s ID Theft Red Flags Rule.

Mr. Cohn draws on experience gained during his 17-year tenure at the FTC, where he was Regional Director and Assistant Regional Director for the Northeast Region, attorney in the Division of Marketing Practices, and legal advisor to the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection.  As FTC Northeast Regional Director, Mr. Cohn supervised all professional and support staff and led multi-agency enforcement efforts against various anticompetitive, unfair and/or deceptive practices. He was also responsible for numerous local and regional media and outreach efforts to educate consumers, business groups, and law enforcement agencies about how to detect and avoid fraud as well as how to comply with antitrust and consumer protection laws enforced by the FTC, such as the Telemarketing Sales Rule, regulations under CAN SPAM Act, Children’s Online Privacy and Privacy Act, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and consumer credit statutes such as FDCPA, TILA, FCRA and FACTA.

Mr. Cohn also spent four years as Legal Advisor to the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, where he reviewed law enforcement recommendations, Congressional testimony, and other matters for the Director.  He served five years as a staff attorney in the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, where he litigated fraud and rule violation cases, coordinated test shoppings of funeral homes for compliance with the Funeral Rule, and played a key role in the development and implementation of the Funeral Rule Offenders’ Program, an innovative, self-regulatory alternative to traditional law enforcement.

Mr. Cohn is a graduate of Yale College and Boston University School of Law, and is a member of the New York City Bar Consumer Affairs Committee and the New York State Bar Food, Drug & Cosmetic Law Section.

Listen to his interview here.

Chris Graham Interview
Chris Graham, VP Business Intelligence for Atrinsic.

Chris entered the world of brand protection when he joined Email Data Source in 2004. CANSPAM was just getting into full swing and the initially vague nature of CANSPAM was scaring many brands away from third party email and affiliate marketing. So Chris went to them with a system that not only allowed EDS to see if anyone was violating trademark or using unauthorized creative, or any of the other issues that came with email, but it also allowed them to show their clients the companies and affiliates who were doing things right for their competitors and who should be considered valuable potential partners.

After EDS, Chris discovered Syntryx. A complex system jammed full of data that enhanced his EDS clients understanding of who was who and who was doing what in the world of email, and it also began to fulfill the same goals for the rest of the web . Taking Syntryx to market was his next venture and it allowed Chris to see even deeper into the world of online marketing; both the good and the bad

Today at Atrinsic Chris sits, somewhat, on the other side of the table. No longer selling intelligence systems, but instead, selling the importance of using the many systems available to us today that allow Atrinsic  to truly evaluate the marketing of their clients and their competitors. Chris’s main job is to battle the forces of evil and protect a brand’s identity from being tarnished in the performance marketing space.

Listen to the entire interview here.

Cari Brinker Interview
Cari Birkner – Compliance Specialist – Lashback

Cari Birkner leads social media, industry outreach, and email compliance content development for LashBack, LLC, the largest provider of actionable compliance and brand intelligence data for email marketers. In addition to contributing to Deliverability.com, FeedFront Magazine and the Smart Data Collective on the subjects of compliance and international email marketing, Cari edits and publishes the LashBack TRUSTED Blog and Email Compliance Newsletter.

Cari is well versed in compliance matters affecting affiliate marketers, particularly concerning the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, European email legislation, suppression file management technology, social media, branding and email deliverability. While working at LashBack, Cari has been at the forefront of monitoring email compliance for advertisers, networks, publishers, legal professionals, ESPs and government regulators. Cari began her career in the online marketing space as an intern and officially joined the LashBack Marketing team in 2008. In 2009, Cari earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a specialization in Marketing from Southern Illinois University.

You can listen to her interview here.

Mark Roth Interview
Mark Roth, Founder and CEO of OfferVault.

In this interview, Mark will be discussing the future of Performance Marketing as he sees it, as well as some of the results and insights that we have gleaned from a recent survey of affiliates that are registered at OfferVault.  If you want to know what affiliates think of networks, you will want to tune in here.

Just a quick update on the Set Country Proxy feature. We have added 4 additional countries:

France
Germany
Italy
Spain

That is in addition to the ones we already had:

US
UK
Canada
Australia

These are all great countries to run offers in and each one has many offers listed in Offervault to choose from. For example a search for “France” turned up 227 offers.

Here is an example of a French landing page preview with the set country button set to France:

Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault can now view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world.

Offervault, the leading aggregator of online affiliate programs and cost per action networks (CPA networks), has added a new “Set Country” feature to the Offervault member’s area. The set country feature provides an automatic proxy function which allows Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault to view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world. For example, a US affiliate can now view landing page previews for Canadian offers and UK affiliates can now view landing page previews for US offers.

“Until now, the inability of affiliates to view landing pages from other countries was a major roadblock that hampered many affiliate marketers’ efforts to evaluate and promote offers from around the world. Now all Offervault members have this capability and can preview any of the 22,000+ offers listed in our system,” said Mark Roth, founder of Offervault. “We have plans to added several more countries in the near future including France, Italy and Brazil”

Offervault has acted as an aggregator of affiliate offers from top CPA networks and other affiliate networks since 2007. Committed to improving the overall industry, its breadth and depth of offers and its free training programs have been highly recognized by the industry. Offervault offers a free sign up process at its website for affiliates and others interested in the performance marketing industry.

When an affiliate marketer gets accepted into a few networks, the first task they have is selecting an offer and deciding how to promote the offer. Today we will discuss several approaches that you can follow to shape your philosophy in selecting niches and offers that are best for you to promote. Of course any of these approaches along with many others are feasible and all affiliates must decide what is right for them. One of the beauties of affiliate marketing is that there are so many different ways to approach it and everyone can find an approach that works best for their own experience, work style and personality. The 3 approaches that we will examine in this post are expertise, seasonality, and audience targeting.

Expertise

Someone who knows about a product is more likely to be successful at promoting an offer. The affiliate will be able to produce better traffic because they know how to target the traffic. They know who ideally will use the product, and pick the appropriate creative or linking method to convert an offer. Expertise in the subject matter will also be a benefit when it comes to keyword research.
When creating content for a Website, expertise in the subject could help you do a better job in blending the content in with an image that naturally fits the theme. For example, if you are currently going to school and you are studying education, a great way to promote an affiliate offer is to match an education or business opportunity offer that best reflects the content being mentioned. So, someone earning an MBA may want to learn about currency trading (FOREX). Alternatively, someone who is studying elementary education may want to purchase a video series about child development or methods to improve reading comprehension.

When targeting social networks, an affiliate often joins certain groups and organizations. Affiliates, like everyday social site users will see the kind of traffic that is appearing within their personal social space. Looking at the advertisement below, it makes sense how the #1 affiliate marketing group on Facebook has two affiliate network advertisers posted on the right. This is called contextual targeting. Ensuring your context matches your users is fundamental.

Seasonality

For every season, there is an affiliate marketing vertical that will capitalize on traffic more so than others. To follow this approach, you must be on your toes, be able to execute quickly and be comfortable handing deadlines. For example, you could promote offers relating to Valentine’s Day but you need to start watching for these offers well in advance of the holiday and be ready to integrate them into your sites and landing pages in time to promote for the build up before the big day. Then you have to watch for the next seasonal happening and be ready to do it all over again. As another example, consumers who are looking for great gifts during the holidays will often make more As-Seen-On-TV purchases from October thru December than any other time of year. Sure there is work involved following the seasonality approach, but the payoff could be substantial. On the flip side, many affiliates prefer to focus on the evergreen type of offers that never go out of style, like, dating, weight loss, beauty and health or auto insurance. As I said earlier, there are many different ways to approach affiliate marketing and you need to know which one makes the most sense for you personally.

Audience Targeting

There are several websites on the Internet that will help you understand who your prime audience will be for a particular niche or offer. Everything from age, sex, geography, income, and education are described (see below). Such sites include Quantcast, Microsoft ad labs, Compete.com and others.

Offervault (www.offervault.com) has a handy demographic feature as well. You can click the “D” demographics button next to each offer and get an instant snapshot of the demographics for typical visitors to that offer. If you are interested in taking this type of approach, there are several traffic sources where you can put this information to good use, most especially Facebook.

There is probably no better place to get traffic pinpointed to particular demographics then Facebook. Plenty of Fish, a major dating site, also has a wealth of demographic data that you can use to target your ads. Lastly, Pay Per View traffic sources will often allow demographic targeting. When done right, this strategy can often produce some of the highest conversion rates of any type of targeting and of course we all love getting high conversion rates on our offers.

As far as the economy, the year 2009 will be remembered for a gigantic unemployment rate and reduced spending by businesses across a wide swath of industries, and yet at the same time, a stock market that came roaring back with a vengeance. Since the 2009 economy experienced such dire straits, many who lost jobs or simply needed extra income flocked to affiliate marketing. This boost in affiliates caused a lot of information products to sell really well in the early part of 2009, including eBooks, video tutorials, and coaching services from the industries top gurus. The rough economy also helped these same affiliates put their new knowledge to work promoting biz opp offers to the broader pool of biz opp seekers looking for any number of ways to replace lost or reduced incomes. Of course the new influx of affiliates also made for a much more competitive landscape with more and more affiliates vying for their share of the traffic pie.

Social Media Buzz

For many affiliates, 2009 shone a guiding light on Twitter and Facebook. Who doesn’t know the name Twitter? Even grandmothers have heard the term from popular news media outlets embracing the medium. Even Larry King is on it at this point. What more do you need to say. Affiliates found they could take advantage of a large following by plugging the occasional affiliate link, and many put forth more focused efforts, building and monetizing large numbers of followers.
2009 was the year that Facebook exploded almost beyond imagination, breaking past 300 million users. Affiliates have seized the opportunity aggressively, both with Facebook’s paid advertising platform and with creative use of groups and fan pages.

Federal Trade Commission Guidelines

The FTC’s new regulations have affected everyone in the online advertising world including affiliates. Yes, we all need to change the way we use testimonials and yes we need to be sure we are fully disclosing out “material” relationships, but we will adapt and life will move forward, and we will continue to make money online.

State Sales Tax

One of the most disconcerting developments to hammer the affiliate marketing world in 2008 continued to have repercussions in 2009.

Other states have joined New York or are considering it, including California, North Carolina, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. The states have decided that sales tax must be collected for sales in which the affiliate resides in their state. This in turn has caused some major online retailers to ban affiliates who reside in these states. Many industry organizations are hard at work battling the states on this, but the fight is likely to go on for some time to come.

eBay’s Affiliate Debacle

In October of 2009, eBay decided to move their affiliate model from a percentage of the sale to a varied per click value determined each day. As a result, profits from many established affiliates plummeted. Thousands upon thousands of affiliate marketers showcased their disgust for eBay through their blogs, Twitter feeds, and elsewhere on the web. But it changed nothing. eBay’s new affiliate program took shape, and they likely lost a good portion of their loyal affiliates as a result. Somehow it always seems that companies get dumber as they grow larger.

Video

It seems that video reached a critical mass at some point in 2009. Top marketers have embraced the medium on their sales pages and elsewhere as tools to boost conversion as well as to boost rankings and traffic. Video is no longer something extra or nice to find when consumers arrive at your site, it is expected, and, it works.

Mobile

2009 was more of a foundational year for mobile marketing in general and for affiliate mobile marketing in particular. By that I mean that all the necessary pieces came largely together in 2009, to make 2010 the year when we will really start to see things happen in mobile. The components of that foundation include the widespread proliferation of smart phones, particularly the iPhone and more recently, devices powered by Google’s Android OS, and the increase in bandwidth that resulted from the major carriers’ migration to 3G networks. Of course any talk of mobile in 2009 would have to include iPhone (and to a lesser degree Android) Apps. The Apple App store now has somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000 apps. Look for smart affiliate marketers to employee the use of Apps to make money with mobile marketing. With these pieces of the puzzle now in place, 2010 may finally be able to lay claim to that fabled moniker “the year of mobile”.

Google Slaps

For affiliates who rely on Google Adwords as a main source of traffic, 2009 was a pretty rough year. Google slaps continued all year with a relentless regularity that saw many affiliate campaigns wiped out and whole accounts banned all together. While some affiliates were able to hold on and adapt to Google’s new rules, many others lost entire incomes, or fled to find other traffic sources more hospitable to affiliate marketing. The current fever for all things Pay Per View (PPV or CPV) has clearly been come about, at least partially as a result of Google’s still unfinished rampage through the affiliate landscape.

Bing

Few companies have the resources to challenge Google in the search wars, but Microsoft is one of them. 2009 saw the introduction of their new rival, Bing. It has proved to be formidable competitor and many seem to like the features and the search results. By the close of the year, Bing’s market share was at almost 11%. Microsoft continues to strike deals that should help it continue its growth, at the expense of booth Yahoo and Google. For example, they recently struck a deal with Verizon to be the default search engine on all non Android phones. While they are certainly not about to blow Google out of the water, they seem to be providing a viable alternative for some searchers. The uptake for affiliate marketers; don’t pass up on this valuable and increasing source of quality traffic.

Facebook Applications

What is Farmville? Oh, it’s just that extremely addictive Facebook game where users spent hours of their day doing chores and building their farm empire. It’s one of the hot Facebook applications for 2009. How many other online game systems can claim almost 70 million users?
The Facebook application development network also blossomed with many affiliates designing and implementing their own applications to offer tasks as simple as a survey. At the finale of the survey, when the user found out how awesome they were or which 80s star they would be, they were presented with some sort of CPA offer. In what ways will 2010 shape application development?

CPA Networks

Even before 2009 there was no shortage of CPA networks, but in 2009 it seemed that a new CPA network popped up almost daily. Many of these networks where hatched by young successful super affiliates, flush with cash from their campaigns and equally flush with confidence. As pressures mount from all sides, it will be interesting to watch the shakeout that is likely to occur. The networks left standing will no doubt have some unique qualities that help them to stand out from the crowd. Some of the more important factors will be their ability to act in an agency role – maintaining direct relationships with valuable advertisers, specialization in particular niches and verticals, willingness to deal with fraud issues and to devote significant effort to enforcing compliance, and financial stability.

Stay tuned for more as we take a look in future posts at continued issues for 2010 and beyond.