Moose on the Loose

Following rapidly after Buy.at’s overdue overhaul of their interface (a good improvement) plus rebrand, Tradedoubler (aka The Borg) have just launched theirs, with an interface facelift, as well as redefining their market offerings.

The product range caters to advertisers and affiliates who are looking to utilise the various marketing and advertising opportunities presented by the internet. TradeDoubler’s range of marketing solutions now have a clear & concise distinction to accommodate advertisers across multiple industry sectors whether they are looking to generate increased brand awareness or drive direct response in the form of clicks, sales or registrations.

The portfolio / product range is now defined as:

• td Pull (Affiliate network)

Long-term partnerships between advertisers and publishers. Publishers are paid a commission by an advertiser when advertising on their website results in an actual sale or registration for the advertiser.

• td Push (Campaign network)

Short-term activity with pre-defined deliverables. TradeDoubler will create a bespoke network of targeted publisher sites to meet the advertiser’s specific objectives.

• td Reach (Ad network)

A plug and play network with extensive reach. An advertiser ‘plugs’ into the existing network of publisher sites and ads are rotated across the network reaching a wide target audience.

• td Talk (Pay-per call network)

Advertisers can use the reach of the internet to drive sales and registrations over the phone. td Talk allows publishers to easily promote more complex products and services on their website and receive a commission for phone calls generated.

• td Toolbox (Marketing interface)

A tracking and ad serving interface. Advertisers and publishers can track, analyse and optimise the performance of all online marketing activity (advertisers) or advertising carried on their website (publishers).

My Opinion:

td Talk (Pay-per call network) – is what caught my eye the most. We have had a trials with a few of merchants in the past, so it’s far from being new yet still remains unexploited, and those we had made a real concerted effort on had reaped dividends indeed. With the increasing untake of VOIP, and traditional use of ordering by telephone still prefered by a good proportion of internet users (especially holidays), this will help plug the leakage where potential customers reach for the phone rather than ordering online, whereby previously an affiliate would have lost out on the commission. Unfortunately, though fairly much in it’s infancy, the market requires a greater uptake by merchants / advertisers of this option if they wish to be taking seriously by high revenue generating affiliates, frustratingly so many merchant / advertiser sites still have prominent order numbers displayed. Therefore, I do hope a lot of energy is focused in this area not only by Tradedoubler but other networks too by encouraging their clients to adopt & embrace this option … Maximising revenues to affiliates who can create landing pages with improved monetisation … The downside of where it hasn’t worked particulalry well so far is Miva UK, the quality of advertisers being poor in our opinion and the uptake of only a few in the finance sector. Still this is an exciting avenue to pursue / explore and one we will be keeping a keen eye on.

Their strap line “Market like you mean it” has more of a buzz to it, rather than the previously mundane “The European Affiliate Network”. As for the logo, well take it or leave, it simply looks like the typical pebble dashing after a few too many beers & a dodgy kebab. More likely they have let a kid loose with with one of those old spiral drawing kids sets. You know the one, where you create beautiful designs using cogs, stencils and colouring pens. Tradedoubler should have commissioned my kids. To be fair it is an overall improvement.
At first glance, the functionality of the interface seems fairly similar to before, the colour scheme reminds me very of DGM.. is that a good? The first thing I noticed was that our so called publisher manager had changed without notification … nice of them to let us know … It used to be Nick Roveta, and over the past year despite many attempts to contact him via email or telephone, little was ever returned. I used to have a lot of respect for him, unfortunately this has somewhat withered with our zero respect for the network. On the whole their rebranding will work out to be a good thing for them and the industry as a whole (pending if the proposed takeover from AOL materialises), but scratch beneath the surface of the veneer / make up and it’s still the old mutton dressed up as lamb Tradedoubler. A leopard doesn’t change it’s spots and I see no commitment or genuine conviction from them that this will change. If I ever had the deciding vote on the takeover, I would have gone against the boards recommendations who I feel have reached their exit strategy of looking to cash out with their cash cow.

On a minor note they claim a be “network of more than 100,000 website publishers”. This really needs to be taken into perspective on a market by market or country by country basis. This number simply blinds prospective clients. Realistically most of the main players in affiliate marketing are signed up to most networks anyhow, the figure you really need to examine is how many cheques a network actually cuts per month, then you will quickly determine that’s it’s fairly similar across many of them. They have over 1000 advertisers which is true .. so quickly looking at this, the ratio of publishers to advertisers is 10:1, then surely the dedicated account managers looking after affiliates should be a similar ratio you would expect wouldn’t you? So if there 100 account managers looking after merchants, then there should be 1000 publisher managers as a rule of thumb, therefore I think you’ll find that the ratio in relation to affliliate / publisher : merchant support is somewhat inverted.

This is an interesting development:

AOL LLC Makes $900 Million Bid For TradeDoubler AB (Aka the Borg)

More info is here at the Morning Star

It’s not particularly a great surprise, rumours had been circulated about Tradedoubler, though not specific to whom the buyer would be. Until now it had simply been gossip & conjecture, with a hint or two dropped along the way.

I am not sure how I feel at the moment, so really it’s still all hypertehtical until the deal is set in stone and the required majority of shareholders accept the offer. With a giant like AOL coming to the table, my initial gut reaction is that it’s unfortunately & gradually taking away the independent network feel good factor. Those very foundations on what affiliate marketing flourished, yet it is inevitable that these roots will be corroded away in favour of big bucks business.

However, there maybe no need to be pessimistic, on the more positive flip-side, this may actually elevate the image & perception of affiliate marketing & thus improving our own stakes with it. Another positive result /outcome could be that it acts as a catalyst for some networks to give their reporting tools & interface a fresh lick of paint to ensure they are more appealing & subsequently a more attractive proposition, since a few more bells & whistles will both improve awareness of them & naturally with it comes further credibility (though this shouldn’t necessarily be the case). Perhaps a couple of networks may actually move their backsides into gear who have been recently lagging on several fronts. But, you cannot get away from thinking will there be a conflict of interest with access to affiliate’s data!

On the A4UForum, one member rightly quotes “I think we’ve all predicted consolidation and Mergers/aquisitions being a theme this year. I wouldn’t imagine the effects will be felt by publishers/affiliates for a half year. Certainly interested in how this will affect the market in the long run though”

This makes me wonder how many networks are contemplating 2007 end, as an “exit strategy / opportunity. There was various speculation last year surrounding DGM, however who else can shares be speculated in?

What difference it will make short term or long term? … one can only hazard at a guess …. Will it be good, bad or indifferent, thus business as usual for affiliates? Is this acquisition more for other territories other than UK & Europe? What kind of shake up in operations can we envisage?

With a brief reference to other networks, I feel Affiliate Window, still independent, have progressed significantly and by doing this relatively quietly in the background, growing rapidly with a good solid base of merchants, improved interface & interesting product search developments due for launch fairly soon. Whereas DGM is unfortuantely still in limbo-land, if & when they can turn it around your guess is as good as mine. Buy.at now have a good new interface & with the capital injection from last year, they are pursuing their own agenda & will certainly be a market force to reckon with in the UK. IBG (Affiliate Future), a very nice network to deal with, maybe haven’t quite got the merchant base yet but are long overdue for an interface redesign & that fresh lick of paint, their niche will be Holiday & Travel. Paidonresults independent & staying, sincerely hoping they get more larger branded names on board, but they too are ripe for cherry picking. OMG, again likeable, still haven’t quite got it, being finance focused they perhaps need to move towards a better version of the Moneysupermarket model.

I don’t feel Tradedoubler were the friendliest indy ever anyway though! Will this only increase the aloofness & make them more difficult to deal with, alienating them still further from affiliates that asissted in getting them there?

You can check out Tradedoubler’s shares on Yahoo Finance, which are currently enjoying a surge.
Yahoo Finance

When i last looked they were at 230 today, Shareholders are offered cash at 215.

Which is another thing, Yahoo would be an interesting option to enter into the fray as it would fit their existing criteria & business model? And with Google / Froogle offering their CPA product to merchants whereby they themselves would be the both network & the ONLY affiliate, will as predicted lead to interesting times ahead.

I am still deliberating whether to purchase more, hold or sell existing shares. As it currently stands the value of my existing investment has doubled. As a shareholder this looks good, as an affiliate .. well time will tell .. One concern is whether as a result will they trim the fat from their affiliate base affecting a number of livelihoods, in their Borg realm of control by having to do as they say, though against your best interest, in their pursuance of this total assimulation.

The timing of this proposed takeover is interesting to, with Google some time ago suspected & consequently rumoured to become a network, did the directors & soem of the major shareholders feel it was an appropiate time to cash in their cow. If the deal is scuppered, with some major shareholders holding back for a better deal and AOL withdraw, what then? Will AOL seek someone else like Commission Junction? Will there be changes in senior management at Tradedoubler who might lose patience?

On the whole congratulations to Tradedoubler and their Shareholders, as for affiliates, we can only speculate but as ever be cautious.

As you are probably aware a few of today’s larger search engines have historically used sponsored listings or back fill results from other sources, and simply branded in their own image msn, yahoo & ask jeeves are to name but a few.

A small, non time consuming, un-innovative side project we are embarking on is to reproduce something similar utilising what is currently available out there, to offer user functionality which is fairly similar to any other search engine whereby some search engines look familiar in the way results are displayed, together with similar userability.

However we have a few interesting innovative ideas up our sleeves on how to monetise those results more effectively, something we have trialled with existing sites with some success without too much effort. We are confident this little twist will reap dividends.

We have absolutely no delusions of grandeur, but our initial target is to gain 10k (10,000) UV’s (Unique Visitors) a day by end of Quarter 1 rising to 100k UV’s by year end. We feel this would be easily achievable & reward us with a nice modest income to supplement what we already earn.

Initially we will be starting with the UK market & duplicating the formula to other english speaking nations such as the US. Other territories will be rolled out once we are satisfied with the results, but cross promotion will assist in ski ramping the sites. One of our main focuses will be to ensure that results displayed are demographically clean & relevant to a UV’s country with geo-targeting to assist this both from a users & advertisers perspective.

The Buy.at Beta Management Area (MA V3.0) & Accompanying Toolkit has been launched with the intention of being an easier way for affiliates to access more information about programmes with a much needed improved functionality & reporting.

We are in the process of testing to the limits we require for our own daily purposes, ensuring it delivers the “nuts & bolts” of what is required “together with a few “bells & whistles”. The old system was particularly poor & clunky to say the least, but if Buy.at are to be considered a serious contender for the affiliate network throne in 2007, this is just one necessity for them in order to attract more big named & and / or quality clients.

Judging by the face of it, it is an improvement, but I will have to play around with it properly for some time over the festive season.

Affiliates browsing the Toolkit by sector will be able discover the latest promotions, affiliate incentives, last order dates & hopefully more.

During the prelude until Christmas Buy.at will be daily updating the Toolkit with information regarding the better performing programmes in terms of the hottest selling products, CR’s (conversion rates) & EPC’s in order for affiliates to maximise the most out of available promotions n the few days remianing. I just hope this is regularly maintained & updated.
The Beta launch of their new Management Area (MA V3.0) & Toolkit, can be accessed using your usual login details. Please note, that as this is a Beta application, the existing Management Area will continue to be available, until such time as they move from Beta to a full application launch. This upgrade sees the inclusion of many new features in what they hope will benefit affiliates by providing an excellent platform which they will be adding to throughout 2007 and beyond.

For further information about the launch and the key benefits of MAV3.0, the Introductory Guide can be downloaded from https://users.buy.at/mgt/introduction.pdf

Also, you may want to check out https://users.buy.at/marketingtoolkit

My advice to Buy.at which has been reiterated to them directly on a number of occasions is to go back to their roots. When they first launched, there was a buzz in the industry, they seemed genuinely in touch with how different affiliate marketing was to mainstream business & had their feet firmly on the ground. However during 2006 in my opinion they became a little arrogant & got above their station with the capture of big brands being primarily due to their previous popularity. With the whiff of cartel like pay closed groups in the pay per click market & poorer than acceptable affiliate support. Let us see if they can walk the walk & follow through with their intentions, in their commitment to change all that for the better like they have assured me. Let’s hope they do becuase their potential is huge .. All we can do is see.

With reference to comments about the new Buy.at platform, postings made by affiliates can be viewed on the following A4U Forum thread.

If you view the right hand side margin, you can see we have a “Mooses Network League Table” of how we rank affiliate networks, who have affiliate programs belonging to merchants we currently deal with. As you can see Commission Junction are firmly & deservedly rooted amongst last place for a multitude of reasons which would be too long a story with multiple instances to enter within one simple blog entry.

This is not a direct reflection of the programs or merchants on their network, whereby there a considerably number we would like to promote more extensively than what we currently do by delivering the volume & quality custom, but sometimes you get a network which is a hinderance to both affiliate (s) & merchant (s) for that realtionship to flourish.

Commission Junction have nearly always be the bane of our lives for a multitude of reasons, the aggregate of minor problems we have had with any other network since being an affiliate cannot compare to those we have endured with CJ. Unfortunately we share that discomfort with other fellow colleagues who have been in industry for quite a while pre 2000.

Remember it was a group of us on this side of the pond in the United Kingdom, who pioneered the beating or the massive withdrawal / retreat of spyware / adware & stopping networks for using these companies to a certain degree.

In our opinion CJ were one of the reluctant to change. As we jointly tackled CJ UK from these shores & even brought it up at CJU in Santa Barbara about 3 years when they were perceived to be in denial claiming it wasn’t illegal or unethical. However that is just one minor encounter from history.

Maybe one day I’ll bore you to tears over a jar about the trials & tribulations of Commission Junction. But to get on track, I want to pose the question:

Are Commission Junction the School Playground Bully?

In my personal opinion, YES they are and I will elaborate examples gradually through the history of this blog as it flourishes.

But one thing for sure with these bullies, the only way to tackle them is to square up to them nose to nose & let their clients & fellow affiliates (on forums) know exactly why they are potentially on the wrong network, and that wrong network being Commission Junction.

Just to mention the 2nd part Fraser’s interview with Nicky Iapino from Affili.net) is now live

Click Here for Part Two

Thinking out loud based on the posting I just read on the A4U Forum.

If Affiliate A places a merchant banner on a their site (earning commission via CPA basis only), as we know banners notoriously have low CTR’s. Visitor(s) remember the brand whilst on your site, a later sequence of events ensues, the Visitor(s) remembers the brand in the banner & types name into a search engine. The Visitor(s) either go via natural listings or merchants adverts. Affiliate A receives no remuneration (gets no commission) for displaying ads.

Perhaps there is a call for there to be a default CPM, payment per 1000 impressions, in any merchant’s banners displayed on an affiliates site.

Another scenario, Affiliate A does the pre-sell with a Banner on their site. Again a later sequence of events follows, the Visitor(s) remembers the brand in the banner & types name into a search engine. The Visitor(s) this time goes through an affiliate link belonging to a privileged affiliate who is part of a closed bidding group. Why should Affiliate A bother promoting the merchant in the first place?

Maybe it’s become a time where there shouldn’t be any more free brand exposure for merchants via banners & brand logo’d creatives & affiliates to be fairly remunerated for displaying these.

I will have to ponder on this some more, but we have generally been reluctant or not displayed banners at all for the aforementioned reasons as well as the fact banners generally don’t have any Whoopee Doo factor … btw … have you ever noticed in NMA how they get so excited when a merchant has created a new 120×60 creative & give it a quarter page spread … Whoopee “Bloomin” Doo … anyhow instead networks & merchants should be focusing on more up to date technology, like what we have been requesting for a significant period of time like full API Product Feeds to easily create price comparison / product search sites & Streaming Media Ads like TV Commercials. The industry is just lagging even further behind.

Perhaps the traditional model of CPA should not necessarily be phased out, but evolve into hybrid commission structures comprising of two or more of the following elements … CPA. CPC, CPM & PPL & PPCall, thus fairly remunerating affiliate efforts for displaying banners & certainly applying to poor converting merchants.

P.S. I have just had this link passed to me from Fraser … Cheers Mate … for In Stream Video Advertsing Click Here

There needs to be more innovation from Networks, Perhaps more will follow suit, following like Lambs. Rather than in 2007 being left like Lambs to the Slaughter.
Note:

CPA – Cost (Payment) Per Acquisition (Sale)
CPC – Cost (Payment) Per Click
CPM – Cost (Payment) Per 1000 Impressions of a Displayed Banner. M represents the Roman numerial for 1000,
PPL – Paid (Payment) Per Lead (Registering or Application)
PPCall – Paid (Payment) Per Call (Telephone Call)

In the right hand column, you can now view “Mooses Network League Table” which is my personal ratings of affiliate networks we currently deal with. It consists of variable factors & opinions all weighed differently. From Trust to Loyalty, Openness & Honesty, Quality of Programs, Affiliate Support, Active Participation in Affiliate Community, Resolution of Problems & Queries, Tracking & Reporting, Quality of Interface etc …

… Basically those towards the top generally “Get It!”

Get It! – Is usually attributed to an individual person(s) within the Affiliate Marketing Industry … who know What it’s About & What it’s Meant to Be About & Know Where It Should Be Going. They not only “Talk the Talk”, but also “Walk the Walk”. They are active … not inert … & strive for fairer practices & positive improvements within the industry & certainly don’t sit on the fence or allow themselves to be intimated. They are the David’s, in a David versus Goliath industry, who realise it can actually be made a more level playing field than others realise.

They are the Boaz of the affiliate marketing industry. Boaz denotes “In Strength”

Therefore those towards the top of the league table receive preferential listings with regard to … say for example … links for an affiliate program which maybe on more than one network. Between 2nd and 5th there really isn’t anything in it, and contrastly 8th, 9th & last position are a long way behind 7th place.

In due course, we’ll blog a quick opinion of each network, with regard to movers & shakers. Like who we are expecting great things from & those which may not have fulfilled their promised potential. Even down to those we think won’t be around for long … or to be more scandalous, the industry would be a better place without them.

But, on a positive front, like any business, next year I think we can expect some really good things from a couple of networks, irrelevant of where they are in the league table, whilst several might not evolve … yet again .. &missing another opportunity & endure a annus horribilis once more.