'Net Features : affiliate network

Rakuten LinkShare Tops List of Affiliate Networks

Michael Garrity — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Awards season is upon us, and for the second year in a row, Rakuten LinkShare cleaned up.

Each year, the media company mThink compiles its Blue Book survey of various online advertisers, publishers and agencies to rank the top 20 CPA and affiliate networks in each respective industry. Survey participation rose over 40 percent this year, meaning mThink was able to consider the opinions of over 10,000 industry professionals with experience in affiliate marketing and working with various industry networks.

The survey’s results are then validated by an external panel of third-party industry experts that “span every aspect of the online marketing community.”

Rakuten LinkShare captured the number one spot on mThink’s list for the second year in a row, beating out a list of major names in the affiliate marketing industry, including Commission Junction (#2), Amazon (#3), ShareASale (#5), Affiliate Window (#12) and many more.

“We’re grateful to the industry for honoring and recognizing our commitment to performance marketing and to the success of our partners,” says Rakuten LinkShare CEO Yaz Iida. “Earning this award for the second year in a row further motivates us to continue to lead the industry in ways that will empower advertisers, publishers and agencies to see even stronger results in the future as we strive to maintain our ranking.”

In the CPA networks category, Clickbooth/Integraclick earned the top spot, followed by Neverblue, MaxBounty, PeerFly and MediaWhiz MonetizeIt, to round out the top five.

Video Advertising & Affiliate Network AffiliatePly

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Recent research from Doubleclick confirmed that rich media ad formats that contain video "overwhelmingly" outperform other types of creative media ad and converts better than banners in terms of click through rate (CTR) and engagement. That’s almost enough to make you break out the video camera – am I right?

PLYmedia, a company providing contextual overlays on top of online video has launched AffiliatePLY, a performance based affiliate network that uses video instead of banners. The platform is unique in that it is a CPA (cost per action – leads and sales, not impressions) network.

The action based video affiliate network provides publishers and advertisers with what is perhaps the first legitimate opportunity to converge viewer interest with profitable content. According to statistics from Forrester, online video ads greatly increase click through rates as users are attracted to more interactive content. Advertisers, empowered by video's influence, upload their video ads to the network, attracting online publishers searching for new content and media of interest to embed their videos onto their website.

AffiliatePLY further enables advertisers to fully optimize the video screen by adding layers of engaging information such as URL links to the landing page and interactive content, leading to profitable viewer activity. PLYmedia’s overlaying technologies stimulate user interaction and increase CTR (click-through rates) with viral videos, news feeds, and tutorials used as promotional information.

“AffiliatePLY’s model will trigger overwhelming revenues, confirming recent research revealing online video to be the most effective platform to attract audiences. PLYmedia’s understanding of the inner workings of online video and user behavior has served as the catalyst that led us to explore and to create this novel network,” explains Avishay Raviv, AffiliatePLY Manager.

Fraud Protection for Affiliate Program Software

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:21:00 GMT

Affiliate network Share Results has made several important upgrades to its affiliate marketing software aimed at providing merchants greater control over their marketing campaigns. The new features will extend to both merchants within the affiliate network and those powering their own standalone program with the Share Results software.

The new version (4.5) of the Share Results affiliate marketing software most notably includes a new fraud alert tool, which allows merchants to keep track of fraudulent activity and manage accounts suspected of fraud. Affiliate managers will be able to see which affiliates have been flagged for suspicious activity - a valuable boost to aid in monitoring the performance of publishers/affiliates.

Two other tools/features from this release include a new Deep Link tool, which allows affiliates to customize landing-page URLS for individual creatives, and co-branded pages, which provide merchants with the affiliate to include a "variety of new fields that can be customized" in order to target affiliates for their programs.

"These new features offer merchants partnered with Share Results more control over their marketing efforts," said Nicky Senyard, CEO of Share Results. "While the new features allow merchants to increase ROI, the new co-branded pages offer our network partners more control over their recruitment."

Monitor Affiliate Revenue With AffMeter

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:59:00 GMT

There are far too few tools developed exclusively for affiliate marketers. When you find one (and a good one at that) it's essential you at least try it out for yourself. One such offering I have recently come across is AffMeter, a software solution which offers statistics, analytics and reporting exclusively for affiliate marketers to see this important data from all of the major affiliate networks they participate in. With a 60-day money back guarantee - it's worth a closer look.

One of the challenges of being an affiliate is the actual management of your campaigns as most marketers use multiple affiliate networks. With AffMeter, you can view your earnings from these affiliate networks and their merchants in one place, set up accounts for multiple networks in different channels, find top revenue generating (and losing) merchants, view EPC's and make comparisons between different time periods regarding your revenue generation, and a lot more.

Many of the major affiliate networks are supported currently, including Amazon, AvantLink, Buy.at, CPA Empire, Canadian Sponsors, ClickBank, ClixGalore, CJ, Google Adsense, LinkShare, PepperJam, Performics, and a whole host of others. LinkConnector, Shareasale and Incetaclick will apparently be added in the future.

Another interesting feature is that AffMeter users can also check their Google Adwords PPC campaign costs automatically. As margins become increasingly slim for affiliates using PPC, good tools will be how you ensure profitability.

Commission Junction Changes Minimum Payout

Administrator — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:06:00 GMT

Popular affiliate network Commission Junction is changing the minimum commission earnings publishers must have before receiving payment. The primary change is in the difference between direct deposit and paper checks (which have a higher requirement).

For the United States dollar, the new minimum for direct deposit is $50 and the new minimum for paper checks is $100.

The reason for the change? Obviously it's to streamline their operations and make the publisher payment process much smoother, but a change like this is almost always rooted in reducing costs - which you can't blame CJ for as they're in business to make money.

Amazon's Back-To-School Promo for Affiliates

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Amazon has one of the largest affiliate (associate) programs available on the Internet and by all accounts they manage that program exceedingly well. Take for example an email I received early this morning about the back to school season. Amazon has created an entire one-stop for back-to-school products and notified their associates that all they have to do is build a link to these pages (by including affiliate ID) or utilize one of the special banners Amazon has created. Sounds easy doesn't it? It is. Special promotions and marketing awareness (as shown by Amazon) can help you to differentiate your own affiliate program and keep you on the road to profitability.

Launch An Affiliate Program - Post Affiliate Pro

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Those actually selling goods (virtual or otherwise) on the Internet are finding that launching an affiliate program is an inexpensive, effective way of generating sales and acquiring more Web traffic. While there are hundreds of affiliate networks that merchants and vendors can employ to recruit affiliates willing to sell or resell product, the other option is to go it alone, creating and managing an affiliate or partner program without the assistance, guidance and support of these networks. The downside to using an affiliate network is that it can be expensive to get started and you may just end up paying a share to the network. If the cost is too prohibitive, there are several affiliate program software solutions worth looking into.

Post Affiliate Pro is one such offering. For $149 (actually the cost is $99 for a limited time), you'll receive a fully customizable affiliate software solution that will help to get an affiliate program up and running in minutes. The software is compatible with nearly all merchant accounts payment gateways, shopping cars and membership systems and the feature list is enough to convince even the most critical merchants. Some of what stood out the most for me were the ability to support unlimited affiliates, ability to offer multiple commission types, refund and chargeback management, a rich communication platform and quite extensive flash reporting.

I'm interested in learning whether the merchant-readers of this blog utilize affiliate programs and what software (proprietary or otherwise) is being used. Login or register now and share your comment!

Related reading on affiliate programs from Website Magazine:

Do It Yourself - Start an Affiliate Program
Directory of Affiliate Program Directories

affiliates affiliate program affiliate marketing affiliate software affiliate program software

Insider Affiliate Marketing Data

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:34:00 GMT

DoubleClick/Performics released data from a survey of affiliates which revealed some interesting information on what publishers want from advertiser promotions. If you are running an affiliate program or are thinking about launching a program, the information discovered through the survey will be interesting:

Fifty-three percent of affiliate publishers expressed the most interest in “free shipping” promotions, followed by “exclusive affiliate channel offers” (48 percent)
Long-running offers are preferred by 31 percent of affiliate publishers, followed by 28 percent preferring new offers weekly
A majority of affiliate publishers (58 percent) prefer one week advanced notice for communications on upcoming short-term advertiser offers
Expiring offers are preferred by 48 percent (“agree” or “strongly agree”) of affiliate publishers

But what motivates consumers to act on specific advertising offers? This is important to understand for a number of reasons, but by helping the affiliates you have recruited sell more efficiently, the return on your affiliate program will be much greater. Findings from recently conducted consumer focus groups include:

“Dollar-off” types of offers are cited by consumers as most likely to “motivate” a purchase
Consumers view online promotions and online shopping as providing an element of control
Many consumers report that they like free shipping, but if they want a product, they do not mind paying a “reasonable” shipping fee