'Net Features : google affiliate network

Q&A: How GAN's Retirement Impacts You

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:32:00 GMT

Marketers were shocked in mid-April with the news that Google planned to retire the Google Affiliate Network. As they say, however, when one door closes...

With that in mind, Integrate SVP of Advertiser Relations, Kyle Gale, offers an exclusive interview about what's to come with Google out of the affiliate arena.

Website Magazine: What impact will the GAN retirement have on the credibility of the affiliate marketing space? And what, if anything, should marketers know about others trying to fill GAN’s spot?

Kyle Gale: Rather than having any lasting effects on the credibility of affiliate marketing, GAN’s retirement points more to the difficulty of performance-based marketing. Google bowing out of the game highlights the biggest obstacle in the affiliate space—credibility is in short supply, causing many to shy away from what they view as “dirty” marketing.

GAN avoided this stigma due in part to Google’s brand recognition. Lesser known and newer networks won’t be able to get away with the issues that plagued GAN, because they can’t afford to lose affiliates. If you have no affiliates, you have no fulfillment; if you have no fulfillment, you have no advertisers, and you don’t get paid.

In their search for a replacement, marketers need to be aware of these lesser-known solutions and ask the right questions before getting involved. It’s not just the name of the network or the high payouts that matter. What they’re doing to ensure quality will prove to be more significant—and ultimately determine if the network thrives or ends in an early retirement.

WM: What factors do you believe led to the GAN retirement?

KG: GAN was a part of Google’s 2007 acquisition of DoubleClick. It was never a priority for Google to make GAN a flagship product, and as a result, Google didn’t give it the attention needed for growth and dominance. Affiliates continually found fault with the lack of tools and support offered, compared to other vendors in the industry, and advertisers were seeing their returns on ad spend decreasing at disproportionate rates. Google knows as well as any company that when things aren’t working out, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate.

WM: Why will the next fold be the blind affiliate and ad networks and what do advertisers need to know?

KG: Blind affiliate and ad networks offer nothing to advertisers with regard to vendor insights. Networks must maintain a certain level of anonymity to protect themselves from circumvention, but vendors that offer little to no historical data on individual publishers are sealing their own fates.

Advertisers should partner with the affiliates that make sense for their objectives—that means having access to company descriptions, performance statistics, verticals of expertise and references when available. Without these bare minimum offerings, it’s difficult for advertisers to buy media from a network standpoint.

WM: Anything else you’d like to add?

KG: The highest quality-producing vendors will offer tools and support to advertisers and publishers, helping both groups adapt to an ever-changing marketing landscape. By paying constant attention to industry trends—and providing features that ensure quality and limit fraud—leading affiliate management systems will redefine the industry’s standards for performance marketing. Along with blind affiliate and ad networks, channel-specific vendors will lose ground to omni-channel affiliate platforms that feature consolidated access to all of their affiliate spend from a single dashboard.

Google Affiliate Network Retires

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:05:00 GMT

Google rocked the affiliate world last night with the announcement that it has made the "difficult decision" to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving results.

While the search giant did note that it will continue to support its customers as it winds down the product over the next few months, Google's Plus page shows no signs of slowing down, even welcoming new publishers, offering advertiser tips and simplifying the application process for its affiliate, Paycare - all within the last week or so. Additionally, the Google Affiliate Network sign-up process is still active and everything seems to be business as usual on the network's website.

This change to the affiliate space will clearly have a ripple effect across the other major networks.

Google's full announcement is below:

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we’ve invested significantly in CPA tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer. We’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers.

To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. And there are other products that can help you achieve your goals. Affiliate publishers can continue to earn AdSense revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we’re continuing to invest heavily in them.

Thanks for your support of our affiliate product, and we look forward to helping you grow your business in the future.

Google's Affiliate Ads Cross the Pond

Michael Garrity — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:45:00 GMT

Earlier in 2012, Google launched Affiliate Ads through its Google Affiliate Network for Blogger users in the United States. The program was such a smashing success that the company has decided to ship Affiliate Ads across the Atlantic for Blogger in the U.K.

The Google Affiliate Network allows affiliate marketers to earn money from their blogs with ads that pay based on conversions. Affiliate Ads come in the form of a gadget that bloggers can easily insert into a blog post. Then, anytime a visitor clicks on the link, goes to the advertiser’s site and purchases something, the publisher will get paid.

Among the advertisers included in the program are Cheapsuites.co.uk, Crooked Tongues, eFlorist, Diamond Manufacturers, Bestbathrooms.com, The Snugg, Hudsonreed.com and Perfume Click, though Google is apparently hard at work adding new advertising partners every day.

U.K.-based bloggers can being using Affiliate Ads tody by simply signing into AdSense and going to the “Earnings” tab in Blogger (of course, they’ll have to sign up with AdSense first, if they haven’t already). Once they’ve clicked the “Get Started” button, they should see the “Advertise Products” gadget appear when they go to write a new blog post. They can go ahead and search for and select a relevant affiliate ad from the gadget, insert it into their post and then publish it. All they have to do next is wait for the money to roll in.

It should be noted that right now the gadget is only offered to “select” bloggers in the U.K. (and U.S., for that matter) whose blogs match the ad categories that are currently available.

eBay Alternative Swoopo on Google Affiliate Network

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:34:00 GMT

It's not often that we write about specific affiliate programs, but due to some special circumstances (we're mentioning one of the companies in the upcoming April issue) it caught our attention and thought we'd bring it to yours.

The Google Affiliate Network (GAN) announced the Swoopo affiliate program. If you use eBay to sell products, and don't know of Swoopo, you will - and most likely very soon. Swoopo dubs itself as the next generation of online auctions.

Swoopo differentiates itself through its business model. Customers (buyers) buy their bids in advance in packs of 30, 50, 100, 300 or 700 ($0.75 each). Bidders can place single bids or use Swoopo's BidButler (and can even bid on the phone). Each bid placed increases the price of whatever product is being sold by $0.15 and reduces the auction countdown by up to 20 seconds. It's really a fascinating auction model that is sure to spark the interest of shoppers.

Swoopo launched in Germany in 2005, in late 2007 in the UK, Spain in May of 2008 and most recently in the US in September 2008.

If Swoopo sounds like something you might be interested in, the affiliate program details from GAN will ensure it. GAN and Swoopo are offering affiliates commissions for new customers that purchase the Bid Packs (a $7 bounty - duration of 30 days).

Google Affiliate Network (GAN) Updates

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:29:00 GMT

The Google Affiliate Network (known in affiliate circles as GAN) announced some new features including product data feed setup in the UI and link subscriptions (formerly orange links) and will begin offering batch creative uploads to advertisers.

Participants in the Google Affiliate Network can now sign up for data feeds through the service's user interface. Publishers will see their approved advertisers that offer a data feed. Google also establishes a file naming convention for al of the feeds that publishers select to receive from Google advertisers and validates their FTP information. Those that set up feeds previously should be aware that any setting adjusted from here on will overide existing settings.

Google has changed the name of the service that delivers promotional data feeds to publishers to Link Subscriptions (formerly known as orange Links). Functionality of the offering will remain the same - publishers will continue to receive a daily file of new ads that their approved advertisers created in the system. The filename format will be changing however so that is something to watch out for.

Uploading offers individually can be cumbersome for advertisers, so Google now allows for the uploading of creating assets in large batches. Advertisers can essentially upload zip files containting multiple creatives.