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Kellie
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1 year ago
in How Does YouTube Rank Videos For Organic Search? on Jim Kukral
Yep, definitely about a lot more than just that. What came to mind off the top of my head. What I've seen was very involved and my brain somewhat seized up. I'll see if I can find the links again.
1 year ago
in How Does YouTube Rank Videos For Organic Search? on Jim Kukral
I've seen some tutorials on it and know it gave me a headache just thinking about it. :) Has to do with tags, description, etc, etc. Lots of tricks just like in how you would code a web page. I'll see if I can find some of the links again for you if you're really interested.
I just remembering thinking...dang that looks like an awful lot of work for one video. :)I suppose once you are familiar with the layout/format/process it becomes fairly quick.
I just remembering thinking...dang that looks like an awful lot of work for one video. :)I suppose once you are familiar with the layout/format/process it becomes fairly quick.
2 years ago
in Can parasite affiliates massively affect other affiliates? on Vinny Lingham's Blog
These are my views:
1) The study on anti-spyware cookie crunching (washing) has nothing to do with loyaltyware and bringing it up just adds more confusion to a topic where a lot of confusion already exists.
2) That question posed to you by CP seems to be floating around a bit. Maybe if the Affiliate Team over at CP asks around enough, they will eventually get the response they are *wanting* to hear and ignore all the factual information they have been repeatedly provided. And they won't have to grossly misrepresent the answer to their question "they in any way hijack commissions from your company" when they are shown evidence, which is what they did on the CP forums after viewing my video tutorials on loyaltyware. The answer to the question, of course, is yes. CJ's TOS allows "technology" partners to redirect the any traffic to the merchant's web site except traffic from other affiliates using CJ network links or afsrc=1 on server-side links. It is allowed and is considered compliant. CP just keeps ignoring that fact.
3) "we factor in any losses like this into our ROI calculations, so even if they do affect us, we maintain margin."
I realize that many merchants and managers approach the issue from this perspective, so you aren't alone with this approach. It's not an approach I particularly care for however. It's still not without problems.
First is, from my own personal experience of speaking with merchants, many don't have the backend analytic systems in place to adequately assess the *true* ROI associated with a particular loyaltyware affiliate. That is they can't truly back track on the data and determine exactly which sales from say their PPCSE campaigns were redirected by the loyaltyware and also received a commission. Unless the merchant can do that type of in-depth analysis, they can't truly assess the ROI and make sure they are witihn ROI margins.
Second is, it just doesn't seem to make for a particularly healthy affiliate/merchant relationship. The merchant seems to be helding somewhat hostage and forced to accept the adware part of the affiliate's business model. That's not exactly how I personally want the Affiliate Marketing channel to be represented to merchants.
And while ulimately it is up to a merchant on who and what kinds of practices they want to allow into their affiliate channel, the issue as it applies to CP is a bit different. So while you or CP or any merchant may crunch numbers and reach a decision on whether you are within acceptable ROI margins, there's a twist with CP. And that is because CP is passing the cost onto their shopkeepers as well. Shopkeepers will be required to pay 20% of their mark-up on affiliate sales! They don't have the luxury of determining if *their* ROI magin is maintained or not. They can either pay on the traffic or they can opt-out of the CP marketplace, hence losing all the other traffic they normally receive from the marketplace. Not exactly appealing options for many of the CP shopkeepers.
4)"the market share that those individual companies have is not big enough to impact any one affiliate’s campaigns"
Your data source to back up that statement? Hopefully not the cookie washing study...since that's apples and oranges. I've never seen any such data published showing exactly what the impact is. I'd be interested in seeing just information.
But in reality is not the impact from individual companies, but rather the cumulative impact of all such companies. And not just loyaltyware companies, but all adware companies playing in the affiliate marketing channel. I just put out a study showing almost 40% of the top online retailers domains minimally being targeted by just *one* adware application with 20 million installations. And while that certainly doesn't show specific impact in dollar amounts, I do think those numbers are significant. And I can't imagine there not being an impact. And with CP seeming to have such a hard time grasping loyaltyware, I can imagine them trying to police that kind of behavior in their program.
You did ask for views. :)
1) The study on anti-spyware cookie crunching (washing) has nothing to do with loyaltyware and bringing it up just adds more confusion to a topic where a lot of confusion already exists.
2) That question posed to you by CP seems to be floating around a bit. Maybe if the Affiliate Team over at CP asks around enough, they will eventually get the response they are *wanting* to hear and ignore all the factual information they have been repeatedly provided. And they won't have to grossly misrepresent the answer to their question "they in any way hijack commissions from your company" when they are shown evidence, which is what they did on the CP forums after viewing my video tutorials on loyaltyware. The answer to the question, of course, is yes. CJ's TOS allows "technology" partners to redirect the any traffic to the merchant's web site except traffic from other affiliates using CJ network links or afsrc=1 on server-side links. It is allowed and is considered compliant. CP just keeps ignoring that fact.
3) "we factor in any losses like this into our ROI calculations, so even if they do affect us, we maintain margin."
I realize that many merchants and managers approach the issue from this perspective, so you aren't alone with this approach. It's not an approach I particularly care for however. It's still not without problems.
First is, from my own personal experience of speaking with merchants, many don't have the backend analytic systems in place to adequately assess the *true* ROI associated with a particular loyaltyware affiliate. That is they can't truly back track on the data and determine exactly which sales from say their PPCSE campaigns were redirected by the loyaltyware and also received a commission. Unless the merchant can do that type of in-depth analysis, they can't truly assess the ROI and make sure they are witihn ROI margins.
Second is, it just doesn't seem to make for a particularly healthy affiliate/merchant relationship. The merchant seems to be helding somewhat hostage and forced to accept the adware part of the affiliate's business model. That's not exactly how I personally want the Affiliate Marketing channel to be represented to merchants.
And while ulimately it is up to a merchant on who and what kinds of practices they want to allow into their affiliate channel, the issue as it applies to CP is a bit different. So while you or CP or any merchant may crunch numbers and reach a decision on whether you are within acceptable ROI margins, there's a twist with CP. And that is because CP is passing the cost onto their shopkeepers as well. Shopkeepers will be required to pay 20% of their mark-up on affiliate sales! They don't have the luxury of determining if *their* ROI magin is maintained or not. They can either pay on the traffic or they can opt-out of the CP marketplace, hence losing all the other traffic they normally receive from the marketplace. Not exactly appealing options for many of the CP shopkeepers.
4)"the market share that those individual companies have is not big enough to impact any one affiliate’s campaigns"
Your data source to back up that statement? Hopefully not the cookie washing study...since that's apples and oranges. I've never seen any such data published showing exactly what the impact is. I'd be interested in seeing just information.
But in reality is not the impact from individual companies, but rather the cumulative impact of all such companies. And not just loyaltyware companies, but all adware companies playing in the affiliate marketing channel. I just put out a study showing almost 40% of the top online retailers domains minimally being targeted by just *one* adware application with 20 million installations. And while that certainly doesn't show specific impact in dollar amounts, I do think those numbers are significant. And I can't imagine there not being an impact. And with CP seeming to have such a hard time grasping loyaltyware, I can imagine them trying to police that kind of behavior in their program.
You did ask for views. :)
2 years ago
in CostPerNews Special: Are CJ and Linkshare Worth Their Salt? on Sam Harrelson's Comment Forum
Comments seem to have diverged somewhat from what was actually said in the podcast, which tends to happen. :) I'm going to try and focus more on what was said in the podcast itself. I had a very visceral reaction to the comments and it wasn't along the lines of warm and fuzzy. I strongly disagreed philosophically with most of what was said.
Jeff D. said:
"Ms X wasn’t debating the relative profitability of different advertiser models for ad networks, she was saying, essentially, that if you are an advertiser of any kind you are better served going to a CPA network than to a traditional affiliate network"
That's what I took away from her comments as well. She further gave a bunch of reasons why. Again, I strongly disagree with that point of view. There were many factors that I feel *should be* extremely important in the overall decision making process for an Advertiser that were completely left out. And hell must have frozen over for me to say this next thing, but.....I actually agree with a point that Jeff M. makes (at least it seems to be a point he is trying to make) is some of his comments. And that is, you may not like or agree with what Ms. X said but it is a point of view that *is* held by a growing number of Advertisers. From my own personal experience, as well as seeing the grow of CPA Neworks overall, I'd have to agree with that. It is a veiw held by some within this Industry. Again, I don't agree with the view and feel that it is a view ripe with pitfalls (and some potentially serious ones) for advertisers.
What I feel was missing from the discussion (which definitely was one-sided so here goes a bit of the flip side) is that quality should factor into the equation and not just volume. Who and how your offer is bieng promoted should matter. If it doesn't matter to you as an Advertiser, then you might want to consider popping you head out of the sand and taking a careful look at the current environment. Because a very clear message is being sent that as an Advertiser you as the Advertiser are going to be held accountable for the how and where. And laying it off to an affiliate did the bad deed isn't going to cut it. In that context, then transparency would seem to be something that is important. Or at least the abililty and willingness of the CPA Network you are dealling with to care about it. Volume does not necesssarily equal quality. Volume and sales are easy to manipulate. I look at it day end and day out. There is such a thing high risk sales/leads for an advertiser and there should be a risk assessment process being done by Advertisers along those lines. JMO of course. :)
Of course volume in and of itself can be a great enticement to an Advertiser. And it is marketed quite well to Advertisers. But I kept waiting to hear Ms.X say such words like ROI, ROAS, incremental sales, true profitabililty of the Advertiser's campaign but either I missed it or she didn't say it. Are those things which an Advertiser should no longer give thought to?
As I got my gut reaction under control (which was along the lines of wanting the throw my speakers against the wall), I thought about what the real message Ms. X was wanting to send out. And while the comments about CPA Networks being about lead-gen and traditional networks retail rev-share have validity, is it possible something is being overlooked here? Online marketing is a very dynamic and rapidly changing arena. I've been under the impression for a while now that there are some CPA Networks who have decided to expand their model beyond the types of offers traditionally thought of consisting a CPA Network. Could it be that CPA Networks are wanting a share of the retail rev-share market held by the likes of CJ and LS? These types of offers are not non-existent on CPA Networks anymore. I'm seeing an increasing number of them. And while it might not be Walmart, Dell, Target (free gift card offers on CPAs for these merchants don't count), I am seeing increasing numbers of retail rev-share merchants (who may also be on a traditional network) being offered through some CPA Networks. I can certainly see some very good reasons that CPA Networks might want to diversify their Advertising offerings along these lines. It's not a trend I'm particularly happy to see considering how voluem is generated by some CPA Networks, but it doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
And whether or not I agree with Jeff M. on many things, it doesn't mean that it isn't an issue that bears discussing within our Industry.
Jeff D. said:
"Ms X wasn’t debating the relative profitability of different advertiser models for ad networks, she was saying, essentially, that if you are an advertiser of any kind you are better served going to a CPA network than to a traditional affiliate network"
That's what I took away from her comments as well. She further gave a bunch of reasons why. Again, I strongly disagree with that point of view. There were many factors that I feel *should be* extremely important in the overall decision making process for an Advertiser that were completely left out. And hell must have frozen over for me to say this next thing, but.....I actually agree with a point that Jeff M. makes (at least it seems to be a point he is trying to make) is some of his comments. And that is, you may not like or agree with what Ms. X said but it is a point of view that *is* held by a growing number of Advertisers. From my own personal experience, as well as seeing the grow of CPA Neworks overall, I'd have to agree with that. It is a veiw held by some within this Industry. Again, I don't agree with the view and feel that it is a view ripe with pitfalls (and some potentially serious ones) for advertisers.
What I feel was missing from the discussion (which definitely was one-sided so here goes a bit of the flip side) is that quality should factor into the equation and not just volume. Who and how your offer is bieng promoted should matter. If it doesn't matter to you as an Advertiser, then you might want to consider popping you head out of the sand and taking a careful look at the current environment. Because a very clear message is being sent that as an Advertiser you as the Advertiser are going to be held accountable for the how and where. And laying it off to an affiliate did the bad deed isn't going to cut it. In that context, then transparency would seem to be something that is important. Or at least the abililty and willingness of the CPA Network you are dealling with to care about it. Volume does not necesssarily equal quality. Volume and sales are easy to manipulate. I look at it day end and day out. There is such a thing high risk sales/leads for an advertiser and there should be a risk assessment process being done by Advertisers along those lines. JMO of course. :)
Of course volume in and of itself can be a great enticement to an Advertiser. And it is marketed quite well to Advertisers. But I kept waiting to hear Ms.X say such words like ROI, ROAS, incremental sales, true profitabililty of the Advertiser's campaign but either I missed it or she didn't say it. Are those things which an Advertiser should no longer give thought to?
As I got my gut reaction under control (which was along the lines of wanting the throw my speakers against the wall), I thought about what the real message Ms. X was wanting to send out. And while the comments about CPA Networks being about lead-gen and traditional networks retail rev-share have validity, is it possible something is being overlooked here? Online marketing is a very dynamic and rapidly changing arena. I've been under the impression for a while now that there are some CPA Networks who have decided to expand their model beyond the types of offers traditionally thought of consisting a CPA Network. Could it be that CPA Networks are wanting a share of the retail rev-share market held by the likes of CJ and LS? These types of offers are not non-existent on CPA Networks anymore. I'm seeing an increasing number of them. And while it might not be Walmart, Dell, Target (free gift card offers on CPAs for these merchants don't count), I am seeing increasing numbers of retail rev-share merchants (who may also be on a traditional network) being offered through some CPA Networks. I can certainly see some very good reasons that CPA Networks might want to diversify their Advertising offerings along these lines. It's not a trend I'm particularly happy to see considering how voluem is generated by some CPA Networks, but it doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
And whether or not I agree with Jeff M. on many things, it doesn't mean that it isn't an issue that bears discussing within our Industry.
