Good news for e-commerce and marketing types who have yet to find a clear, practical use for RSS (a.k.a. Real Simple Syndication). 

“RSS is here to stay, but it’s already started to disappear,” says Charlie Wood and Steve Rubel agrees stating emphatically “RSS is plumbing.”

But what about my former co-conspirator, Stuart Watson (now founder of RSS analytics pioneer SyndicateIQ)?  I know he has more to say about RSS’s application in the enterprise and specifically among marketers.  He’s wrapped up at the Syndicate Conference this week but perhaps I can convince him to report in on key happenings.

Settle Down Now: Pheedo’s RSS CTR Rates Explained
In related news out of the Conference, many are picking up on Pheedo’s reports that RSS ads that appear as actual items or “stories” inside feeds get an 8 percent click through rate (CTR).  Excited?  I’m not and here’s why.  Ever use RSS feeds?  I do and guess how many ads I’ve clicked on (or nearly clicked) that I mistook for actual content / news stories?  This sky high RSS CTR that Pheedo reports is artificial... so, settle down now. 

Through a comments post at Revenews.com, Azoogleads’ Joe Speiser is vowing to take on Commission Junction (CJ).  It’s war time and he says CJ is unfairly cutting a competitor (he admits) out of the CJ network based on fear… just as Shawn Collins suspected.  Speiser claims that his affiliates will remain loyal to the Azoogleads network - not CJ’s.  Speiser went as far as saying he’s “just fine” without CJ’s advertisers in his mix and is labeling CJ’s actions “disingenuous.” Speiser himself said…

“I felt you, our industry peers, should know the truth—the decision to terminate AzoogleAds was solely a strategic move by CJ to thwart an ever-strengthening competitor that recently launched a competitive revenue share service called M-Port...”

Round II
Hopefully nobody will get hurt in this boxing match but so far Azoogleads isn’t game on stepping into a padded ring.  They’re suiting up for a knock-down-drag-out with advertisers and affiliates. 

In his open letter to CJ advertisers and publishers (that’s what CJ calls affiliates, of course) Speiser suggests that ValueClick’s (VCLK) CJ is “... hiding behind a ‘quality violation’ issue rather than enacting a simple solution that would allow us to continue supply(ing) large volumes of quality customers to their merchants.”

What’s more, he suggests Azoogleads is “happy to compete and will be just fine without merchants within the CJ platform.”

He claims the company’s removal from the CJ network “has nothing to do with compliance” and CJ is attempting to create a negative image of Azoogleads… which is flattering, yet disappointing.

Round III
Azoogleads claims to have received an email from a “high-level CJ insider” shortly before the account termination notice arrived in customer’s inboxes.  Azoogle, Speiser says, was told that “CJ will be terminating Azoogle’s account because of a competitive threat.”

The un-named person “continued to say that the ‘spin’ CJ is going to tell eBay and other merchants, is that Azoogleads’ affiliates will simply work directly though CJ rather than Azoogleads.”

Vowing to fight Speiser says, “This is not the case.”

It appears that Affiliate Marketing 2.0 is now in full swing and reaching outside the Web.  At the core of the movement is privacy.  When it comes to consumers’ computers, consider adware/spyware and spam but what about their phones?  Those are also under attack.  Today, there’s news of DirectTV being fined $5.3 million (the largest Do-Not-Call list settlement ever) for hiring “dirt world” telemarketing affiliates that ignored (violated) the No-Not-Call list provisions. 

According to Direct Magazine’s interview with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “If a federal judge approves the proposed settlement, it will be the largest civil penalty ever for an FTC enforcement of a consumer protection law.”

I point at this and many other happenings (all involving recent federal judgments and FTC actions against marketers) as a serious indicator of changing times.  Are retailers and direct marketers who leverage the Web listening?  Setting aside all the economic implications of owning a loosely managed affiliate program, the FTC has given you serious reason to buckle down. 

Are marketers ready to spend more time with their affiliate program?  Experience tells me many are not as they have found affiliate marketing too difficult to scale… meaning that they reach a point where increased resources on the channel doesn’t move the needle enough to justify the investment.  Can marketers afford to not, at least, take an honest ownership of their affiliate program?  Can they continue shun accountability and, when held accountable by authority, shrug shoulders saying “well, I didn’t know… I couldn’t control it… it was a rogue affiliate.” I suggest to you (as does Harvard Law PhD candidate, Ben Edleman) that cannot.

ValueClick’s Commission Junction has given the boot to affiliate (and rival?) Azoogleads.  In an e-mail being circulated to advertisers working with the company, CJ claims Azoogleads is

“non-compliant" in that CJ “has identified a series of isolated violations with Azoogle and has worked closely with them to rehabilitate and make the necessary corrections, to no avail.”

CJ goes on to say…

“Unfortunately, given the nature of their sub affiliate business model, Azoogle has been ineffective in their ability to perform the requested corrections to meet the high standards as defined in the Code of Conduct (COC). At this time Azoogle is still in violation of the standards.”

CJ account services reports that Azoogleads will be disabled as of December 27, 2005.

Commission Junction, a company that continues to distance itself from advising its customers on who to partner with, is telling its clients “You need to determine if you are going to pay the publisher for those commissions that were earned.  Removing non-compliant publishers is a key part of our priority to maintain an ethical, high-value environment for all clients and it will bring long-lasting benefit to your affiliate program.”

Here we go again - being reminded that affiliate marketing DOES have an ethical, value-driven side to it.  Who’d have thunk… and to be reminded by the world’s largest affiliate network no less!  This, in my opinion, speaks volumes of affiliate marketing’s tarnished image.

Thanks to Robert Moskowitz for helping us understand Claria’s new Personal Web technology.  Moskowitz does a great job of summarizing the value proposition when he said:

“Imagine your best friend, a skilled reference librarian, watching you surf the Web and—by noting what you stop to read and what you bypass—continually offering you lots of additional, in-depth content you might not easily find on your own.”

In a world of already happy consumers who use Yahoo, Google Sidebar, ISP’s like Earthlink and a plethora of others to create personalized “home pages” that offer news and information content Claria believes they want more… they demand a more personalized experience.  Users simply aren’t happy with their “home pages” because they’re static and too difficult to update. 

As an example, says Scott Eagle, Claria’s chief marketing officer, wants his “home page” to collect email from two different providers (do people want to use a “home page” to centralize email? really?) and let him check Expedia (why not just go to Expedia?).  Eagle also wants it to reflect his current interests and offer new topics he might enjoy.  Finally, he wants the “home page” to not display content he’s no longer reading (hello… RSS!).  Finally, he says he wants manual control over all this.  Does any of this sound remotely familiar (as in, do users already have this tool)?

As I see it, there are few reasons why Claria is bound to fail.  First of all, they’re Claria and come with one heck of a tarnished image—especially in the “power user” category (people who might want to do all the nifty things his application will do).  Can MicroSoft have some kind of impact on this… and what’s in it for them now that the courtship is over?

Claria is choosing to do battle with some heavy hitters (Google, Yahoo, ISPs of all flavors, anyone employing RSS to update personalized content… which is just about everyone these days, etc.) and more importantly they’re not sure who the tool is aimed at.  I come to this conclusion based on Eagle’s comments which seem to signal both power users and dear old dial-up dad. 

The real wrench in the proverbial engine?  Privacy.  The nation is virtually burning advertisers at the stake and everyone from the FTC to Congress is heavily involved in protecting privacy.  Congress has only fueled citizen’s privacy concerns with passage of the Patriot Act and big business seems to be forever losing reems of financial data on consumers.  Identity fraud has us running scared… and along comes Claria’s success story?  Really?

Claria seeks to earn the trust of a nation that rejects even the most well-crafted, thinly disguised attempts at providing free tools or information in exchange for the opportunity to offer them “tailored advertising.” There’s always a catch and privacy concerns have never been greater.  Can a once trusted (remember the Gator wallet?) known prime offender give itself a new name and earn the trust of a privacy-centric nation?  Doubtful.  Tivo… now that is control.  Show me some commercials, please, and give me access to everything available on TV, cable and the Web—on my schedule.

Busy executives get paid to move the needle leaving very little time for experimentation… yet researching new innovations (new tools that can help us innovate) is required in order to compete.  Often, e-commerce and e-marketing teams make large investments in essential tools such as e-mail delivery systems yet only use 1/3 of their total functionality.  Why? 

Jeanniey Mullen reveals that perception is at the core… in that busy professionals choose (I suggest) to see but a handful of a tool’s total options.  These are the functions that, they believe, are essential in moving the needle (generating consideration, sales, leads); the rest are “bells and whistles.”

Is this a dangerous practice?  I suggest it may be considering the rapid pace of innovation and young, “e-savvy” entrepreneurs.