If you have ANYTHING to do with affiliate marketing, you need to hurry and register for Affiliate Summit 2006.  I’m actually speaking at this event, but when I look at the roster of top speakers, I’m not sure why!  Brilliant people such as Anne Holland from MarketingSherpa and Declan Dunn from Dunn Direct will be sharing their wisdom from the stage.  Other companies slated to present information include Amazon.com, Carat, Payless Shoesource, Endai Worldwide, and more.  I’ve not yet attended an Affiliate Summit, but I’ve heard the conferences are an amazing opportunity to learn and network.  I’m really excited to be attending, and hope you will check it out.  You can learn more about it by clicking here. 

If you do attend, be sure and let me know so we can meet up!

(The last Affiliate Summit SOLD OUT before the conference even started, so if you want to go, don’t wait to register!)

On the heels of Commission Junction’s CJ University event and last week’s apparent, quiet ousting of notorious “bad actor” affiliate ShopatHomeSelect.com I thought it might be interesting to delve deeper into CJ’s network composition as described by itself.  This is of particular interest considering so much of my consulting business reveals so many advertisers continuing to (knowingly or un-knowingly) work with download-lovin’ ShopatHomeSelect.com.

As seen above, Commission Junction itself reports what it calls “Downloads” as representing a small yet significant portion of its publisher base (translation: to some degree, revenue base).  Also worth noting is that it separates out “Downloads” from “Loyalty” which may actually include players like ShopatHomeDirect given its cash-back (to consumers) business model… although largely distributed via downloads.  It is likely that other loyalty players (such as the Almighty uPromise.com and affiliates like MyPoints.com, eBates.com etc.) are similarly categorized as “Loyalty” although Commission Junction has not been very revealing about its categorization criteria.

It’s also important to note that CJ’s network of affiliates, or “publishers” as they call them, relies primarily on search… a service that they, themselves, and their competitors are rushing into (in effect, competing with their base of affiliates).  CJ competitor, Performics has been at this for years now and managed to take affiliate business away from CJ and Linkshare based on their ability to offer “more than affiliate programs.” I’ve written in the past on risks involved for affiliate networks that are dependent on search-based affiliates/publishers. 

Also, I’m interested to understand more about “Acquisition” affiliates as they would seem to be competing with and/or crossing over with other ValueClick holdings… specifically, CPA networks such as WebClients (acquired earlier this year).

We should be asking when (not if) RSS-powered technologies will be more widely adopted by advertisers considering Return Path’s recent study along with Lyris Technologies’ study... each citing large increases in “false positive filtering” of spam.  In other words, the verdict is out on e-mail delivery: users’ desired communications (i.e. from marketers and other trusted senders) is, increasingly, not getting delivered, rather is being categorized as “spam” or “bulk email.”

“Hotmail’s rate of “false positive filtering” increased from 5.6 percent in 2Q05 to 9.4 percent in the third quarter, and Gmail’s from 4.1 percent to 7.17 percent...”

and

“21 percent of permission-based emails did not reach the inbox during the first half of 2005 because they were either blocked or filtered into the junk folder, according to a new email deliverability study from Return Path.  Senders’ deliverability problems stemmed as much from their own practices (e.g., low list quality and number of complaints against the sender) as zealous blocking of emails by ISPs; blocking rates for individual mailers were as high as 54 percent.”

Jupiter Research received a fairly good dose of egg on its face when it published its widely criticized report on RSS earlier this year.  RSS adoption among marketers has been slow in coming yet RSS is no longer poised to explode… it’s exploding, being integrated into everything from browsers to major portals and is beginning to catch on among marketers in terms of adoption... outside of inserting ads into RSS streams.

Considering all of the email headaches, when will we see marketers move in large numbers to offer RSS-powered communication devices to their valued customers?  I, personally, envision devices wherein consumers willingly place icons on their desktop… doubleclicking to open an RSS-powered window that delivers and organizes order receipts, promotional offers and general communications with customers.  A loyalty device that sits directly on the desktop and is distributed via a viral campaign to tech-loving customers who find it “way cool.”

Googlewashing is a new term used to describe a growing practice by the Almighty search engine (among others).  In practical terms, it describes a cleansing process.  You’re probably thinking. “how did Google get dirty?” In fact, its index has gotten rather filthed up over the years as many… ranging from outsourced SEOs to marketing affiliates… have tried to “game” its search algorithm by making commercial information look like non-commercial information and other technical trickery.  It is critical for all marketers and publishers of original content to pay attention to this trend as early signs indicate that Google, itself, is having a difficult time keeping track of who to index and who to de-list/purge. 

The latest e-plague, in the eyes of search engines, is being dubbed “duplicate content.” Recently, Google has begun to scrub itself clean of this unwanted phenomenon; hence, the term “Googlewashing.”

Duplicate content is largely what it sounds like: information that has an original source but can be found in many other places.  Sound like plagiarism or “syndication gone wild?” For the most part you’re starting to understand the problem for search engines.  In the simplest of terms, “too much of one specific thing in too many places” makes it difficult to distinguish the original, (hence, “good” or “high quality") information from the stolen or regurgitated stuff. 

Who steals and/or regurgitates… and why?  Yes, affiliates of all sorts have been known to.  For simplicity’s sake, here’s the skinny:

1) Some Marketing Affiliates leverage data feeds provided to them by marketers (like you, perhaps).  Do the the contents of said data feeds look similar?  Most often they do… but do they look similar after your affiliates place them onto their Web pages?  This is the key question.  If they do look mostly similar you have, in effect, created your very own duplicate content machine - your affiliate program.

2) Some click-focused Contextual Advertising Affiliates (who make money from programs like Google AdSense or Overture ContentMatch) simply don’t have the time or energy to create their own original content… so they swipe it from somewhere else and slap it up on Web page(s).  Mixing some AdSense advertisements that are contextually-based on the fake/stolen content gives users something to click on and the affiliate a revenue stream.  But how do affiliates get users to the site?  Three letters: SEO and usually not the pretty kind.  As you can see, it’s easy to find.  Here is an example of a headline/article used rather liberally across numerous sites geared to garner ad clicks via “content.” Heck, there’s a whole get-rich-quick-for-doing-nothing industry out there that has sprung up and, so far, Google seems happy to play along.

So what harm is there in this?  That’s another debate entirely but in the eyes of search engines duplicate content is not desirable and is to be eliminated.  Do the good guys (the original sources of the content… i.e. advertisers) ever get mistaken as the bad guys (the “content” purveyors)?  You bet they do and would you believe me if I told you that one of Google’s own has gotten caught up in the mess?  Indeed, the search Goliath recently Googlewashed a blog belonging to one of its own employees.

If you’re like me, you buy advertising on Google AdWords and have opted out of having your advertisements displayed across Google’s network of syndicated affiliate partners.  The syndicated product is called AdSense and features less tracking functionality than Google AdWords (i.e. you cannot track your ads to a conversion/desired action such as a purchase or sign-up).  For this, and other reasons I won’t get into here, AdSense simply isn’t of value to me (for an interesting read on pros and cons check Mark Glaser).

Does this mean that my AdWords ads won’t appear on Web pages filled with real or “fake” content?  No, it does not fellow advertisers and this means you too.  Your ads may end up here, here or here just as mine are in the case of Yahoo! Search’s ContentMatch product.

What does this mean?  Essentially, it means that our ads are not just showing up at Google.com based on keywords we’ve purchased.  They’re ending up on these sites which Google’s affiliates use to fraudulently collect click referral fees.  How might someone end up at such a listing of ads (including yours)?  In any number of ways including adware but that’s another story.  More common is the arbitrage game - affiliates themselves purchasing keywords at lower cost sources (i.e. FindWhat’s network) and sending the user/clicker on to their page - filled with more expensive clicks that YOU pay for yet which they split with Google.

What’s more frightening from an advertiser’s perspective, if a fraudster doesn’t wish to take the time to game Google or Yahoo, they (actually, just about anyone) can purchase Web sites with “content” (sometimes stolen news feeds… sometimes nothing but re-purposed ads).  Shopping for one?  Just click AdSenseSitesForSale.com. 

So… how difficult is it for companies like Google and Yahoo to curb this kind of thing?  Deadly simple as I see it.  The likelihood of these companies taking any kind of action soon on it?  Nil.