AffiliateBenchmarks Research Study Ends Today – Top 10 Reasons to Participate

July 16th, 2010

Our 2010 AffiliateBenchmarks research study ends promptly at 5pm EST today. At that point we will no longer accept survey submissions. If you want to participate please go now.

Reason #10 to fill out the AffiliateBenchmarks survey = The online marketing industry values your opinion. Last year thousands of people used this research data to better understand the affiliate world. Affiliate, Advertisers, consultants, etc all downloaded the report and used the information to build stronger affiliate marketing strategies. Commission Junction, Pubcon, search engine strategies, and other events even featured the research in their annual conferences. Please participate today and share your thoughts with the industry.

Reason #9 to complete the AffiliateBenchmarks research survey = Be a part of the affiliate industry’s largest research project. Last years study made affiliate marketing history when it became the largest panel based research study ever conducted with over 3,500 participants who have completed the survey. This years study is breaking our own record and already has over way more participants than last year !!! Please take a few minutes and add your thoughts to this project and be a part of affiliate marketing history.

Reason #8 to complete the AffiliateBenchmarks survey = filling out the survey only takes 5 minutes just once a year and is a way better use of your time than the following:

- 5 minutes of commercials
- 5 minutes of spam emails
- 5 minutes of pointless conversations
- 5 minutes trying to figure out what happened to your team in the world cup
- 5 minutes walking your dog or walking your kids (whichever you walk most…just please don’t put your kids on a leash)

Reason #7 to answer the 2010 affiliatebenchmarks survey = Our survey is supported by almost every major affiliate marketing network including:

- Commission Junction
- LinkShare
- Google Affiliate Network
- ClickBank
- Pepperjam
- Share A Sale

We are grateful for the support of these great networks and hope you will join the effort too by filling out our survey.

Reason #6 to participate in our AffiliateBenchmarks survey.

This survey effort is supported by great advertisers (and NETexponent clients) such as:

- Audible.com
- Dick’s Sporting Goods
- Total Gym Direct
- Nick Jr Boost
- Shockwave Games
- Automotive Concepts
- CengageBrain
- Hot Topic
- Torrid
- Shockhound
- Yola

These advertisers and more use our valuable survey data to help guide their affiliate marketing strategies. Your opinion matters and will surely help these folks be stronger affiliate marketers.

Reason #5 to participate in the 2010 AffiliateBenchmarks research survey =. Use this as a chance to reflect on your business growth. Our survey is designed to ask insightful questions about your business. Every year we get feedback from participants telling us they found it helpful to think about their business while answering these short questions. We all work hard but sometimes we forget to step back and examine our efforts in different ways. Take the survey and see what happens.

Reason #4 to complete our AffiliateBenchmarks survey = overwhelming industry support. We are proud to have started an affiliate marketing research effort that caters to affiliate publishers, advertisers, agencies, and consultants. Over the last 3 years our survey has been supported by some of the biggest affiliate companies in the industry such as:

- Revenews
- Performance Marketing Association (PMA)
- Shopping-Bargains.com
- AffiliateTip.com
- JEBCommerce
- CouponWinner
- AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com
- AffSpot
- 5StarAffiliatePrograms

and many more. We are grateful for the support of these great companies and we hope you will join us by completing the survey before it closes (today at 5pm EST).

Reason #3

Because we asked nicely?

Reason #2

The second biggest reason to complete the 2010 AffiliateBenchmarks survey = you get a free copy of the report.

We know your time is valuable. In fact we know your time is worth at least $199 and that is why we plan to give you a free copy of our research study if you complete the survey. On average it takes folks no more than 5 minutes to complete the survey…that means we think an hour of your time is worth $2,388!!!!

That’s right, folks who complete every question in the survey will be emailed a completed research report at no charge ($199 value) and folks who answer just the required questions will receive a free executive summary ($99 value).

Reason #1

The #1 reason to complete the 2010 AffiliateBenchmarks survey = no regrets.

Today is the last day to complete our survey. The link provided below will cease to work at 5pm EST tonight.

If you pass up this opportunity to answer our survey and get a free copy of the data you wont get another. Of course you can always buy a copy of the report once it is ready for sale but that will cost you $199. Why not take a few minutes and answer the survey…then put that $199 to use in better ways.

Click on the link below and complete the survey before 5pm EST tonight and you wont regret it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/netxblog

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Research by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments

LinkShare Symposium East 2010 – A Success!

June 25th, 2010

On Tuesday I attended my first ever LinkShare Symposium, representing our clients: Nick Jr. Boost and Shockwave ! Overall, it was a great event with a perfect balance between education, networking, and fun.  Since it was my first time, I just wanted to reflect on everything I experienced, as well as provide a brief overview for those who couldn’t make it.

To kick off the event, several members of the LinkShare team (including CEO Yaz Iida) welcomed and thanked all of the attendees. They introduced us to some of the great developments that LinkShare has been working on:

  • Deep Linking Controls (For advertisers that do not allow linking to certain pages, but would like to allow deep linking on all other pages)
  • WordPress Deal Feed Plug-In (LinkShare would like to make it easier for publishers of all sizes – including bloggers – to plug & play. They’ve seen over 5,000 installations thus far!)

And…the most exciting development (in my opinion) is the ALL NEW Advertiser Dashboard! The new advertiser interface is a lot cleaner and simpler, making it easy to find everything you’re searching for:

  • New Trend Chart with Year over Year Trending Reports
  • It is now easier to enter dates when pulling a report
  • Link Section enables you to see just how well your creative is performing
  • Publishers are a lot easier to locate

After we learned about all these new developments, Sucharita Mulpuru (Vice President of Forrester Research and Symposium 2010 Keynote Speaker) talked to us about how eCommerce can succeed in every economic condition. Some key notes (ha.. no pun intended):

  • Consumers shop online because it’s convenient (#1 reason: it saves time and #2 reason: deals & coupons -> Remember this important stat, advertisers!)
  • Successful brands compete up or across! Instead of fighting over whose value/dollar menu was the best, McDonald’s challenged Starbucks by highlighting a new product: McCafe.
  • React to people power: Get your customers involved! Social web activity is a global phenomenon. EventBrite allows customers to share information about their tickets via social media.
  • Expand your IT team – new technological developments & innovation breed success.
  • Multi-Channel: Many buyers are now on more than 1 device – embrace the mobility revolution.

Next up: Panel Discussion! This year’s panel included: Siva V. Kumar (TheFind.com), Diana Gee (The North Face), Jeff Nobbs (ExtraBux), David Lonczak (Drugstore.com) and Kenneth Dayley III (crocs). This discussion was interesting because it allowed us to get perspectives from both advertisers and affiliates! It was great to hear their thoughts on these topics:

  • Conversion Rates: Some affiliates (including ExtraBux) are going to have dynamic featured ads that will change to fit the customer. It’s also important to make sure there are clear Call to Actions. Additionally, don’t include too much info! We wouldn’t want to overwhelm visitors.
  • Data Feeds: What’s missing? Unique identifiers: Sku #s, Bar Codes, Brand & Model #. Tax and Shipping information is also a plus for TheFind.com!
  • Coupons & Discounts: crocs found that product-specific coupons performed much better! Siva from TheFind pointed out that virtual discounts (e.g. Facebook Credits) are great for those advertisers who are brand sensitive and prefer not to offer coupons.
  • Mobile Commerce: TheFind also found that their peak mobile day was Black Friday due to customers comparing online deals to in-store.
  • Global Plans: Try to develop sites that are accessible to those around the world.
  • Getting Ready for Q4: Prepare ahead of time and make sure you keep your affiliates posted on your deals. Ideally, letting affiliates know when a product is out of stock would be great too (especially to help conversion rates)!

After all this great learning, it was lunch & Golden Link Award time! The Golden Link Awards were hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade who certainly kept things fun.  I especially liked their piece on the creator of the Pop-Up Ad – “Mr. Popup.” The Golden Link Awards were really nice because they rewarded all of the innovative and successful players in the affiliate marketing space. Congrats everyone!

Next came “DealMaker,” a place for affiliates and advertisers to walk around and chat. Some had booths with great giveaways (Erica won a hat from KarmaLoop.com) and some just had great information.  This was one of the most successful parts of the Symposium because I was able to meet a lot of our clients’ awesome partners in person!

Lastly, the after party at the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel – who doesn’t love free beer & pretzels? The photobooth also made things really interesting.

This concludes my successful trip to LinkShare Symposium. I learned a lot, and got to connect with all kinds of people – merchants, agencies and affiliates alike! Thanks everyone for this great experience.

Valerie Russo

Media Coordinator – Affiliate

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Events, Media Partnerships, Meet Us, Online Marketing, Research by Erin M. | | 0 Comments

AffiliateBenchmarks Survey 2010 Launches

June 8th, 2010

The NETexponent and AffiliateBenchmarks teams are so excited to announce the official launch of the AffiliateBenchmarks Survey 2010!

Last year, 3500 experts and insiders took part in the largest research effort this industry has ever seen. We plan on making this year even bigger!

Whats new for the 2010 AffiliateBenchmarks Study?

  • Our affiliate/publisher study is now simpler. We removed some questions and streamlined others to ease the burden on busy affiliates/publishers.
  • We added a short survey for advertisers/merchants to collect some information on their challenges and views of affiliate marketing.
  • We added a short survey for agencies/OPMs/consultants to collect information on their view of the industry.
  • We have even more partners who have agreed to distribute the survey and ensure that 2010 will be the largest affiliate research study ever produced. (a title currently held by our 2009 report)
  • We are prepared to provide even more data analysis when we issue the 2010 report.

Special note: Participant who answers every question (not just the required ones) will receive a free copy of the the full survey results. Participants who answer all of the required questions will receive a copy of the Executive summary.

The survey is open from now until 5pm EST on July 16, 2010. Go now! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/netxblog

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Research by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments

The Furture of Mobile As Told By the Giants

May 28th, 2010

This week, our friends at TechCrunch.com hosted Disrupt in New York City, a conference dedicated to web innovators disrupting media and technology and the handful of executives successfully navigating these disruptions to talk about how to turn change into opportunity. At one roundtable, Facebook’s Chris Cox, Google’s Vic Gundotra, and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley chat up a storm regarding the future of mobile, privacy controls, and the hit or miss nature of this new leaf in consumer technology.

“Your phone should be a personal assistant. That’s clearly where we’re going,” says Chris Cox of Facebook. ‘Ambient awareness’ was used multiple times to describe device relationships (rather, the necessity thereof) in our near future. But when quizzed on specifics for what phones of the future will look like and how consumer interaction will differ in the coming years of innovation, Cox had this to say:

“People overestimate what’s possible in a year, and underestimate [what's possible in ] 5 years. These devices are going to be magical in 5 years.”

Some even speculate that ‘mobile’ will be come a meaningless word soon because we are inherently always connected. “The real frontier is what’s local,” speculates one commentator, citing the popularity of groundbreaking platforms like FourSquare. “I think Foursquare has done some amazing work with check-ins, but it’s early,” says Gundotra when asked if there is a clear winner in the location game.

“I think we’re building great stuff — there is no winner,” pipes FourSquare’s Crowley. “Think of where we are now to where we were 2 years ago. We’ve made the space more interesting. We’ve pushed things in a different direction. It’s experimenting in the space.”

Speaking of experimentation, Gundotra was asked what he thought Google TV will do what for mobile apps and his answer reads a bit like an upsell, stating that “the most exciting thing about it is that the same Android apps you use will work on the TV. Like Pandora, play it on the TV.”

Facebook’s Chris Cox got a little heat regarding the ever changing privacy controls pleging the platform. He was happy to report, though, that this week, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” privacy controls in an attempt to remedy what Facebook CEO Zuckerman has publicly called “missed marks.” Facebooks next challenge? “It’s hard to know what to invest in — a better Android app or Facebook Zero.” Facebook Zero is their new, “fast, free, global and mobile” data service.

Posted in Creative Development, Display Advertising, Events, Online Marketing, Research, Social Media by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments

Our Affiliate Partners Make Parenting Magazine’s “Best” List

April 22nd, 2010

At a time when everyone seems to be looking for a great deal, websites  spring up daily competing to offer the best ones to the eager online community. In particular, families need to conserve their money and find the best deals they can for purchases. Many websites have emerged to help fill this need over the years and we have done our best to establish strong relationships with leaders in this category. We’re excited to note that quite a few of the affiliates we work with are listed among Parenting Magazine’s Best Coupon Sites For Moms, hitting home runs with one of the most consistently coveted demographics in advertising history.

Congrats to all that made the list from your friends here at NETexponent. To see the full list check out Parenting.com.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Awards and Honors, Online Marketing by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments

Promoted Tweets: And Now A Word From Your Sponsor

April 14th, 2010

In an effort to “optimize value before profit,” co-founder Biz Stone has explained, Twitter has intentionally kept the traditional web advertising model at arm’s length. But yesterday the micro blog FINALLY announced its new ad platform: Promoted Tweets. As we await the release of additional details scheduled for later this week, we do know that user searches will trigger these ads to appear at the top of that users timeline as a traditional Tweet. Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America will be among the first to launch campaigns.

Interestingly, the lives of these Sponsored Tweets are reliant on user engagement in a whole new way. “If users don’t respond …by re-tweeting, favoriting, or replying… [the ads] will be pulled from the search results,” PC World reports, adding that “only one promoted tweet will be displayed per search results page.” This almost puts one in the mind of how Google rewards PPC and organic search results with PageRank and Quality Score based on relevancy and activity. Biz Stone insists that these Promoted Tweets should be useful to users, not burdensome and disruptive and some have noted that the limited screen real estate could make for very expensive ads.

Comparisons to Twitters new platform have been to that of radio ads: you’re “listening” to the conversations of your friends (and pundits you may follow) and BOOM! Virgin America chimes in with their two cents. Then more chatter from friends and pundits, seemingly uninterrupted. The difference here is that, unlike radio ads, Twitter ads are more present (read, persistent) and will contain links – way more effective than radio ads. It’s true that these ads will be easy to ignore but in considering Twitters unprecedented engagement and interactivity users will end up reading them because they are so ingrained in the experience. Promoted Tweets may even be confused with “regular” tweets as “not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform isn’t already an organic part of Twitter,” says Stone. “This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.” Promoted Tweets will also appear organically in the timelines of those who already follow a particular brand. See below for our first look at a Promoted Tweet!

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments

2009 Online Ad Revenue Research Highlights

April 8th, 2010

The Internet Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse Coopers just released their annual online ad revenue research report for 2009. This report is widely regarded as one of the best indicators of trends in the online advertising sector. For those of us in the sector it never seems to be much of a surprise but it is always good to benchmark our progress against previous years and other industries.

I wanted to highlight two key data points for our blog readers.

First, I thought it was important to show how the pricing models used in online advertising have changed from 2008 to 2009. As you can see from the chart below, performance based pricing models (led by search marketing of course) continue to lead the way for online advertising growth while CPM based pricing models continue their slow decline.

Data like this makes me proud that NETexponent has been a leader in the Performance Marketing arena since 2001.

Another interesting component of this research shows the growth of online advertising from infancy until now compared to the same first few years of TV Broadcast and TV Cable advertising. This chart is pretty amazing and really puts into perspective the aggressive gains in online advertising.

Download the report and check out all the other great data points available for free.

Posted in Online Marketing, Research by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments

Why A Samurai Is Better Than A Ninja

April 7th, 2010

So I am reading the Wall Street Journal today (on my Kindle) and I come across an article titled “In Search of

enter the ninja

a Hot Job Title, Enter The Ninja”. (Love the obscure reference to the 80’s cult movie) This article talks about how many companies are creating titles around the Ninja such as Marketing Ninja, Affiliate Ninja, Customer Service Ninja, etc. I have noticed this trend over the last several years mostly in online companies but the fact that it is spreading made me think. Do these people really know what a Ninja is?

The ninja emerged as mercenaries in the 15th century, where they were recruited as spies, raiders, arsonists and even terrorists. – excerpt from Wikipedia

Ok I will be the first to admit that Ninjas are pretty cool. I spent many saturday mornings watching kung fu and ninja movies when I was a kid (and maybe much much later in life too). What boy growing up in the 80s didnt dress up as a Ninja at least once for Halloween?

While I might like to moonlight as a Ninja, I dont think it matches with my current career. Speaking for myself, I would much rather see my team as a group of Samurai than Ninjas (sticking with the Japanese theme).

Why are Samurai better than Ninja? Simple, because Samurai followed a code called Bushido. They were fierce warriors but always honorable and trustworthy. Samurai were also loyal to the end.

NETexponent is a service business and we pride ourselves on our ethics, results, and client service. I look at my team and they are each Samurai in their own fields. Our folks work hard, fight for our clients and partners, and are some of the most trustworthy folk in the online marketing industry. We are a clan of Samurai not Ninja.

Perhaps that is why I spend more time watching Akira Kurosowa movies these days than Ninja themed movies.

Posted in Online Marketing by Peter Figueredo | | 3 Comments

Top Takeaways from SES NY

March 26th, 2010

Here are my top discoveries from SES NY ordered from “Hey! Good idea that’s interesting” to “Boom!  What was that?! That was my mind being blown!”

  • No two advertisers have the same attribution model. Use attribution to see what media mix gives the highest ROI for your product.
  • Don’t just measure a video’s success on CTR – do an engagement analysis.  How many people started the video?  How many people hit the :30 mark, 1 minute?  How many people rewound, fast forwarded, paused?
  • When it comes to link building it’s more important what others say about you than what you say about yourself.  This is true in real life too by the way :)
  • Successful link building comes from finding the authority on your keywords, seeing who links to them, and then getting those sites to link back to you.
  • CTR increased 94% if the user was exposed to social media before searching.
  • SEO results are moving closer and closer to the fold.  Search for ‘lamp table’ and expand all the product boxes, you’ll see what I mean.
  • YouTube is the #2 search engine.
  • 4% of internet users never search.  Don’t ask me what they’re doing.  I guess they have a URL directory in their brain which updates in real time.
  • And….a glimpse into a crystal ball……There’s an app for everything why would anyone open a browser?!

Posted in Events, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads by Erin M. | | 0 Comments

Putting Social Media on the Map

March 10th, 2010

Evidently, frequent updates of what other users are merely doing at all times no longer enough, so social media outlets are integrating mapping software to allow users to attach their locations to their posts as well. All of the biggest players are unveiling new geolocation features and some businesses are incorporating this into their customer service strategies as well.

Twitter’s geolocation feature went live through its application programming interface (API) last November, yet there wasn’t been any sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. The screenshot (above) from TechCrunch shows that tweets with the location tag will have a placemarker next to the source. When the user hovers over the icon it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a miniature Google map showing the location the tweet was sent from. The user can view these maps as overlays both on other user’s Twitter pages and on tweets in the main stream.

Next, according to several people briefed on the project, Facebook plans to unveil their new location-based feature in late April at the company’s yearly developer conference, f8. These sources were not authorized to discuss unannounced services, so they spoke only under the condition of anonymity.

Last November, Facebook updated its privacy policy in preparation for this new feature. Now, the policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.”  Essentially, like all other Facebook user content, when a user posts a location they should consider the fact that this is now fairly public information.

Finally, Foursquare is a service that allows users to share their location with a group of friends as they check in to a restaurant, business or any other supporting venue upon arrival. Foursquare encourages the businesses to recognize users’ loyalty in some fashion, such as rewarding the most frequent customers with complimentary items.

With this tool, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to their clients’ business locations, what time they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. This research will allow business owners to offer instant promotions to engage new customers and retain current ones, similar to the loyalty cards that many retailers typically offer.

“If a restaurant can see one of its loyal customers has dropped off the map and is no longer checking in, the owner could offer them incentives to come back,” said Tristan Walker, director of business development at Foursquare.

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments

Next Page »