November 11 is the technical Veterans Day. Today of course is the recognized Veterans Day. I came across this recently and thought it was fitting Veterans tribute, some what related to our industry. The performer Terry Kelly also wrote the lyrics and is based on a real life event.

To all those who have served their country your sacrifices are remembered and honored today and always.

What’s that all elusive path to direct revenue in a social media web site? We found a prime example and thought we’d share it with others.

Jango is a new social music site where you can listen to your favorite music, share it with friends, rate songs…all the usual social site type of stuff. The site is in beta right now and membership is by invite only.

The CEO of Jango is Daniel Kaufman and according to their web site “was founded in New York City in November 2006 by a group of old friends from Vermont, Sweden and other music hotbeds” Daniel Kaufman? Now that sounds familiar…someone who has been around the Internet biz for a while.

Staying with the theme of social sites, Kaufman’s LinkedIn Profile gives a bit more info.

Oh yeah, he was one of the founders and CEO of Dash.com. Remember them? It was an AllAdvantage type of thing. Install a toolbar and get paid to watch ads while you surfed. Like all the other such companies, they went belly up.

But there’s a bit of a gap in employment experience. What was Kaufman doing between January 2001 and November 2006? Well he was busy being the co-founder and executive over at DirectRevenue. Along with his friend and co-founder from Dash, Joshua Abram. Of course DirectRevenue is now a thing of the past between the actions of the FTC and NY Attorney General. For those who may not be familiar with the illustrious histories of Kaufman and Abram’s past Internet businesses, this article from MSNBC will give you at least a look at the tip of the iceberg. I really don’t see why the DirectRevenue days were omitted from is LinkedIn Profile.

But there you have it…the path of Direct Revenue…you get the idea. I do wonder who his other “friends” are involved in this venture.

MeMedia (formerly Whenu) is expanding into the Hispanic community with the launch of MeMedia Latino. Don’t know what else there is to say about it. Except for some reason the name MeMedia cracks me up every time I hear it. And I guess the Hispanic community is entitled to adware focused towards them as well as any other ehtnic group?

There’s been quite a bit of discussion over the last few months about forced clicks (or cookie stuffing) and coupon sites. It’s a feeling of deja vu. This was an issue “discussed” at length several years ago. The discussions were pretty heated then and seem to generating a bit of flurry once again. The amount of discussion happening now may be related to a couple of things. First, there are many new faces in Affiliate Marketing that weren’t here when all the discussion was happening three or so years ago. Second, a couple of high profile affiliates with a reputation for advocating fair industry practices were “outed” for using what some considered forced clicks on their coupon site. That’s pretty much tantamount to striking a match in a shed full of gun powder.

I’ve gotten quite a few emails, IMs, PMs, and twitters on the issue of coupon sites using forced clicks the last couple of months. The amount of discussion in the community isn’t always the same as how prevalent the practice is however. So I decided to do a little study determine if the degree of discussion is proportion to the degree of coupon sites using forced clicks today. Is the rate of incidents more, less or the same as in the past?

I did some testing over the last week and the results of my testing of the Prevalence of Forced Clicks on Coupon Sites can be found here. (more…)

And another gone, and another one gone, and another one bites the dust……

That would apparently be DirectRevenue. Affirmation of my general philosophy that what goes around comes around..eventually. A business model built upon bullshit just isn’t sustainable long-term. At some point, no matter how much spin is put out there and to how much the spinners may start believing their own spin, someone who has the ability is going to come along smell the stink and lower the big whammy. No one is immune. No one. A fact that a few others should be heeding at the moment. (more…)

Sometimes I find things in unexpected places and ways. This is one of those times. It also brings home the conflicts of interest that can arise within companies involved in different aspects of online advertising.

A friend sent a link over IM the other day for a news article they thought was amusing on the NYPost web site. I clicked through and noticed a pop-up ad being delivered. That wasn’t an unusal occurrence, especially for a content site. As I went to close out the pop-up window, I found an ad which I recognized for SpamBlockerUtility. This is a “free” software application to block spam owned by Zango and bundled with Zango when installed. (more…)

Zango has set their sights on the UK and European Market. Zango announced today the opening of Zango offices in the UK in order “…to enable Zango to more effectively serve interactive advertisers in the rapidly-growing European market.” In addition to opening offices in the UK, Zango will also be adding personal in the UK.

The press release states Zango currently has almost 100 European advertisers. The move is to allow Zango to better serve these existing clients and to better reach new advertisers outside of the US.

A heads up to our friends across the pond heading into Q4. UK Networks and Merchants should increase their monitoring for Zango advertising by both affiliates and merchants.

Lisa Picarille over at Revenue blogged yesterday a pre CJU post as she gets ready to head out to Santa Barbara. Here’s what I found really interesting in her Getting Schooled post……the end where she posts a press release sent out by ValueClick. I haven’t been able to find a copy of it anywhere else, but her is what she posted:

ValueClick Media and Commission Junction Partner for 2007 Holiday User Re-targeting Promotion

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – September 6, 2007 – ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq:VCLK) today launched a behavioral targeting program to help retailers increase online sales from campaigns run on the ValueClick Media display advertising network during the upcoming holiday shopping season.

Both ValueClick Media and Commission Junction are making the “Ring in More Holiday Sales” user re-targeting promotion available to their advertiser clients. Advertisers who place a holiday user re-targeting campaign by October 15 are eligible to receive one million run-of-network bonus impressions.

“User re-targeting is the single most effective form of behavioral targeting because it presents your message to individuals who have already expressed interest in your brand,” said David A. Yovanno, general manager of ValueClick Media. “Our extensive network reach and experience serving online retailers provide a unique advantage for any advertiser focused on sales performance, especially during the competitive holiday shopping season.”

User re-targeting allows advertisers to reserve inventory targeted exclusively to consumers who have visited their sites or interacted with their online ad creative. Advertisers simply place ValueClick Media pixel tags on the pages where they want to identify visitor behavior. When those users are identified again on any of the 13,500 sites in the ValueClick Media network, they are served highly customized ads increasing the likelihood of response and conversion.

Campaigns for Commission Junction clients can be optimized across the ValueClick Media network using existing Commission Junction conversion tracking pixels, eliminating the need for additional tracking tags to be placed. Affiliate marketing clients should contact their Commission Junction program manager for more details.

ValueClick Media is one of the few online advertising media properties capable of delivering a behavioral targeting solution on such a massive scale. According to comScore Media Metrix, ValueClick reaches 131 million unique users per month, or 73 percent of the U.S. Internet audience.
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Interesting. ValueClick made a big fuss last year (I believe it was last year) with the launch of their behavioral targeting on ValueClick Media. I’d heard rumors recently of CJ merchants being approached with running ads on ValueClick Media. From the press release, it looks like a full push is will be made to pull some of their CJ Advertisers into the ValueClick Media fold for Q4.  VCLK is offering one million bonus impression on the VCMedia network if Advertisers sign-up by Oct 15.

The ads displayed on the VC Media network will be retargeted ads. Advertiser’s ads will be displayed to end users who have already visted the merchant’s web site on VCMedia publisher’s sites. So how does VCLK know if an end user has already been to the merchant’s site? Merchant’s place VCLK’s pixel on the pages of the merchant’s site where they want to tag user’s behavior.

Here’s where it gets really interesting to me. Bolding by me:

“Campaigns for Commission Junction clients can be optimized across the ValueClick Media network using existing Commission Junction conversion tracking pixels, eliminating the need for additional tracking tags to be placed.”

Existing CJ conversion tracking pixels? Hmmm….is this the tracking pixel that merchant’s put on their receipt page to track the sale? Someone correct me if I’m wrong on this one (I’ve not doubt someone will if I am wrong here) but that’s the only tracking pixel I’m aware of that CJ advertiser’s use. That pixel looks for the CJ cookie and passes such information as the Publisher ID, Advertiser ID and amount of sale. So exactly how will that work?

Or do they mean the img pixel provided to CJ publishers that some people use and some people don’t? If it’s that pixel, then surely CJ would let their publishers know they are using information collected on the CJ publisher’s site to deliver ads on their VC Media publisher’s site.

Maybe there’s another tracking pixel I’m not aware of. But the wording of the press release makes it seem like they mean the Advertisers tracking pixel.

And I’m still back to how will that work? Will this impact CJ Publisher’s in anyway? Will CJ Advertisers be paying the CJ publisher even if it’s the VCLK Media Publisher serving the re-targeted ad that’s the “last click” in prior to the sale? Where will Advertiser’s feel the real value is coming from for closing the sale?

I’m feeling rather confused and in an ambigous place on a Friday. Maybe some people will come back with some clarification from CJU. Hopefully ValueClick is setting this up in such a way that one set of publishers aren’t compromised for another set of their publishers. I’ll eargerly await hearing any input from CJU attendees.

Rakuten USA, the US division of the Japan headquartered Rakuten, has purchased CauseLoyalty.com. Shaking the corporation tree for those who aren’t aware, Rakuten USA owns LinkShare and CauseLoyalty owns SchoolPop and OneCause.

Another affiliate has been bought by a company which also owns a major Affiliate Network. This is the second such acquisition by LinkShare. In June of this year, LinkShare acquired TrafficStrategies.com. ValueClick has made similar acquisitions, most notably the purchase of PriceRunner and MeziMedia. Performics is being bought by Google (ok that one isn’t an affiliate but there is AdSense and Google moving into the CPA arena). ThinkPartnership owns KowaBunga, SecondBite (an affiliate with access to merchant’s shopping carts and customer contact information) and PrimaryAds. (more…)

Chris Pirillo wasn’t to happy to find some of his videos listed on Zango. Well you can listen for yourself how Chris felt about the whole situation.

Viewing the above video does not require the installation of adware onto your computer. Oh, I mean crapware…at least according to Chris…just his opinion of course.

Revver publishers should let Revver know how they feel about their content being syndicated to Zango. Of course, this isn’t the first time the Zango/Revver relationship has come up.