Author: adam

  • Linkshare Fires Overstock.com

    Here is the origional Linkshare post from the linkshare blog, it doesn't seem to appear there any longer.  I pulled this from the rss feed:

    LinkShare Resigns Overstock.com

    from LinkShare Blog by LinkShare

    For the past seven years, LinkShare and Overstock.com have enjoyed a productive and mutually-beneficial partnership.

    However, we have been working together for some time to resolve a few mutual differences.  In recent weeks, it has become clear to all involved that we cannot overcome them.  As a result, LinkShare has resigned as Overstock.com’s affiliate network provider.  Of course, we will work to ensure a smooth transition for our publishers.

    As a pioneer in the performance marketing industry, LinkShare takes great pride in the breadth of our publisher network and the longevity of our retailer relationships.  We’ve served some of the biggest brands in retail for nearly a decade:

    • Avon (member since 1997)
    • Omaha Steaks (member since 1997)
    • 1800Flowers (member since 1998)
    • JC Penney (member since 1999)

    We also continue to attract today’s hottest brands, like Neiman Marcus, which brought not only its flagship store, but also Juicy Couture, Michael Kors, and Bergdorf Goodman.  Over the past year alone, Internet Retailer 500 brands that selected the LinkShare network over all others include:  eBags, Napster, Vans, Sam Ash, Chico’s and Dollar Rent-a-Car.

    Our network is strong, and our commitment to building lasting relationships across the LinkShare community remains firm.

    Kelli Beougher, Senior Vice President

  • Broad Match Can Cause Unintentional Trademark Abuse

    Lori Weiman does a good job laying out an important issue that many search markerters have fallen trap to in her blog post on Search Engine Land called "Does Auto-Matching Cause Unintentional Trademark Abuse?"

    "Google and Yahoo, by way of the auto-matching feature, can show your ads on keywords that you did not intend to sponsor."

    At imwave we have run into this a number of times.  With Google they will take your broad match terms and display the ads on competitive trademarks you didn't ask for or know they were going to choose.  Running a broad match term like "sneakers" doesn't mean you will only show up under terms like "basketball sneakers" and "tennis sneakers", but they may match your ad up to shoes, boots, sandals, or terms like nike, adidas, etc…  At Yahoo the situation gets even worse!  Not only will they start displaying your ad under these brand terms, they will actually sometimes adjust your ad copy (without telling you) to include these keywords in headlines so that they get higher click through rates!!!  This can be very annoying when you have agreed to follow strict brand guidelines, and then Yahoo decides they know better!

    What is the solution?  You can stop running broad and advanced matching, but that is going to leave A LOT of opportunity on the table.  The only other solution I know of is to work with your clients to establish a good list of negative keywords that you know you don't want your ads to appear on.

    I'd love to hear your experiences with this issue.

  • Skyline from the Buy.at Party @ Affiliate Summit

    Here is a short video clip I took with my Flip HD Mino video camera, the vegas skyline from the top of one of the Palms Towers on the deck of the Moon Night Club:

  • ExitJunction – A Great Way to Kill your PPC Search Campaigns

    I got some spam this morning from a new company called ExitJunction offering to pay you to show invisable ads on your website.  When visitors come to your site from a search engine, they will hijack the back button and show ads when the visitors try to click back to the search engine.

    One of google's rules for PPC search is that the back button must bring the visitor back to the search page, so there goes any PPC ads you are running with Google, I am not sure if the other search engines demand the same.

    If they are checking that for PPC, they might be checking that for SEO as well, so you might just kill all your search traffic to your site.

    What a bargain!

  • Happy Holidays!!!

    We just wanted to take a moment and wish all of our faithful wiseaff readers, a very happy and safe holiday season.  Here’s to a great holiday, a happy new year, and cheers to a prosperous 2009 coming up!

    Thanks everyone!

       

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  One of our employees sent this to me, and it made me laugh, I hope you enjoy it as well!

    Enjoy a “Big Bird” this year, and in uncertain times, remember how lucky you are and be thankful for the many blessings in your life!

    Happy Thanksgiving!!!

    Adam

  • Big News at Imwave this Morning!

    On Monday, November 3rd, imwave completed a deal to acquire move marketing’s performance search marketing business.  We just announced the deal this morning.  See the official press release here.

    This week we have been working hard to contact some of move’s top partners and transition all of the search and affiliate accounts and now we are excited to let everyone know!!!

    We are also extremely pleased to welcome Andre Colantuono to the imwave team as our new Director of Business Development.  Andre has been the business development director at move marketing for over 4 years, and brings a lot of industry knowledge, experience, and strong relationships.

    Now that the deal has been completed and the accounts have been transitioned we will be spending some time analyzing the campaigns and relationships to identify ways to utilize the different paid search marketing tactics of both companies to grow the combined campaigns for our partners.  At first glance it appears that move and imwave have taken some interestingly different approaches at building search campaigns, both of which have been very successful.

    So, fun times at imwave!  Stay Tuned…

  • Party like it’s 1998 @ CJ – Happy Birthday!

    Commission Junction just turned 10!  Happy Birthday CJ!!!

  • IMWave Serves 2 Billion Ads on Google!

    We announced at IMWave today that we have officially served over 2 Billion ads on Google Adwords since starting the company.

    Now, that’s nothing compared to the 100 billion hamburgers McDonald’s has served, but not to shabby for an Paid Search Super Affiliate!

    We have been focused on running paid search campaigns for our affiliate merchant partners since 2004.

    In addition to showing 2 Billion ads via Google Adwords, we have generated approximately 25 million visits to our merchant partner’s sites from these ads, and spent over $2.5 million with Google.

    I can only imagine what that equates to in total sales volume for our affiliate partners.  I know in 2005 alone, we figured out that we had generated over $15 Million in sales for our partners and that was before we really started ramping up!

  • Jumping on the Deep Linking Bandwagon

    Attention Affiliate Managers.

    If you haven’t read this blog post from our good friend, Scott Jangro, then you should take a moment to go trough it.  Deep Linking is so important for top affiliates, if you don’t have it, don’t expect great results!

    "Virtually every affiliate network supports deep linking in some manner, though not all merchants allow it."

    Do you support deep linking in your program???