According to Wikipedia, “Affiliate Marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.” In layman’s terms, affiliates act as salesmen for the vendor by promoting the vendor’s website. The affiliate then receives a monetary compensation for any sales they generate. Affiliates act as a publisher in many ways as well, by putting banners on relevant affiliate sites and sending traffic through to the vendor’s site. However, affiliate marketing is often called “performance marketing”, referring to the typical affiliate commission structure that is based on this sales-like structure of compensating sales & conversions rather than clicks & impressions.

Affiliate marketing today has matured into a well-respected form of commercial media. This is a drastic change from the early days when a lack of control over industry affiliates was abused by some, leading to a bad name for the entire industry. Affiliate marketing still lacks an overall regulating body; with no legally binding rules and regulations Affiliate marketing can be dangerous waters to navigate.

The rise of Web 2.0 has been essential in shaping the industry into what it is today. In addition to allowing vendors a closer (and much simpler) connection with their affiliates, the rise of new media has led to a self-policing environment. This new environment is more conducive to operational transparency: any questionable activity is made known to the affiliate community and can be halted with much greater speed and efficiency.

The benefits of Affiliate Marketing are numerous. By using a set commission structure based on the concept of Revenue Sharing, vendors maintain a steady ROI creating an affiliate “sales team.” Affiliate marketing also enables a vendor to generate sales for their site from entirely new sources, and offers an unparalleled branding opportunity that can flow back as sales through other marketing channels.

Like many other online marketing practices, Affiliate Marketing/Performance Marketing will not work the same way for every vendor looking to increase conversions. The obvious loss of some control over the brand presence online is the deal breaker for many vendors. The unique branding opportunity and access to a huge network of new salesmen is a convincing argument for the industry on the other hand. There is no doubt, however, that Affiliate Marketing is one of the hottest new approaches to interactive marketing.

Although this process of information harvesting has been in affect for some time, the level of sophistication and depth is increasing at an accelerated pace. With the recent backlash Facebook has received for its Beacon advertising, every good marketer should be keeping a watchful eye on this trend.

We here at Morpheus Media are lucky enough to have our very own all-knowing eye, Adam Broitman. Mr. Broitman who is Morpheus Media’s Director of Emerging and Creative Strategies was recently involved in the before mentioned Associated Press piece found here on USA Today.com. As always Adam’s insight and knowledge place him as a true industry authority.

As organizations such as Yahoo continue to demonstrate that data mining can be a useful tool for marketers new and innovative approaches can be taken to alert the world of the benefits of your brand. So as the digital marketplace is successfully taking all of the guessing out of the guesswork we here at Morpheus are thankful we have Adam Broitman to keep us well informed.

In an attempt to justify (in my opinion) a way over inflated valuation of $15 Billion Mr. Zuckerberg must continue his foray into cloak and dagger marketing techniques. Angry over the alignment of opting in versus opting out a percentage of Facebook users have struck back through the auspices of MoveOn.org. It is reassuring though to know that the same group that gave us General BetrayUs earlier this year is now after Mark Suckeredusberg.

At the heart of the issue is the assertiveness of Facebook’s willingness to air everyone’s laundry whether it is dirty or not. With Microsoft looming large over Zuckerberg’s head an effective advertising channel needs quantifiable ROI. So sure Facebook ruined everyone’s Christmas this year. But how else would you be able to complain about it to your friends if not via Facebook. Myspace? I don’t think so.

Although Facebook continues to be the social network of choice there are only so many aggressive pushes users will accept until they finally pull away for good. Although the American entrepreneurial spirit is one of two steps forward one step back. I believe Mark Zuckerberg has out paced himself on this one. Beacon was four steps forward, resulting in five steps back. It will take time to see if users are willing to accept such an aggressive approach to divulging personal content. In the interim if anyone knows of a good alternative to Facebook, friend me, please.

The services being built are applications that anyone can build and upload; CEO Mark Zuckerberg told FORTUNE magazine, “We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so that you can run full applications.”  At the release event the company called F8 (“fate”) Facebook announced that 65 companies had launched 85 new applications.  Companies on board include:  Amazon.com, Microsoft, Photobucket, Twitter.com, and a music discovery program called iLike.  Two weeks after the release of their platform, Facebook is up 1 million users from 24 million users to 25 million users; and applications like iLike which only had 3 million members on it’s website before it’s Facebook lunch now has almost 1 million users alone on Facebook and is growing at about 200,000 users per day.

The idea to spawn Facebook into a platform came to Zuckerberg in 2005 when Facebook launched their photo application.  Zuckerberg told FORTUNE magazine, that it lacked many features that other photo sites had but it almost immediately garnered the most traffic by far.  Members could quickly see when friends uploaded new photos and in turn viewed more of them. The next step was the “News Feed” feature where information about the activity of your friends is broadcast to your own Facebook home page.  This feature, which launched in September 2006 and gained major criticism by users, was necessary to open Facebook as a platform.  Now users can see which Friends are using what applications, and moreover use applications to form community a voice.  Facebook essentially hit the nail on the head with its strategy and is asking not what its community can do for Facebook, but what Facebook can do for its community.

So, what does this mean?  The release of Facebook as a platform has sent the social-networking world into a type of race – and Facebook is not just in the lead, but as MediaPost writer Joe Marchese  put it, “…Facebook has fired the starting gun…”  Just two weeks after the release, which wasn’t announced to Facebook users, there were already 300 applications created.  The viral power of a platform like Facebook is growing immensely.  Application partners like iLike did not do any explicit promotion or advertising of the new application; users tried it, liked it and because Facebook users can see what their friends and people they trust are doing, they try it out.

This seems like a no-brainer for marketers, especially interactive marketers, yet the response among those in the media is mixed.  FORTUNE magazine writer David Kirkpatrick points out that the Facebook platform represents a major shift in how the web works – with less effort than ever Facebook is eliminating labor in the creation of social applications. Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike told FORTUNE magazine, “Anybody who is currently building consumer facing websites should be thinking about building a Facebook application instead, Developers who don’t ask themselves that questions are like the people building multimedia CD-ROM software in 1996 who didn’t’ ask themselves if they should be building a website.”

While Partovi feels the adaptation of Facebook as a platform is extremely beneficial, some feel this attitude will not be easy for many marketers to adopt, and that Facebook’s huge viral power can even hurt some marketers.  Kirkpatrick also pointed out that significant damage could be done if someone builds tools that would allow Facebook users to become more efficient at communication amongst themselves about products and services they use making it easier to learn if friends have been wronged, such as an overcharge on a credit card.  However, it’s just as easy to find out if your friend loves their new shampoo.

Marchese thinks it will mean painful transitions for marketers and has made a strong statement: “As social media players shift strategies, the questions advertisers have to ask themselves include: What are we as advertisers doing to match the pace of change in social media? How can advertising support the open social media ecosystem? What value can our advertising creative and our brands’ social currency add to the social media ecosystem?”  He also addresses the advertising/marketing community with, “When was the last time you, like Facebook, asked your staff not what social media communities can do for your brand – but what your brand can do for social media.”

I feel what Facebook’s platform provides is extremely valuable.  Facebook strategy boss Matt Cohler told FORTUNE magazine, “…Users will be telling us more about themselves by using a richer site, and we can use that information to serve them a more relevant experience, both in advertising and other ways.”  This is a huge resource for any marketer.  Many companies can upload an application specifically created for their product and without any extra advertising or promotion garner immense buzz marketing.  The most positive thing right now, I believe is Facebook’s advertising guidelines for applications.  CEO Zuckerberg told FORTUNE magazine that Facebook will not limit the ways developers make money, “They can sell sponsorships, they can have ads, they can sell things, they can link off to another site – we are just agnostic.” 

-Amanda DeVincentis

Tags: facebook, social media, twitter, Ali Partovi, Fortune, Mark Zuckerberg, ilike, Photobucket, Microsoft, Marketing, Media, Joe Marchese, advertising

Danny Sullivan – Host

• Issues related to increase in technology and how the search engines handle it

Shari Thorow – Grantastic Designs

• CSS – cascading style sheets
• • Contols design parameters
  • Search engines can and do read CSS
  • Decreases download time of page
  • Easier to control exact positioning
  • Hidden text and hidden links – considered search engine spam
  • Tagging – H1 tag used for headlines
  • Alt text in img – don’t wrap h1 tag around an image, does not help
  • CSS Layer coordinates – search engines detect this (negative coordinates to put text off page) – spam
  • Layers on top of each other – can be detected by search engines
• There are legit uses of hidden layers
• • Drop down menu – text is clearly meant to be read by humans
• Do not robot exclude styles directory or javascript files

Ryan Johnston & Jim McFadyen – Critical Mass (Ajax & Search)

• AJAX is the new buzzword in web design
• Merely an improved user interface
• Application like functionality on site
• Asynchronous Javascript And Html
• Makes pages feel more responsive
• Allows communication with browser and server without refresh
• XHTML and CSS is used for presentation of AJAX
• Supported by all browsers with javascript enabled
• AJAX is NOT supported by search engines
• • Search engines do not run javascript
  • Often, content will not be indexed
  • Especially true with navigation – stop indexing
• Limitations
• • Every page must exist as an html page
  • Must be a page SE can find and index
  • Every page must have it’s content on the page
  • Links must already be in html (normal html anchor text)
  • Test site, by turning javascript off, and navigate site.  If you can see content you are delivering, you’re good to go
• Developers – what they do
• • Normal anchor text – will now be collected and changed the functionality.  Instead of going page to page for each of the anchor tags, it will run them directly on the one page
  • Search engines will just follow the links along (sans-javascript)
• What to do
• • First build out your baseline application, make sure it runs without javascript turned on
  • Test for all users (limited supported users)
• Example:  www.rolex.com
• • Ajax call: new content on page, but URL does not change
  • Turn javascript off, need to make sure still navigate to these pages (in a static type way)
• AJAX breaks normal browser refresh
• • No history, no back button
  • Content is not the corresponding URL, makes for a possible cloaking
  • Use javascript to add unique page IDs to each page
  • Use javascript to fake an entry on a users history (using # in URL)
  • EX: www.yoursite.com/category/product.html#/category/product or www.yoursite.com/category/product.html#product/category
  • • This can be 4 or 5 dif. Ways
    • But search engines ignor everything beyond #, which gets rid of content duplication issues with indexing
• Example: Rolex.com – URL’s update beyond the # sign
• # sign URLs are the solution to separate page indexing and excluding duplication
• Scripts to accommodate URL updates
• • Unfocus.com/projects/?page_id=3
  • Asual.com has one as well
• BAD AJAX example – GUCCI.com
• • No ajax support – turn off javascript and there is NOTHING
  • Site breaks every rule, all site is served exclusively through AJAX
• GOOD AJAX example
• • Amazon diamond search
  • • Uses sliders for results
    • Without javascript – similar interface, just no sliders
    • Added ajax as an enhancement, not a requirement
    • All nav links without javascript

Search Engine Representatives on Panel

Dan Crow – Google

• Beginning to move in the direction of supporting javascript with Google
• Also flash indexing coming, and dynamic rich sites
• Don’t assume that anything in javascript will be hidden from search engines, soon that won’t be true

Amit Kumar – Yahoo!

• Reason they don’t use javascript, search engines fault, behind the 8 ball on it
• Lots of users are behind as well, lacking javascript, so we should optimize for non-javascript and flash as well
• Do not exclude CSS or Javascript in robots.txt
• Sitemaps are great, submit them, they help

Danny Sullivan – Q&A

• Firefox addon – Web Developer (can use to turn on/off cookies, javascript, flash etc)
• Widgets Best Practices
• • Make sure it’s legitimate
  • Concern that widget is in an iframe.
• Spam Filters
• • Reflects the intention of users
  • If it’s clearly navigational, will not trip the spam filters

]]> http://www.morpheusmedia.com/mlog/archive/ses-nyc-css-ajax-web-20-search-engines-%e2%80%93-41307/feed/ 1 http://www.morpheusmedia.com/mlog/archive/social-networking-2m/ http://www.morpheusmedia.com/mlog/archive/social-networking-2m/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:39:43 +0000 Toby Evers http://www.morpheusmedia.com/mlog/?p=38 Mobile has been a hot topic for quite a while now. To be honest, while I have adopted many mobile functions in my personal life, I still have not found a way to efficiently integrate mobile into a campaign that I am working on. Perhaps it is due to the direct nature of business here at Morpheus but I simply have not gotten Mobile to work like so many other channels we employ.

What I do see as a burgeoning mobile experience with great opportunity for, not only geek’s like but, marketers as well,  is the social aspect of the mobile arena.

I may not consume a tremendous amount of mainstream content on my phone but I certainly tweet a lot (twitter). If some of my social mobile activities were subsidized by advertisers, I may be fine with that. Furthermore, if value in the form of relevant advertising were presented to me, I would mind even less.

In a press release today mobile content provider, Mobileplay announced the release of eXpress It. It is described in the release as the following:

a social networking service for cell phone users which
allows them to create and share personal mobile web
pages as easily as sending an email.

The free, advertising-supported community allows users, regardless of technical ability,
to create mobile web pages for themselves or to share them with others
simply by sending an email or an MMS picture message to their own phone number.

Tags: Mobileplay, eXpress It, Twitter, MMS, Mobile, SMS, Social Networking, Mobile Social, Mobile Web, WAP

Tags: Second Life, Video, Virtual Worlds, Apple, 5th avenue, experience marketing

The popularity of Cyworld has lead to its launch in other countries, including Japan, Taiwan, China, and the United States. The US Cyworld is a modified version of its Korean parent, lacking some of the graphics and features that make it uniquely Korean. The fact that the US version has been watered down begs the question: can the popularity of a site with such strong appeal in one culture translate over into another culture?

But I digress. When you become a Cyworld member, you are presented with a mini homepage, avatar (called a mini me), and mini rooms which you can customize according to your own tastes. And there is much room for creativity in customizing these items, with Cyworld’s 4,400 graphic artisits constantly creating new and interesting graphics. The genius behind Cyworld lies in its unique money making model: although becoming a Cyworld member is free, personalizing your own site is not. Personalizing one’s site makes it interesting and thus appealing to others. The appeal of one’s site is directly related to the amount of members (or mini me’s) who will visit it and want to be friends. The idea behind it is that since the goal of those logging into social networking sites is to expand their social circles, it goes without saying that creating (financing) an intriguing site is worth the expense. Cyworld members pay for digital decorations in the form of backgrounds, charms, pets, clothing, accessories, etc. The currency of Cyworld is the acorn, which, at about 100 wan per acorn, translates to roughly 9 cents.

Will Cyworld give Myspace a run for its money? I dont think so. Although the average Cyworld member spends $7 per year, while the average Myspace member spends only $2.17, the site’s creators don’t expect the US Cyworld to rake in huge sums of money, especially not from the sale of digital decorations. Rather, US sales will come primarily from advertising. Advertisers will have the ability to boost their brand awareness and popularity by creating their own mini homepages and doling out promotional acorns and offers.

One interesting feature that Cyworld can boast over MySpace is that it hasnt incurred the predator problems-and subsequent bad publicity- that MySpace has, due to a more extensive sign up process. (Koreans have to submit their national ID (like social security #) in order to become members, meaning that no one can have an anonymous profile from which to stalk little children.

So, will Cyworld wow American audiences? I’m guessing not; paying to decorate one’s homepage in 9 cent increments is not something that is familiar or appealing to Americans. The fact that the US version of Cyworld provides the incentive of free acorns upon sign up as well as promotional acorns from advertisers attests to this statement. Ultimately, Cyworld is a closed platform and is thus limited in what it can offer members. I think that freedom reigns here in the US – and the freedom that has made Myspace so attractive and so popular will not likely be forsaken for Cyworld’s cutesy graphics. Having launched in the US only a few months ago, I guess it still remains to be seen.

Analysis will be provided after the conference.

Tags: Jonathan Carson, Buzz Metrics, Will Hodgman, M:Metrics, Kenneth Papagan, Rentrak, Scott Radcliffem SAS, David Rosenberg, JWT, Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, Oversi, Mark Ghuneim, Wiredset, UGC, Contextaul, 3G, GPS

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