Publishers Spoke, We Listened

We just completed our second release of the year and have a couple enhancements I'd like to call to your attention.  We'll be sending a full release note out on Monday that includes some more screenshots and details on a couple other minor enhancements.  But I couldn't wait to get the word out on these two, so here you go.

We've been getting lots of positive feedback on the newest links UI.  But several  publishers suggested that they'd like to see a view of this feature that included links from only those advertisers with whom they have a relationship.  I'm happy to announce that this feature is now available.  Now you may view links added to the network in the past seven days for all advertisers in the network or for only your approved advertisers.  You can further filter the list by link/banner, banner size, promotion type, and for short term promotions.

We've also heard from many publishers that they want more direct contact with our advertisers.  To that end, your primary email address has been available to your approved advertisers for over a year now.  We are now also offering an option on your communications preferences page that will allow you to expose your email address to advertisers in our network with whom you are not currently working.  You will need to opt in to this setting to begin receiving direct communication from non-joined advertisers; all publishers are opted out by default. 

We will soon be releasing a feature to advertisers that will enable them to recruit our network and view the contact information of those publishers that have opted in for non-joined advertiser communication.  We think this will help to open up our network and facilitate many more relationships than we could establish through our own recruiting and matchmaking efforts.

We're very excited about this release and hope you'll find that these features will continue to improve publishers' experience with DoubleClick Performics and our advertisers.  As always, please leave comments and suggestions if you have them.  There will be a publisher webinar on March 5 to walk you through these and other recently released features, check your email for the invite.

Larry Adams
Affiliate Product Manager

Comments

[Kevin Delaney]

Sorry, but email doesn't cut it for affiliate communications. I've had other affiliates send false "termination of affiliation" notices to my email address. I have also received emails with bogus coupons and sale information.

Since it is possible to spoof email, affiliate networks need to create an internal email program.

Such programs are extremely easy to write.

[Larry Wentz]

Unless advertisers are actually able to see that an affiliate has multiple websites with different niches ...... it's a waste of time for everyone concerned as far as recruitment by merchants looking for new affiliates. This is extremely true for affiliates applying to merchants.

I have been told by Performics to change my primary URL "every time" when I apply to merchants to make sure that they see the proper website. Even though we can enter multiple websites in our account profile via the "publisher site description" .....merchants can't see those sites when you apply.

At the moment I have my plus size clothing site listed as my main site and will have to wait until merchants approve me before I can change my main website to apply to merchants for the next site. That's absurd! If a merchant delays in their approval process and I change my main site to a fishing site ..... do you think the plus size clothing merchant will approve my fishing site into their affiliate program?

Ironically I was declined by Cabelas a long time ago when I had my magazine site listed as my main site ..... I'll have to get that corrected some day.

[Larry Adams]

Kevin, thanks for the suggestion. We do plan to implement an internal messaging system in the future.

Larry, I'd suggest you update your profile to include all of your URLs and leave your primary URL alone. We recently updated the site description on your profile to accept HTML so you can link to as many of your sites as you'd like. But we'll also consider adding additional URL fields as well. I also highly recommend maintaining a page that highlights all of your affiliate sites so that you can direct interested merchants to it. I've seen several publishers use this tactic and it is very well received by merchants evaluating their applications.

Larry

[Larry Wentz]

I've had my URLs listed in the site description area and thought merchants I applied to could see them. They apparently "can't" see those sites which is why Performics told me to change my primary URL when I apply to merchants for different sites. I was told directly from a merchant that they could not see my other sites that I had listed - only the primary site.

So which is it? I'm getting mixed advice from Performics which doesn't solve the problem. I'm currently waiting for my plus size clothing merchants to approve me before I can do anything else due to the current set-up.

I don't want to be rude here but the only reason affiliates need to have pages listing all their websites are for affiliate networks that think affiliates have only 1 website ........ even 3rd tier affiliate networks nowadays have that multiple website option.

[Larry Adams]

Larry,

I'm sorry for the confusion. Advertisers can in fact see your site description. I'll send you an email to get more details on this specific case. But we'll also do some training of our customer support team and our advertisers to ensure they know where to find this information.

We'll also look into making this info more prominent so that you won't run into this problem in the future.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Larry

[Kris Jones]

Larry,

The title of your post is “Publishers Spoke, We Listened.”

You must have taken some liberty in that title considering that it is strikingly similar to one of the marketing campaigns launched by Pepperjam Network to extraordinary success just six weeks ago: “Affiliates have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened.”

I took the liberty to run some reports and I note here that Pepperjam Network has generated over 365,000 banner views on various content Web sites for our “Affiliates Have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened” campaign since launching PJN on 1/15/08. In addition, we created 250 T-Shirts with the same slogan and many of us were wearing those same T-shirts last week at Affiliate Summit - you were there - right?

I’m totally assuming your title was just a coincidence, but since one of our affiliates e-mailed me about it, and several Pepperjam employees mentioned it, I thought I would go on record at least calling it out. FYI: It took a dozen people from our creative team, including myself several weeks to come up with our various marketing efforts for the launch of Pepperjam Network (PJN), including (1) Affiliate Marketing is Evolving. Introducing PJN. (2) Affiliates Have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened. Introducing PJN, (3) The Rumors are True. A Network by Affiliates for Affiliates. Introducing PJN, and (4) On 1-15-08, Everything Changed. Join the Affiliate Revolution. Introducing PJN.

I’ve already delivered props to you over on Scott Jangro’s blog about stepping up for your advertisers to provide more info about your affiliates.

I repeat that sentiment here.

Congrats to Performics for stepping up to the plate.

As for the title of your post - small beans, but you guys are more creative than your title would suggest.

Kris Jones
Pepperjam Network
Thinking Forward

[Larry Adams]

Kris, it's wonderful that you feel the need to shower us with praise everywhere our new feature is mentioned on the net (although with your vast creative resources, I would have figured you could have done better than to copy and paste the same comment you made at Revenews fifteen minutes ago). We clearly have struck a chord with you. Perhaps you'd consider a job in our marketing department if the whole network thing doesn't pan out - http://tinyurl.com/2hescu

Larry

[Kris Jones]

Larry,

LOL. You must not be familiar with the Pepperjam Story - www.pepperjam.com. At 110 employees and innovatively growing at the speed of Lance Armstrong in the final stretch of yet another Tour de France victory, I don't think I'll need a job from Performics anytime soon. Plus, I think Stewart is pretty happy with his job.

Kidding and jabbing aside, I think Performics is an incredible company. I admire what you guys have become.

I merely wanted to call you out for what appeared to be a confusingly similar tag line.

I'm confident that it was either a mistake or an honest attempt at appearing equally innovative.

FYI - your T-Shirt is in the mail.

Kris

[Aaron Rivera]

nice program I will join ;)