Affiliate Blog

DoubleClick Performics Affiliate is now Google Affiliate Network

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google's brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google's commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics' Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics' Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients' search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry.  We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great things together.

NY State Sales Tax Update

The State of New York recently enacted legislation regarding Sales Tax Vendor definitions. DoubleClick Performics cannot provide guidance on legal or tax matters, but we do encourage all advertisers not currently registered as Vendors in New York State to review the facts carefully. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division recently issued a briefing that clarifies some intentions of the legislation.

All data needed to evaluate your New York based affiliate relationships is available in ConnectCommerce at anytime. Advertisers in the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network have access to geographic location at the state level through the 'advanced search' feature.

Steps:

1. Upon login, click > 'affiliate' > 'approved'
2. Scroll down to and click 'find criteria'
3. Select the state/province dropdown and click New York (NY)
4. Click 'find publishers.'

Should any advertiser desire to alter the special Terms and Conditions related to your Affiliate Marketing program, please contact your assigned DoubleClick Performics' representative with any additional language.

ConnectCommerce Q1 Release Webinar

On March 5, 2008 we held a ConnectCommerce Q1 Release Webinar. Jorge Zapata, Business Systems Analyst, walked Publishers through the new ConnectCommerce features including information on our Newest Links Interface, a Publisher Communications Preference Page Update, Advertiser Profile Interface Updates and more! Additionally, there was a robust Q and A which followed the webinar.

If you were unable to attend the webinar, or would like a refresher, you can view our video podcast here.

DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Research

On February 25th, DoubleClick Performics announced results of a semi-annual survey of affiliate publishers. This survey was part of a multi-faceted research initiative to provide insight on consumer engagement with online promotions. Some of the survey highlights include:

• Fifty-three percent of affiliate publishers expressed the most interest in “free shipping” promotions, followed by “exclusive affiliate channel offers” (48 percent)
• Long-running offers are preferred by 31 percent of affiliate publishers, followed by 28 percent preferring new offers weekly

To learn more, please view the press release here.

Scheduled Maintenance on Saturday, March 1

The ConnectCommerce interface will be unavailable Saturday, March 1, 2008 for our newest release.

The system will be unavailable for 8 hours from 10:00 a.m. EST (3:00 p.m. GMT), until 6:00 p.m. EST (11:00 p.m. GMT). You will be able to log in again when the release is completed.

Please note: ConnectCommerce tracking is NOT affected during this period!

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

I'll take my juice with some PULP

DoubleClick Performics is proud to announce Publisher PULP -our newest content piece including interviews, best practices and more! This issue features a Q and A with Chuck Hamrick of Affiliate Crew, 5 in 5 with employee Jamie Ross and as for the rest-you'll have to check out the PULP.

Chris Henger Chats about Affiliate Marketing in 2008

Linda Woods, President of PartnerCentric, interviewed our Vice President of Affiliate Marketing, Chris Henger, for the launch of the Affiliate Marketing Insight podcast. This two part chat includes trends for 2008, the growth and opportunities of social networking and common mistakes made by both advertisers and publishers.

Listen to the two part podcast here:

Part 1

Part 2

One-Time Publisher Bonus Opportunity

As you know from previous communications, DoubleClick Performics experienced a system outage on Saturday, December 8, 2007 due to an inadvertent complete loss of power in the DoubleClick Thornton, Colorado data center. In light of the service disruption, DoubleClick Performics decided to do something special for its Affiliate Publishers and will pay a one-time bonus of 10% based on affiliate commissions generated on Saturday, December 15, 2007. Such bonus will be equal to 10% of the commissions earned during the entire day by an Affilate Publisher and will be reflected in the January payment statement. We are hopeful you view this as a reflection of our commitment to your success, and the success of our Affiliate Marketing business. We appreciate your valuable contribution. The DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Team

Advertisers are Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!

DoubleClick Performics would like to congratulate our advertisers who have made the Internet Retailer Hot 100 list, which recognizes some of the best and most innovative online retailers. We are pleased to offer affiliate programs for many of the retailers on this list. Below is a partial list of our advertisers who were recognized in the Internet Retailer Hot 100. Congratulations!

AE.com                                   Patagonia                           
BarnesandNoble.com                PCConnection.com
Cabela’s                                  Skechers
Delightful Deliveries Inc.          Swell
Diapers.com                            Timberland
Guess Jeans                            Vivre
Harry & David                         Kohls.com
LakeChamplainChocolates

12/2 ConnectCommerce Outage Update

We suffered a hardware outage that affected banner serving to consumers and a media server for the ConnectCommerce application on Sunday afternoon. The two systems both started having problems around 3:20 CST on December 2. Services for ConnectCommerce were restored within an hour and twenty minutes. The banner serving outage lasted approximately three hours but only impacted images hosted by DoubleClick Performics. Many affiliate publishers host their own ads and these images displayed properly throughout the outage.

At no time were our tracking/redirect servers affected and text and data feed links were fully operational throughout the media serving outage. The tracking servers operate on different hardware systems and are not dependent on media serving for operation.