Marketing Pilgrim's "Affiliate Marketing" Channel

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Microsoft Launches Affiliate Program

posted on December 20, 2007

Microsoft has launched a new affiliate program for paid search ads (Microsoft adCenter) and their security and PC backup service Windows Live OneCare.

There are two ways Affiliates can earn cash.
1. Each time someone signs up for a free trial of Windows Live OneCare.
2. The Microsoft adCenter program – which I can’t find details about – but you can earn cash each time someone you refer from your site signs up for paid search ads.

They are launching Microsoft adCenter with a $50 ad credit for your visitors (Andy ought to sign up Marketing Pilgrim!).

Microsoft will provide the banners to put on your blog or web site. I can’t find figures on their payouts.

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Online Advertising and Display Ads Rise

posted on November 29, 2007

Internet advertising as a whole is steadily rising. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) announced in early October that Internet advertising has reached a new record of $4.9 billion for the first quarter of 2007. Last year first quarter revenues were at $3.8 billion – a 26 percent increase.

I recently read a MarketingSherpa article on one type of online advertising that is making a small comeback. Some call them banner ads some call them online display ads, but according to MarketingSherpa, they are back in vogue. Why? They are lower cost other online advertising methods. MarketingSherpa published a helpful introduction to this advertising medium.

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iTunes Doubles Affiliate Commissions for Holidays

posted on November 26, 2007

iTunes is sweetening the deal for affiliates who promote their online gift certificates with 50% more commission. You can email, or buy and print a gift certificate in amounts from $10.00 to $200.00. They’re also throwing in a free iPod nano for the top performing affiliate.

That puts commissions at 7.5% for all sales generated until 12/31/07. But the catch is that affiliates must opt in to Offer 54.1 to earn higher commissions. This is good news for music affiliates, but it’s not for individual downloads, just electronic gift certificates. iTunes is run through LinkShare’s affiliate network.

Amazon.com introduced their new music download service this year with a promotion for affiliates. Even though the selection is less, they are paying 20% commissions until January 2008 then it drops to 10%.

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How Advertising Works Our Nerves (In a Good Way)

posted on November 15, 2007

At last, neuroscience is applying itself to understanding how that extremely artificial endeavor — advertising — engages our basic biological instincts.

Two pieces of science news will interest marketers. First, the more we can anthropomorphize products, the better we like them. Second, advertising can take the place of real memory in our beliefs about a product.

It seems that dancing raisins, talking cars and the Geico gekko — but probably not subservient chickens — can actually change consumers’ perceptions and attitudes, according to Pankaj Aggarwal (University of Toronto) and Ann L. McGill (University of Chicago).

This Science Daily story says that we’re more likely to positively evaluate an anthropomorphized item.

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Death to Russian Scammers

posted on November 5, 2007

Here’s one way to eliminate spam – corporal punishment. We all hate spam, especially the ones that advertise Viagra, and pills for penis enlargement (and as I write this I’m thinking of the related ads I might trigger just by writing this). You can rest easy knowing that the man responsible for around 30% of those ads won’t be spamming you anymore. He’s dead. Or at least that’s what everyone thought. Now it appears the story is a scam.

The story made the home page of Digg, and quickly got picked up by bloggers. The story goes that a man named Alexey Tolstokozhev (which in Russian means ‘Thick Skin’) was shot in his luxury house near Moscow. Shot by Russian hit men.

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Amazon Increases Payout for Music Downloads

posted on October 18, 2007

Amazon.com is offering affiliates a higher payout on Amazon MP3 music downloads to compete with Apple’s iTunes. At Amazon they call affiliates associates and typically their payouts aren’t very high – around 6%. But to boost adoption of their music downloads they are offering 20% commissions until January 2008.

Compare that to Apple that offers 5% commissions on iTunes. They also priced the downloads slightly lower – some are 98 cents at Amazon while iTunes are at 99 cents. Beginning on January 1st, commissions will drop to 10%, still double that of iTunes.

Amazon has one of the earliest and largest affiliate programs on the internet. Now some of those affiliates have an incentive to promote music along with Amazon’s other offerings.

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Affiliate Marketing – High Growth in the UK

posted on September 27, 2007

By Janet Meiners.

According to a report by E-consultancy retailers in the UK are seeing positive results from affiliate marketing. The research group surveyed 239 merchants this year and most of them have both online an offline presence.

A full 95% of brands said that affiliate marketing is ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost effective.’ The next most effective ways to acquire a new customer is paid search and then email marketing. On average the retailers spend 18% of their online marketing budget on affiliate marketing.

Retailers like affiliate marketing (also called CPA or cost-per-acquisition) because they only pay an affiliate when a sale is made.

Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at explains, ‘Affiliate marketing has proven itself as the most cost effective online channel to drive incremental volume. It works for marketers because they only pay for activity that generates genuine sales?” He even went so far as to say that affiliate marketing “is a guaranteed positive ROI if managed correctly.” You can’t get much more glowing than that.