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Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Email Authentication Use, Stats From the Experts

Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 3:35 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

While far from solved, there is hope on the horizon for email deliverability problems. Authentication methods are more and more becoming the norm. (Discussion by ClickZ Kevin Newcomb is here.) They’re expected to be followed later by increased use of reputation methods.

Email marketing gurus Loren MacDonald and Kirill Popov discuss the trends and the distinction here. They describe the two major methods thus:

“Where authentication methods like SIDF and DKIM verify that a sender is who they say they are, reputation services take that sender’s identity and check it against a database of their sending practices, checking for things like bounce rates, unsubscribe practices and user complaints.”

In the article, the authors state that authentication is up 60% in the last year. Also, that:

“35 percent of all Internet e-mail is authenticated using SenderID framework (SIDF), a protocol identified with Microsoft.” Also, that “10 percent of all Internet e-mail uses Yahoo!-developed DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).”

That’s good news, but the battle will be uphill if some of their other statistics are accurate. They write, “10 of every 12 messages tracked by the Postini Threat Identification Network is spam.” Also, that “At the recent E-mail Authentication Summit, representatives from AOL and Microsoft stated 90-95 percent of all inbound e-mail they process is spam.”

Those numbers are considerably higher than others reported elsewhere. But despite what must be a large overhead on MSN’s and AOL’s servers, the fact they are trapping that many is a good thing. The alternative would be to have them wind up in the Inbox where they’d clutter up the genuine marketing messages from affiliates and merchants. (One of the problems with marketing is always the signal to noise ratio.)

So despite the many hurdles email marketing continues to face, its future looks better than ever.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 5:00 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

I keep promising myself I’m going to write a post full of bad news. Something full of gloom and doom, or at least wonder and worry. (That seems to have worked well in journalism for decades, and of course we’re always looking for ways to increase readership.) Unfortunately, events just keep refusing to cooperate.

Pew has just released a report that contains the results of another of their excellent surveys. In it the author, Mary Madden, discusses the continuing rise in Internet and broadband use and the increase in online shopping confidence.

“[O]ur latest survey, fielded February 15 – April 6, 2006 shows that fully 73% of respondents (about 147 million adults) are Internet users, up from 66% (about 133 million adults) in our January 2005 survey. And the share of Americans who have broadband connections at home has now reached 42% (about 84 million), up from 29% (about 59 million) in January 2005.”

When I think about the fact that broadband users tend to spend more online, I find it hard to be sad.

Here’s another interesting tidbit:

“91% of adults living in households earning more than $75,000…” use the Internet.

When I remember that jewelry, luxury, and other high ticket items are one of the largest dollar amount affiliate marketing segments, it’s difficult to be depressed.

But, I’ll keep trying…

The “World” In World Wide Web

Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 3:37 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Internet marketing is booming in the U.S., but not only there. Even the (for a while, relatively) weak Japanese economy is improving with Internet marketing as both cause and beneficiary.

Japan has the third largest Internet population in the world. (Second, if you discount the heavily censored Chinese market.) Estimates put the number in the neighborhood of 73 million individuals.

Not only numerous, the Japanese are highly industrialized, strong on financial services and technology oriented. Most consumer electronics products see their introduction there prior to the rest of the world. (And the Japanese consumers often pay a significant premium for such items.)

Brazil is coming on strong as well. With a working population over 123 million, 14 million of whom use the Internet regularly, Brazil is the largest Internet market in Latin America. It grew by over 6.5% from February 2006 to March 2006 alone.

Canada, for a long period a relatively quiet Internet marketing arena, is now also seeing significant growth.

“According to the latest figures from Statistics Canada, Canadian online sales recorded their fourth consecutive year of strong double-digit growth in 2005. Combined private and public sector online sales increased by 38.4% compared with 2004, to reach a total of CAD39.2 billion (US$32.4 billion).” (eMarketer)

At a time when worldwide PC shipments are up over 13%, and economic news around the world in general is mostly healthy, this trend is likely to continue.

It may be time to learn another language.

Less Cookie Deletion = More Affiliate Profits!

Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 10:12 am by Anik Singal

RevenueScience reports on a study that shows a 55.6% drop in people who frequntly deleted their computer’s cookies.

“Bolstering these findings were strong indications that cookie deletion is on a significant downward trend. When asked how often they delete cookies form their hard drives, only 8 percent answered “very frequently” compared to 18 percent in a 2004 survey; while 24 percent indicated they “never” delete cookies—more than double the 11 percent from the previous survey.”

Read the article at: http://www.revenuescience.com/news_releasesdetail.asp?prID=060427

And more than DOUBLE the people (from 2004) said that they NEVER delete their cookies…

New Ad Venues, Increased Income

Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 3:27 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

A third of the way through, 2006 is shaping up to be a banner(less) year. New forms of advertising, far surpassing the effectiveness of those of yesteryear are growing in popularity. (Ok, so we work in a medium where yesteryear is really only the year before, like yesterday is the day before today, but still…)

Blogads are becoming more popular and more lucrative, as 75,000 new blogs per day are coming into being. (I’m still looking for figures on those that become inactive daily.)

RSS ads — despite continuing controversy about when, whether, or if it should largely replace email — are rising, too.

And podcasts are marching along, with monetization via accompanying ads growing all the time.

So now Microsoft is buying Massive, the in-game advertising company for between $200 and $400 million dollars. With its fanatically popular Xbox, the rejuvenated giant of software should find a fine synergy there.

A much overused and ill-understood concept, it fits here. “The effect of two or more agents working together to produce an effect that is greater than the sum of the parts,” as one site defines it. Think of pushing a child on a swing in time with her rhythm.

That amplification is just the thing that will push gaming to new revenue heights. And gaming, let us not forget, is one of the highest income generating affiliate markets around.

Ads served within those games offer a double or triple whammy. The games are typically Internet-enabled, so the feeds are live and contextual. They hit the most active online segment — males between 18 and 34 (though females make up a large percentage of gamers, as well). And the ads, along with the games, have spinoff potential for music, movies, and other high revenue generating segments.

Me? I’m warming up my Microsoft Flight Simulator. ‘Cause 2006 is going to take off.

The $1 Million Affiliate…

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 4:15 pm by Anik Singal

We’ve been getting swamped with e-mails asking about the new book “High Performance Affiliate Marketing” by Jeremy Palmer.

Jeremy earned over $1 MILLION through just affiliate marketing and was won Commission Junction’s Horizon Award for Innovation…

If you want to read what I think about it, visit:

High Performance Affiliate Marketing

Just so you know, Jeremy reveals some neat things:

- Free keyword research tools to use
- Different kinds of websites to make
- Gives you templates you can model after
- Even shows you a few of his sites!

The full review…
High Performance Affiliate Marketing

Click Fraud, Bad But Maybe Less So

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 6:27 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

With the judge agreeing to Google’s proposed settlement, click fraud is back in the news again. (It left for a while?) In essence, Google has agreed to allot up to $90 million in credits for advertisers who apply, claiming unreimbursed “invalid clicks”.

(Google uses the term “invalid clicks” rather than “fraudulent clicks” on the grounds that automatically detecting a click for which an advertiser should not be charged is one thing, while “it’s practically impossible to ‘prove’ that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception.” I think they overstate the case, but they have a point.)

To date, one of the difficulties surrounding the whole subject is the fact that Google, Yahoo!, and others won’t release figures showing the real size of the problem. (I can’t say I entirely blame them here, either. But that’s a distraction I’ll go into another day.)

Thanks to at least one vendor, ClickFraudIndex, that may be less an issue in the future. According to the company, which offers a free service currently used by 400 advertisers, fraudulent clicks may be smaller than previously reported.

Most reports are admittedly anectdotal (or at least not statistically rigorous), but they hover in the 20-35% range. Click Forensic’s data suggests the figure may be far lower, in the low teens. Without a careful review of how they’re making the measurements it’s impossible to say who is right. And, in any case, they’re only one company. But their numbers look plausible.

Even 13.7% is still pretty troubling, of course. No advertiser wants their income artificially reduced by such a large amount. Even one percent would qualify as serious money in some circumstances, but one might be willing to consider that as the cost of doing business.

Still, it’s good news that at least one company is offering some hard data. And, since the service is free, many might find it helpful to investigate the worth of using it.

It also gives credence to Google’s claims that the problem is smaller than many others have claimed. There is the potential for conflict of interest in Google’s reports, of course. But the thought of that behemoth deliberately deceiving their customers would be troubling, if true. I stand by “innocent until proved guilty” as a valid principle, but reasonable people can disagree in this case.

In the upcoming issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the subject of click fraud. So, stay tuned for more on a subject that affects everyone’s pocket book.

Shop-By-Phone Takes On New Meaning

Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 5:10 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

According to an In-Stat study, as many as 25 million may be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011. Previous attempts to get users to shop-by-phone in a new way didn’t fare well.

(For those under 30, shopping by phone — i.e. buying from real paper catalogs used to be enormously popular. It still is, though it gets a lot less press in the 1st century AG (after-Google founding) Era. For example, one major retailer in the Northwest U.S. employs over 300 customer service reps just to take orders. Even for them, though, online purchases represent a third of sales these days.)

But with color-screen phones that have excellent resolution, along with a Google or Yahoo! Local, etc, the technology to make it work just might be there this time.

Most users resist the idea primarily due to added fees for mobile shopping services. But telecom vendors and merchants will soon get wise to the idea that those fees are foolish and unnecessary. Take a cut off the back end from the merchant and sales will rise to more than cover both parties’ costs.

At the same time, mobile phone users are increasing their browsing activity. (At least among the 18-34 crowd.) In Japan, for example. 40% of adults browse the net using their “wireless handset”. And more than 90% of households in Japan, Korea, and urban China have at least one mobile phone. In Western Europe, the figure is 80%.

Internet spending in non-U.S. countries is rising. In some cases, more than others, but in the UK, India, Germany, and Japan the numbers are rising fast.

Of course, even if when they’re not out and about they’ll still want to shop online. That may be occurring more in the near future with gas prices reaching record highs, after their last record‑highs, (which were higher than… well, you get the idea).

According to a recent Shopzilla survey 50% of consumers said higher gasoline prices will motivate them to shop more online.

So, affiliate marketers can expect a healthy year, provided they don’t have to spend all their profits at the pump. If they do, I’m sure they can find a use for that mobile phone.

eMarketer: Behavioral Targeting, Better Than Suspected

Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 5:53 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Just when we were beginning to wonder if we were making it up…

eMarketer has provided data suggesting BT (Behavioral Targeting) is even more worthwhile than we claimed. (It’s good to be wrong in the right way….)

The research gurus estimate that “marketers will spend about $1.2 billion on behavioral targeted online advertising in 2006. And in only two years, behavioral targeting spending will surpass the $2 billion mark.”

They also say why:

1. Behavioral targeting helps marketers get better
results from fewer impressions.

2. Publishers like the fact that behavioral targeting
delivers more revenue from lesser pages.

3. Users tend to find ads targeted by their actions to be more relevant to their needs.

(Source: “Online Ad Targeting: Engaging The Audience” by David Hallerman.)

With technology assistance growing to help marketers identify who is buying and why, BT is becoming more than just a buzzword. It’s becoming an important way to increase conversions.

And with Internet advertising sharply on the rise, the double-whammy is — we predict — going to result in record sales in 2006. But, like record stock prices, that trend only does you good if you own one of the record-breakers.

In this case, the way to up the odds of that is to invest in using BT when crafting your emails and designing your sites. Affiliate Classroom will be giving members lots of concrete, useful tips on exactly how to do that over the coming months.

Use All Your (Marketing) Voices

Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 4:26 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Marketers are always looking for new ways to attract attention. That’s their job after all. With attention comes sales. (Not every look leads to a purchase, of course, but few sales come without at least some prior nudge.)

But attention-getting techniques are limited, especially online. Once you’ve done the obvious, what next? Two options are techniques called Behavioral Targeting and Demographic Analysis.

As with any marketing technique, there are debates about how effective either is. One study suggests only 18% of users respond to behavioral targeting, with demographic coming in at 28%. Compared to 62% who are more likely to purchase based on a contextual ad, that doesn’t seem like much.

That may well be the case, but 18% or 28% represent significant chunks of users and after you’ve done contextual, then what?

Demographic techniques — using zip codes, income levels, gender, and other data — to target users is also helpful. However, the effectiveness varies with all those criteria (and more). Users in the North East US respond differently than those in the West, as do users of different income levels.

Getting that sort of data, even when it isn’t ethically questionable, can be difficult and expensive though, especially for online marketers. Useful as part of the toolbox, but not for the faint of heart.

More than just a buzzword, BT describes a method of tracking and analyzing user behavior in order to encourage higher conversions. Online behavior is monitored, then ads are presented that match a profile built from the data.

There are several concrete ways to do that. Among them are clickstream analysis (recording and viewing what a user clicks on within a site), recording a cookie and matching clicks against purchases, reviewing RSS subscriber lists, and a host of others.

The moral of the story is this. Paraphrasing a line from The Lion In Winter said by Henry II: “Use all your voices. When I bellow, bellow back.”

That ought to get their attention.

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