Commission Junction Changes Their Links…

Monday, May 29th, 2006 at 12:25 pm by Anik Singal

This is major news. CJ has announced that they are changing from HTML links to Javascript links. What does this mean?

Well, instead of having links that you would use typically, you will now have to place “coding” into the page for a link.

What does this mean to you?

Well the way you insert links is completely different now. Affiliate links are becoming a bit more like Adsense links. They will be “fed” directly onto your site by CJ.

Some of the implications are that this does give the merchant/CJ much more control over your site and what is actually showing (as in the text for the link - not as easy to change any more as just changing a few html text).

However, CJ is still saying that they will allow affiliates to control text and look/feel over the links - but havn’t exactly said how that will be possible.

Also, if you use data feeds or have a comparison shopping website, it is still unclear how easily you’re going to be able to automatically have JAVA links inserted.

Now for all you e-mail and PPC affiliates

You don’t need “me” telling you that you can’t exactly insert JAVA script into an e-mail or into a Google Ad…

CJ’s response is that they WILL still have HTML links for you to use - but they will be case by case and monitored to make sure they are not being used on websites.

There is NO way they can completely eliminate PPC affiliates - way too much revenue comes from there, they’d probably cut their revenue in half!

When does all this go into effect? June 23…
When do the HTML links go Bye-Bye? No announcement yet…

What are my feelings on this change? To be honest, I’m not sure yet - but definitely something to watch…

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5 Comments

Hopefully, we will hear from CJ directly how this will all work!

Comment by Bob Marconi | May 29th, 2006 2:39 pm | Permalink

Such a hot topic isn’t it? We blogged about it as well. How could we resist?

Our affiliates have been in touch with us asking if we’re considering following suite and we still feel that the best approach is to offer up as many options to our affiliates to support them in their efforts. While we haven’t implemented any kind of Javascripting (we’re still an HTML driven network at this point), it’s something we’ll consider as an additional tool for affiliates.

I’ll be watching as well! Thanks for keeping us in the loop Anik