Posts Tagged Networks
Recession Hits Affiliate Marketing as DGM Enters Administration
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on July 16, 2010
Just after a month after being the co-sponsor for the A4UAwards, DGM have announced that they have gone into administration. The news comes on the same day that Affiliate Window announced a merger with Zanox, thus highlighting the varying fortunes of the two networks who have been part of UK Affiliate Marketing for a considerable amount of time.
Given the economic climate it’s perhaps not a surprise that a network has hit this point. Even so, it’s a sad day for affiliate marketing and for those who have been involved with DGM and it’s previous incarnations of UKAffiliates. For many affiliates, including ourselves, it used to be their number one earner and despite a few issues around the “Pro” era there’s always been affiliate affection towards the network.
In fairness the road has always been uphill for DGM since they moved from DGM2 to the ill fated DGMPro. In essence this has been the albatross attached to the millstone that’s been round their neck, whilst a (Cheeky)monkey played on their back. The affiliate system wasn’t the most user friendly and whilst DGM tried to sort things out, Awin and Buy.at emerged like Seb Coe used to do having sat behind Steve Ovett for 700m and leg it to the finishing line to grab the gold.
After a management buyout – at least on the surface it looked like New DGM were moving forward. They introduced new innovative ideas, like the mobile and broadband comparison units as well as travel maps. New clients, including The National Trust, were appearing too and with the merger of Buy.at/Awin there was opportunity for them to continue that climb and establish themselves as a network of choice for affiliates.
Sadly, for whatever reasons, that climb has now been halted by the grim reaper of administration. The knock on effect to affiliates is as yet unknown. But, it’s a stark reminder to us all how the fall of one business to which we are somehow linked can have an impact on our own. Affiliates do need to make sure they have several eggs and several baskets!
DGM’s administration though has, as you’d expect, resulted in some lively and interesting discussions on Twitter about networks and their future.
Are the days of the affiliate network numbered? Will there be other casualties? Do networks need to adapt their business models? Will agencies take to the space and remove the need for networks?
Perhaps there are more questions to be asked – like were the clients won really ideal for affiliate marketing or more intriguingly are there the affiliates in situ willing or able to promote new wins, not just for DGM, but other networks who as yet haven’t been absorbed by Affiliate Window? Has affiliate marketing hit a critical point, where as a discussion ensuing on affiliates4u suggests, that it’s now simply voucher code marketing?
Who knows the answers to these questions and how these events will effect AM in the months to come?
In the meantime, let’s hope there’s minimal impact for those effected by this administration.
New Deeplinking Tool From Paid On Results
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on May 20, 2010
Creating deeplinks can be an annoying and time consuming process, especially if you’re busy blogging or writing content for your website. Most networks have tools to help you generate deeplinks, but the guys over at Paid On Results were the first to provide a one click browser based solution. They’re about to relaunch the tool and they’ve kindly let me have a sneak peak.
And blimey, it’s pretty damn good!
The process is very simple. You put an icon on your browser toolbar, which is done as simple as dragging the necessary link, and you’re ready for deeplinking fun. Under the first system POR launched, when you wanted a deeplink for one of their merchants you clicked the link when on the merchant site. This gave you a text link to use!
The new system gives you so much more than just a link!
For example let’s take this lovely looking giant cup cake tin that’s available from Prezzybox. I want the deeplink link for this and so all I have to do is click the “Paid on Results Deeplink Generator” on my browser. This results in a pop up box appearing as follows:
Not only do you get a deeplink for the product you’re looking at, you also get options to customise the link including shortening the url which is ideal for Twitter promotions. If you’re worried about the link there’s even an option to test it! You also get a product image to use direct from POR’s feed system. The image can be resized with a number of options.
If that wasn’t enough they you also get links to banner creative that can also be used in my promotions. It totally removes the need for logging in to the CMS, rooting around for banners, copying images from a merchant site and figuring out deeplink structure.
Quite simply – brilliant!
It’s compatible on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera too, so there’s no limitations imposed there. The only thing missing is that the pop over box is static and I’d like to have the ability to move it, but that’s a minor quibble over what is a very clever and intuitive tool from the POR guys.
The new deeplink generator tool will be available for all to use from next week.
Can This Creative Get DGM on The Map?
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on February 12, 2010
One of the things I’ve found with affiliate marketing of late is that it all seems so much faster. Blog this, tweet that, email the other! The days of leisurely adding content and then having a week before the next email from a network have gone forever. So, when new tools are released by networks they have to be usable from the off… I don’t want to be messing about with APIs, or spending time writing code, especially as we have a system in place to use feeds already.
I’m more interested when content creative is released by a network. If it’s something I can use straight away, perhaps around our own written content, then that’s infinitely better than any techno techno techno stuff that gets churned out by networks. Yes we can do the API coding if needed but there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do everything.
The new creative from DGM utilises Google Maps and are called DGM Travelmaps. They’ve taken all the locations of their travel merchants hotels and holiday parks and stuck them on a map. Click on a locality and you get a description and affiliate link to the merchant site. Pretty cool!
A quick example is shown below.
I say a quick example as all I’ve done is resize one of the options from the creative suite. When I first looked at DGM Travelmaps admittedly my heart sank as all sizes with 600×800. For some reasons all networks seem to provide content units that are infinitely bigger than most websites. However, there’s good news. DGM allow you to resize the units to fit your page. Good work.
But it gets better. By playing around with the settings you can zoom and focus onto the map to highlight particular areas you want to show to your visitors. There’s an explanation on the DGM interface how it all works.
There are some minor niggles! For example, I’d like to be able to remove the legend as on a resize it kind of overpowers plus an option to not include a merchant would be cool. Not being too demanding, I’d also love to be able to include the code via PHP rather than an iframe, but these options could possible be included in a future release?
Travel affiliates perhaps may have their own in house versions of this kind of creative and include feeds from other networks, however for other affiliates this kind of creative is a useful additional extra when perhaps writing about a local region or promoting a special offer from one of the travel merchants included.
DGM Travelmaps is pretty much a usable straight out of the box solution and more importantly it’s functional. Even better it isn’t all API techno trousers and therefore doesn’t take up valuable time to implement.
Come Away Come Away From William Hill
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on August 5, 2009
How many times have you had a merchant who for a while was good, but perhaps not so now, on your site and you’ve thought “well, I’ll leave them there for a bit longer, perhaps it’ll pick back up”, even though you should listen to your head and work with other merchants instead? We’ve done that far too many times and whilst occasionally commissions or relationships have improved, in general the initial gut instinct of abandon ship is usually right.
This week, William Hill finally moved their affiliate program from Netrefer, a simple and easy to use CMS, to Affiliates United, quite possibly the slowest and worst system I’ve encountered in over 10 years in affiliate marketing. In short it’s awful and I just don’t understand the thinking behind using this set up. Anyway, as all the old links now won’t track it means picking up new ones and changing them over to the new ones… oh joy!
Poor CMS + Extra Work = Not a Happy Affiliate!
Which got me thinking!
Why switch links to a network with whom I’m not 100% happy with when I can promote merchants, like Paddy Power, Blue Square or Skybet who I like working with and seem to understand affiliates and want to have a good working relationship with them?
So that’s the answer – work with merchants which aren’t a problem! There’s a temptation to muddle on with Affiliates United and William Hill, but my instinct is that it’s just not going to work out well. So the big affiliate tip of the day is don’t be afraid to walk away from a merchant – sometimes you just have to do it!
Of course there’s a downside and that’s in the form of potentially losing lifetime revshare issues and old links.
The revshare issue is a concern – will old players still be tracked properly? You’d hope so, but here’s an interesting point. AU casino links go to William Hill Casino Club where players are told that their William Hill accounts don’t work on this casino and that they must register a new account.
That to me sounds like any casino players previously sent to WH on the old system now can’t be tracked for revshare as they’re essentially entering a new casino? Maybe that’s not the case, but it doesn’t look good and hopefully clarification of revshare tracking for old players will be made available.
Old links can be addressed in two ways. We could change some links to the new ones, but what’s more probable is that we’ll add some code that will basically remove all links to William Hill.
In terms of work it’s probably as much effort, it may lose us commission (but I have a feeling that would happen anyway), and it does mean a well known brand being removed from our site. However, it means we’re not going to have hassle in the future (it’s expected), we don’t have to waste time with a network who we’re not happy with and we do get to work with merchants who are a joy to promote.
Good news all round!
Finally the title of this blog relates to the William Tell Overture “Come Away Come Away with William Tell” – and so to end on a fun note, here’s a cool Youtube video of a guy drumming what was also the theme to The Lone Ranger.
Now it’s time to get changing those links!
