Linkshare testing widget-ads

The Internet’s first big affiliate network - Linkshare, is also one of the first affiliate networks to be able to adapt itself to the new internet.

Linkshare is currently beta testing an ad network that they will be opening up to bloggers and product review sites called Linkshare Showcase. This network will focus on specific products from leading merchants and allow publishers to highly customize the ads with features and reviews. Publishers will be able to choose which products they want to recommend to their users from participating merchants

Reports Salvo.ws

Linkshare showcase is what will probably be a linkshare sub-network targeted towards bloggers and other web2.0 ish content heavy websites that will offer:

• One simple interface for choosing the products you want.
• One small piece of Javascript to copy and paste onto your site.
• LinkShare Showcase is optimized for peak performance.
• No waiting for your money. Fast payments, from the first $1.

There are, of course, other companies that offer such advertising networks, linkshare, however, is the first major affiliate network to talk about offering widget-merchandizing besides shareasale, which started offering widget ads earlier this month

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Affiliate marketing? Get a fortune cookie at Sam’s new blog

Sam Harrelson, publisher of popular internet marketing blog Cost per news and CEO of PlanetBeta has just launched a brand new online publication for affiliate marketers at Affiliate Fortune Cookies.

Affiliate Fortune cookies is a “affiliate marketing tip/hack/tricks blog” that aims at “lowering the currently high threshold that keeps many people out of our industry.” - how this will be done, is explained in the blog’s first first post:

Affiliate Fortune Cookies is a blog where we’re going to be throwing out quick and easy tips, tricks and hacks to help out both newbie’s and old pro’s alike.

So, the experience level required to understand posts will range from absolutely none to fairly advanced understanding of algo’s and CJ inner workings. However, there will be something here for every affiliate marketer looking to stay up on the latest tips.

Definitely a blog I recommend subscribing to, I have already subscribed and placed it among the first blogs I read in my netvibes page. If you are an Affiliate-manager, I also recommend advertising on AFC, it’s only $250 for 2 months, and if an affiliate signs up to your program via AFC, you know that affiliate is going to be a top-performer!.

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Adapt.TV : Yet Another Video Advertising Network Launching Today

This one is a bit different, unlike the competition that I wrote about here in the past, Adapt.tv serves ads for video, but the ads themselves are not video ads, they are simply static images or text with a link that are displayed pre and/or post-roll. Since there is no video being played in the advertisement, the network runs on the friendlier cost per click model rather than the newer to the internet advertising industry model of cost per view.

Metacafe will be the first video network to use Adap.TV ads

Their About page states “The company uses advanced technology that adapts in real time to consumers’ interests and their viewing behaviors”. How exactly this done, is not mentioned.

[via NewTeeVee]

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New Inline Video ads on YouTube

GigaOm network’s NewTeeVee.com is reporting about a new format of video ads being tested on Youtube in what seems to be the best and smartest effort in monetizing the video sharing social network since Google acquired it.

As can be seen in this screen shot, a text ad is placed below a playing video which can be clicked to pause the playing video and play the video advertisement. The good thing is, viewing the ad is solely the user’s discretion and the ad can also be played once the video has been entirely watched.

I can not see the ads here yet, I am guessing that they may either be geo-targeted or google might just be testing them for now.

NewTeeVee also notes that ads are not displayed when a youtube video is embedded to a web page outside of youtube.

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PRWeb Announces “Blog This”

PRWeb, the online press release distribution service has announced the launch of “BlogThis” - A new tool that allows bloggers who comment on PRWeb news releases on their blogs to blog directly using PRweb’s interface.

A new “BlogThis” button is displayed next to every press release on prweb.com, upon clicking which, one is asked their blog type, url and username/password - this leads to a simple wordpress-like text box where a blogger can write the contents of their blog-post. Click post, and you’re done. PRWeb posts your post to your blog with an image, link and a track back to the original PRweb story to your blog like a good third party blogging app. The only drawback I can see is not being able to choose catagories/tags while posting.

Click here to read the press release

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Coupon Affiliates - now on twitter!

Just stumbled across the twitter profile of DealTwit. A Coupon code microblog on twitter that regularly twitters coupon codes from e-retail merchants - one can ask for a specific merchant’s coupon code by sending a direct twitter and DealTwit promises to respond.

Dealtwit is the second “revenue” twitter microblog I have seen, the first being Twitterlit - who is “Twittering the first lines of books so you don’t have to”.

Smart affiliates have finally begun monetizing twitter, and they are doing it in very creative ways. This is good stuff, Affiliate marketing 2.0.

I’m not sure how much success this can be, Dealtwit only has 17 followers as of now, Twitterlit, on the other hand, has as many as 109 followers, both have taken the right step in a direction. These guys are branding themselves. The days of anonymously marketing merchants are going away as more and more affiliates realize the importance of building a brand and eventually monetizing it.

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ReviewMe launches a payperpost like Advertiser Marketplace

ReviewMe, where advertisers can buy reviews of their products/services/websites on blogs, has just launched what the call the Advertiser Marketplace in a move to attract more advertisers and bloggers to their systems.

Originally, The ReviewMe model would let bloggers put a pricetag on reviews on their blog, and advertisers would select which blog they’d like to be reviewed by.

While the original way of advertising is still in place, the new system lets advertisers set up campaigns and provide details of what they would like reviews for and offer a fixed price per review for any blogger within the reviewme network to pick up. Competitor payperpost, currently employs a very similar system within their blog advertising network.

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eBay takes on Auctionads with “togo”

Just saw this on techcrunch. Looks like e-Bay’s answer to AuctionAds. Not sure if it’s possible to integrate tracking code into the widgets, but I’m sure that’s comming soon. Meanwhile, the widget is great for ebay sellers with blogs and web-stores.

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Tweets for the day

I’m addicted to twitter, and today’s post will be twitter style, a few “tweets” in this post. Each less than 140 characters.

• More affiliate programs starting affiliate blogs every day - the latest is Kodak - http://kodakaffiliate.blogspot.com
• Ebay to roll out a brand new feedback system - http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m04/i26/s01
• Affiliate marketing jagron - http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/glossary-of-affiliate-marketing-terms/
• [social network] Web 2.0 site lets users send virtual scratch cards -
• http://www.prweb.com//releases/web2-0/sweepstakes/prweb522060.htm
• The Google reader theme is very cool!
• New BumpZee! Features
• Top 10 reasons why web 2.0 sucks

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Planetbeta was not an April Fool’s joke!

Sam Harrelson and Wayne Porter announced on the first of april about Vinny Lingham’s Incubeta acquiring Revenews and CostPerNews, For two days, I thought this was an april fool’s joke.

Apparently, it wasn’t. The Planetbeta blog is now live with some clues on what the latest new-media entity is going to be all about.

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