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System Enhancements for Adsmarket Publishers

Sep

Here’s some good news for Adsmarket Publishers! We are pleased to announce that this week we have rolled out a series of new features and enhancements to our publisher interface that we are sure will benefit publisher activities

Find Programs is now Search

You will notice that the Find Programs tab on your homepage has been replaced by a Search tab. We have improved the functionality of our search to include not only programs, but also campaigns, products or even creatives.

Added Features to the Campaign and Program Details Pages – Quick Download Tracking URLs for Creatives

This enhancement allows publishers who do their own ad-serving to download a .zip file of tracking URLs for all the creatives in a campaign.

Set Your Preferences

If you want to make sure that you get the most relevant notifications, search results, and API queries, use the new My Settings options to customize your preferences! Set preferred countries and categories (My Countries and My Categories) for the option to apply them to searches, notification emails, and when using Adsmarket’s API.

Landing Page Previews and Easy Approval to Programs

From campaign search results you can now easily preview a landing page.

We are excited to bring you these changes, and we thank our development team for all their hard work. We are continually improving and adding new features to our system in order to bring our clients the best user experience. If you have any questions or feedback, contact your account manager.

ErgoTip #6 – How to Ergonomically Manage a Multiple Screen Workstation

Mar

Looking around the Adsmarket office, I have seen many account managers, finance analysts, and VPs using more than one screen on their desk. Does this also sound like you? Most of you use the laptop screen as the secondary screen, am I right?

If the screens are not set up right, it may affect the condition of your neck and upper limb, and may raise the risk of orthopedic problems in these areas.

It is very important that the setup effectively minimize looking to one side, repeated one-sided movements and the worst movement to the neck: extension (like a back bend).

I would like to set some ground rules for ergonomic setting of multiple screens:

1- Find out how much time you spend working with each screen, if your time at each screen is more or less equal; position yourself at the middle; between the 2 screens. If one of the 2 screens is more dominant (around 70% of your time), position yourself in front of the main screen and try to locate the secondary screen to your right side for one week and to your left side for the next week, and so on…

2- If you work with a laptop and a screen; try not to work with the laptop as your work station, try to raise your laptop screen to the height of your LCD and work with an external keyboard and mouse.

If you are not sure you have it right you are welcome to send me a picture of your setup and I will be more than happy to advise!

ErgoTips are provided by Dalit Ben Tovim, a renowned ergonomic consultant and trainer who serves Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller corporations and organizations. Contact her at DalitATergo4u.com, and please visit the ergo4u website.

Affiliate Marketing Tips from an 80′s Action Figure

Mar

Contributed by Maor Sadra, Director of Sales

“By the power of Greyskull, I have the Power!” If you grew up in the 80s, you may remember He-Man yelling this line while waving his mighty sword to get ultimate power. I’m not going to comment on the lack-of-imagination-name the creator of the show gave ‘He-Man’. My post is still related to online media.

Part of my sales team’s responsibility at Adsmarket is working with advertisers to create affiliate programs that publishers can generate results. We are middle-men, and we end up having the same ‘who has the power’ discussion at least 5 times a week.

For years, I’ve heard advertisers and publishers arguing the ultimate question: Who has the power? Who is more responsible for the success of the other? Is it the advertiser who is paying for the media, or is it the publisher, whose media generates results for the advertiser (even allowing them to advertise)?

Advertisers are indeed sponsoring the world nowadays. Think of an internet without advertising, where you would have to pay (gasp!) for content, videos, streaming music or for reading this post…

Publishers are the ones responsible for the content you see & hear on the web. And more often than not, they are a business meant to generate revenue in addition to providing users with content.

That’s why I’m here to say that it’s not a question of who has the power. Power should have nothing to do with performance marketing. It’s all about the Win^X3 Solution.

The Win^X3 Solution:

In every campaign, there are 3 ultimate factors to consider:
Publisher + Advertiser + User = MORE SALES

What can go wrong?? The number of wrong equations goes on and on:

An Advertiser promoting the right offer on the wrong media will likely to not generate good results (quality/quantity).
A Publisher running a campaign where the Advertiser is offering a too-low CPA will not generate a high enough ROI in comparison to their media value and will eventually drop the campaign.
A user seeing an un-related ad on a website will likely to not take action.
An Advertiser promoting an offer with a long tedious user flow will not get the volume required.

The right equation is simple:

A campaign must be designed to match the Advertiser, Publisher AND User needs – Only then will it generate good results on a long term basis.

As an Advertiser, your goal should be to create high converting pages, looking at minimizing the user flow while offering an incentive for the users you are looking for to take action. Research the rates you are able to offer publishers for quality conversions to be competitive in your industry.

As a Publisher – know your users and traffic, and promote the right offers for the right users. Generating low quality for Advertisers ensures a one-time campaign.

As a user – Keep enjoying free content, and hope the free ride continues…

Ofer Druker: Facebook has not reached its potential for affiliate marketers yet…

Feb

Adsmarket CEO Ofer Druker‘s indicates that Facebook became a major source of media for performance advertising and predicts Facebook will take a bigger share in the coming 12-24 months:

On Feb 22^nd and 23^rd , 2010, the Israel Internet Association presented Web ’10, its 14^th annual conference, held at the Avenue Conventions and Events Center near Ben-Gurion Air-Port just outside Tel Aviv, where Adsmarket is located. As CEO of Adsmarket, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion: Creative Money – New and Innovative Business Model for the Web and Mobile on Day 1 of the conference.

I was asked about trends that I had witnessed in Adsmarket and in online advertising in 2009. I should point out that affiliate marketing can be a volatile and fickle business, especially with 2009′s ups and downs in online advertising (See my 2009 Year-End Post) We know that as a performance-based affiliate network, 2010 will be Adsmarket’s best year yet, as we are investing more and more into developing the best product out there for affiliates, and the best platform for affiliate program management, as well as expanding our business in the US and Spain/LATAM.

In answering the question about trends I witnessed in 2009, I said then and I say now that Facebook is continually gaining a larger influence, and is significantly contributing to online media and performance marketing. Proving this,iIn the past 18 months or so we’ve witnessed enormous growth in the results and traffic we are getting from Facebook related media. If, 2 years ago, a main source of media was Google, the pendulum is now its swinging to Facebook; their reach is growing that fast. We expect that this trend will continue, with users on Facebook rounding 1 Billion sometime by the end of 2011.

It will be the challenge of every affiliate network to accommodate this growth, and we expect to meet the needs of Facebook affiliates and advertisers head-on.

Facebook Privacy Settings Not to be Overlooked

Jan

Back in December 2009, Facebook changed their default privacy settings for users, pretty much revealing someone’s entire profile: photos, information, contact information, friends, etc. to the universe, including major search engines. At the same time and throughout January, they announced the change on the site at the point of login, and users were given the option to change these defaults to protect their privacy. But, how many of us actually did it? Unless you log in to the site frequently, you might not have known about the changes for days, weeks, or months ( not that this would be an issue with Facebook marketers and affiliates who are hooked up to the site by IV…) and even frequent FBers are so used to seeing little banners and extra information that you might just ignore it.

Opening up Facebook in this way seems to be another wave in the current tide of making the web more transparent. Twitter’s power for marketers is based on it, and this change from FB is probably just a follow-suit move to cater to their advertisers, though how it will affect their total revenue remains to be seen.

Getting back to how this all affects us, the general Facebook community, Sarah Perez of The New York Times made some recommendations for protecting your privacy on Facebook, and here is her shortlist of the 3 most important profile items you should think about protecting:

1. Decide Who Can See The Things You Share (Status Updates, Photo, Videos, etc.)

If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.

2. Decide Who Can See Your Personal Info

Facebook has a section of your profile called “personal info,” but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the “personal info” setting on Facebook’s Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.

After last month’s privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either “Everyone” (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to “Friends of Friends” (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to “Only Friends” as well.

3. What Google Can See – Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines

When you visit Facebook’s Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:

“There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.”

While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you’re allowing Google to index. If the box next to “Allow” is checked, you’re giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you’ve marked as visible by “Everyone.” As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines…probably more information than you were comfortable with.

As an affiliate network with a significant portion of business in Facebook and Social Media, we strive to uphold the quality of affiliate activity in this area. Part of that quality is an ethical commitment to the users on behalf of our advertisers, and so we recommend that you take a few minutes to follow the steps outlined in this post to keep Facebook a happy place!

Laptops and Notebooks and Bears, oh my!

Jan

Updated global data show that about a third of all computer users have a laptop. Laptops may look friendly and inviting, but in fact they have become a first-rate ergonomic hazard. Dalit Ben-Tovim, an ergonomic consultant and trainer, who specializes in creating and adapting working environments for better health and safety, offers a variety of tips for using your laptop safely. And you may want to look into that smartphone… (but that’s a different article). We at Adsmarket are definitely listening.

Why is the laptop so damaging?

Structure – The laptop’s structure does not allow for a separate adjustment of the keyboard and screen. As a result, if the screen is adjusted to the desired height – and the recommendation is for the upper limit of the screen to be at eye level – we will find ourselves with the keyboard at a position that is destructive for the hands and wrists. On the other hand, placing the laptop for convenient typing will create strain and damage the eyes and the neck muscles.

Mouse – the integrated mouse or touchpad is another ergonomic nightmare we should be aware of. The posture required when working with a touchpad creates a constant, incremental tension on the hand tendons and in the shoulder, with devastating results.

Posture – prolonged usage of a laptop, coupled with an incorrect sitting posture, with no support of complementary ergonomic accessories, could lead to serious orthopedic problems in the neck and shoulder belt, pain and inflammation of the wrists and back aches. In addition to all the problems mentioned, the infamous warming of the laptops has already been proven to increase the risk of testicular cancer and fertility problems.

Not all is negative. It is possible and even recommended to use a laptop safely, if you adopt the correct habits that will prevent damages.

Tips for casual/infrequent users:
Those who do not use a laptop as a main working tool, but occasionally find themselves using a laptop, would do well to adopt a few rules:

Try to find a comfortable chair, one that enables you to lean back comfortably. Remember that the head and the neck are supported by large muscles. You need to protect the hand muscles, which are more sensitive. Place the laptop on your legs, with the hands in a relaxed posture, neither bent nor stretched.
Keep your shoulders relaxed.
Tilt and adjust the screen to allow for a minimal neck tilt.
Use a laptop ventilation tray to prevent heating.
Carry as few additional peripherals as possible, keeping the laptop’s weight minimal.
Use a backpack with wide shoulder straps to carry the laptop.

Tips for heavy users:

Place your laptop on the table so that its upper edge is at your eye level. There are several laptop stands designed specifically for this purpose.
Use an external keyboard and position it directly in front of you, at a convenient height allowing your hands to rest at a neutral posture – neither bent nor stretched.
Connect an external mouse and place it at your side at a height that keeps your hand relaxed and at a neutral posture.
The keyboard and the mouse can be connected directly to the laptop or through a docking station.
Place the screen at a straight arm length away from you. Nevertheless, you should take into consideration the screen size, in order to allow for effortless reading.
Minimize any sources of reflected screen glare.

Tips for all users

Besides the mobility and convenience, using laptops carries many health hazards which users are not aware of. We have divided our recommendations into different types of users, but our most important recommendation is: Listen to your body! Pain is a sure sign that you should stop your work to stretch, change your posture, relax and rest your eyes and hands.

Integrate physical activity in your life. An hour of aerobic exercise once a day will work wonders for your painful back and stiff neck.

Gil and Dalit Ben Tovim are renowned ergonomic consultants and trainers who serve Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller corporations and organizations. They are the official Google Israel ergonomic consultants and they work with other global corporations including; NDC of Newscorp and Johnson & Johnson. The team has also partnered with hi-tech companies such as ECI, Aladdin and Nice and government institutions.

For more information about Dalit Ben Tovim, contact her at DalitATergo4u.com, and please visit the ergo4u website. Make sure you check out the Ergocloud, an ergonomic forearm support by ergo4u Ltd.

Happy New Year from Adsmarket

Dec

A Message from Ofer Druker, Adsmarket CEO

Dear Partners and Friends,

As the decade closes, we reflect on the challenges and milestones we acheived at Adsmarket, and look forward to the future with great expectations.

There is no doubt that 2009 looked very bad when we were planning it at the end of 2008, and it was full of challenges. With amazing mutual effort, however, we crossed it with great success and many accomplishments.

We used this year to strengthen our foundation and to make progress with our goal of offering the best performance, results, and experience to our publishers and advertisers, and we remain fully committed to that goal going forward.

In 2010, we will keep putting our focus on building our technological capabilities, keeping our proactive approach and expanding our areas of activity together with our partners.

It’s a good opportunity to say thank you to all our partners around the globe that not only worked side by side with us to reach our targets but also make the road pleasant, fun and fulfilling. I would also like to thank all my colleagues at Adsmarket that made it happen with a lot of will, passion, and openness to learn and evolve.

Have a great year, achieve your personal and professional goals, and have fun along the way!

How to Choose an Affiliate Program

Dec

Learning how to choose an affiliate program is an important step to earning money

online. There is much competition among people trying to earn revenue as well as

affiliate programs to assist you in this endeavor.

Here are the tips to choosing an affiliate program:

1. Choose programs that offer hot products – items that people are buying and

that are popular among online buyers. This is an easy step because you can learn

the trends just by reading any social media sites, blogs and watching what is selling

on auction sites for example. The only caveat is that these products change

frequently.

2. Research the affiliate programs you are interested in. Learn if they have clear

information about their payments and if there are many complaints about them.

3. Choose a two-tier program. This is where you earn money from the referrals

you send to the affiliate program as well as their business.

4. Make use of mentors. Even seasoned marketers need advice.For example,

many affiliate marketers and bloggers are always willing to advise others

and make connections. Finding an affiliate program that they endorse is often a

good way to get started.

5. Choose a program that provides support that available to you via phone and

email. You want a partner to guide you along and help you to earn money and

avoid mistakes.

Deciding on the best affiliate program is vital to earning revenue and maintaining

that revenue stream. Research, get advice and make use of mentors. Soon you

may be one of the Super Affiliates too.

Connie Roberts aka ConnieFoggles is the author of 3 blogs, including

Brain Foggles, her product review blog, and is now writing

at MurrayNewlands.com

What Affiliates Want From their Affiliate Offers

Dec

The day-to-day work of our media department is full of varying tasks, from
searching for and recruiting new affiliates worldwide to analyzing their
performance on our network and making recommendations tailored for each

one affiliate (like which offers to take).

In the process, we always try to enter our affiliates’ shoes and find answers to
these questions:
Who are our affiliates? What makes them satisfied when promoting our merchants’
offers? What makes an affiliate become a long-term partner?

In addition, upon meeting with our merchants, we find that these questions are in their
mind as well. They also understand that a having a satisfied affiliate is a win-win
situation for all players in the industry.

Being a global affiliate network, we are accustomed to approaching affiliates from
different countries and cultures. We always compare and strategize what makes
publishers from different backgrounds tick, and we are intrigued by these qualities.

Many of you may know about eConsultancy’s thorough Internet Statistics
Compendium, released each year, which provides data in online market research.
I would like to share with you some of the findings from their 2009 report about
affiliates in the United States and the United Kingdom.

		US	UK
Time spent as an affiliate	fulltime	51%	34%
Time spent as an affiliate	Part time	36%	46%
Work from home		85%	81%
age	Under 30	23%	26%
age	31 – 40	27%	32%
Gender	Female	28%	18%

Affiliate business types

	US	UK
Revenue-generating traffic source by size	SEO PPC Blogs and forums Social NJetworking Cashback and Reward Email marketing	SEO PPC Price comparison Blogs and Forums Email Marketing Voucher codes
Promotion methods	Text Banners PPC Emails Data feeds	Banners PPC Emails Data feeds Offline magazines
Promoting outside of origin country	UK – 32% Canada – 27% Australia – 11%	US – 27% Ireland – 13% Other mainland EU – 8%

Affiliate Decision Factors
Main factors for promoting a certain offer:
Quality and quantity of leads

Reasons for not promoting:
Didn’t get round to it
Lack of data feeds

Main factors for running an offer but dropping it:
Found a more attractive offer, change in commission structure, poor conversion rate.

Main factors for working with a merchant through a network:
Saves time, networks provide security, networks guarantee payment.

EConsultancy’s report gives us insight into the mind of affiliates, showing us how
they’ve evolved in the last year, and as an affiliate network, Adsmarket works hard
to develop priorities that complement both the Publisher and Merchant business needs.

What do you think? We would love to hear your thoughts and comments about this subject.

Contributed by Gabi Cohen, VP Media and Marketing at Adsmarket.com

Unleash the Beast – Part 3

Nov

This is the last in a 3-part series on analyzing online media quality. It’s a doozy,
but an in-depth look. If you missed the other installments, here’s Part 1 and
here’s Part 2.

The Sophisticated Approach
The sophisticated advertiser distinguishes between media sources and offers
a different CPA for each of them. Let’s take a simple example, an advertiser that
sets CPA at 3 levels:

$5 for regular traffic
$2 rate for incentivized traffic
$6 premium rate for SEM traffic.

In this example, all the traffic sources will run this offer, and the ROI will be

positive for all the sources.

Media Type	Quality	Capacity	CPA	Revenue	Total Cost	Profit
SEM	10.00	10,000	6.00	100,000	60,000	40,000
Banners	8.00	20,000	5.00	160,000	100,000	60,000
Email marketing	6.00	30,000	5.00	180,000	150,000	30,000
Pops	5.00	40,000	5.00	200,000	200,000	0
Incentivized	3.00	60,000	2.00	180,000	120,000	60,000
					Total	190,000

In this way, 5 different levels can bring the advertiser up to $300,000 profit from
160,000 users.
Let’s summarize the profit for each advertiser:

	Profit
Unsophisticated advertiser	$60,000
Semi-sophisticated advertiser	$80,000
3 payout levels	$190,000
5 payout levels	$300,000

This model works not only in theory. In my experience working with advertisers at
Adsmarket, I’ve seen many empiric example of how advertisers dramatically
increased their revenue and their profit by handling and monitoring the traffic
sources better. This brings me to two major conclusions:

There is no “Bad Traffic”. You need to find the right payout for each source
in order to take advantage of its full capacity and potential, “Unleashing the
Beast”.
By monitoring and optimizing media sources the advertiser can increase
profit by hundreds of percents, “Controlling the Beast”.

Feel free to contact me at Yuval.bATadsmarket.com to learn more about these tools
and about traffic source optimization in general.

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