Intelligent Performance Marketing

LinkShare Symposium East 2010 – A Success!

Friday, June 25, 2010

On Tuesday I attended my first ever LinkShare Symposium, representing our clients: Nick Jr. Boost and Shockwave ! Overall, it was a great event with a perfect balance between education, networking, and fun.  Since it was my first time, I just wanted to reflect on everything I experienced, as well as provide a brief overview for those who couldn’t make it.

To kick off the event, several members of the LinkShare team (including CEO Yaz Iida) welcomed and thanked all of the attendees. They introduced us to some of the great developments that LinkShare has been working on:

  • Deep Linking Controls (For advertisers that do not allow linking to certain pages, but would like to allow deep linking on all other pages)
  • WordPress Deal Feed Plug-In (LinkShare would like to make it easier for publishers of all sizes – including bloggers – to plug & play. They’ve seen over 5,000 installations thus far!)

And…the most exciting development (in my opinion) is the ALL NEW Advertiser Dashboard! The new advertiser interface is a lot cleaner and simpler, making it easy to find everything you’re searching for:

  • New Trend Chart with Year over Year Trending Reports
  • It is now easier to enter dates when pulling a report
  • Link Section enables you to see just how well your creative is performing
  • Publishers are a lot easier to locate

After we learned about all these new developments, Sucharita Mulpuru (Vice President of Forrester Research and Symposium 2010 Keynote Speaker) talked to us about how eCommerce can succeed in every economic condition. Some key notes (ha.. no pun intended):

  • Consumers shop online because it’s convenient (#1 reason: it saves time and #2 reason: deals & coupons -> Remember this important stat, advertisers!)
  • Successful brands compete up or across! Instead of fighting over whose value/dollar menu was the best, McDonald’s challenged Starbucks by highlighting a new product: McCafe.
  • React to people power: Get your customers involved! Social web activity is a global phenomenon. EventBrite allows customers to share information about their tickets via social media.
  • Expand your IT team – new technological developments & innovation breed success.
  • Multi-Channel: Many buyers are now on more than 1 device – embrace the mobility revolution.

Next up: Panel Discussion! This year’s panel included: Siva V. Kumar (TheFind.com), Diana Gee (The North Face), Jeff Nobbs (ExtraBux), David Lonczak (Drugstore.com) and Kenneth Dayley III (crocs). This discussion was interesting because it allowed us to get perspectives from both advertisers and affiliates! It was great to hear their thoughts on these topics:

  • Conversion Rates: Some affiliates (including ExtraBux) are going to have dynamic featured ads that will change to fit the customer. It’s also important to make sure there are clear Call to Actions. Additionally, don’t include too much info! We wouldn’t want to overwhelm visitors.
  • Data Feeds: What’s missing? Unique identifiers: Sku #s, Bar Codes, Brand & Model #. Tax and Shipping information is also a plus for TheFind.com!
  • Coupons & Discounts: crocs found that product-specific coupons performed much better! Siva from TheFind pointed out that virtual discounts (e.g. Facebook Credits) are great for those advertisers who are brand sensitive and prefer not to offer coupons.
  • Mobile Commerce: TheFind also found that their peak mobile day was Black Friday due to customers comparing online deals to in-store.
  • Global Plans: Try to develop sites that are accessible to those around the world.
  • Getting Ready for Q4: Prepare ahead of time and make sure you keep your affiliates posted on your deals. Ideally, letting affiliates know when a product is out of stock would be great too (especially to help conversion rates)!

After all this great learning, it was lunch & Golden Link Award time! The Golden Link Awards were hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade who certainly kept things fun.  I especially liked their piece on the creator of the Pop-Up Ad – “Mr. Popup.” The Golden Link Awards were really nice because they rewarded all of the innovative and successful players in the affiliate marketing space. Congrats everyone!

Next came “DealMaker,” a place for affiliates and advertisers to walk around and chat. Some had booths with great giveaways (Erica won a hat from KarmaLoop.com) and some just had great information.  This was one of the most successful parts of the Symposium because I was able to meet a lot of our clients’ awesome partners in person!

Lastly, the after party at the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel – who doesn’t love free beer & pretzels? The photobooth also made things really interesting.

This concludes my successful trip to LinkShare Symposium. I learned a lot, and got to connect with all kinds of people – merchants, agencies and affiliates alike! Thanks everyone for this great experience.

Valerie Russo

Media Coordinator – Affiliate

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, Media Partnerships, Meet Us, Online Marketing, Research | Tagged , , , |

The Furture of Mobile As Told By the Giants

Friday, May 28, 2010

This week, our friends at TechCrunch.com hosted Disrupt in New York City, a conference dedicated to web innovators disrupting media and technology and the handful of executives successfully navigating these disruptions to talk about how to turn change into opportunity. At one roundtable, Facebook’s Chris Cox, Google’s Vic Gundotra, and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley chat up a storm regarding the future of mobile, privacy controls, and the hit or miss nature of this new leaf in consumer technology.

“Your phone should be a personal assistant. That’s clearly where we’re going,” says Chris Cox of Facebook. ‘Ambient awareness’ was used multiple times to describe device relationships (rather, the necessity thereof) in our near future. But when quizzed on specifics for what phones of the future will look like and how consumer interaction will differ in the coming years of innovation, Cox had this to say:

“People overestimate what’s possible in a year, and underestimate [what's possible in ] 5 years. These devices are going to be magical in 5 years.”

Some even speculate that ‘mobile’ will be come a meaningless word soon because we are inherently always connected. “The real frontier is what’s local,” speculates one commentator, citing the popularity of groundbreaking platforms like FourSquare. “I think Foursquare has done some amazing work with check-ins, but it’s early,” says Gundotra when asked if there is a clear winner in the location game.

“I think we’re building great stuff — there is no winner,” pipes FourSquare’s Crowley. “Think of where we are now to where we were 2 years ago. We’ve made the space more interesting. We’ve pushed things in a different direction. It’s experimenting in the space.”

Speaking of experimentation, Gundotra was asked what he thought Google TV will do what for mobile apps and his answer reads a bit like an upsell, stating that “the most exciting thing about it is that the same Android apps you use will work on the TV. Like Pandora, play it on the TV.”

Facebook’s Chris Cox got a little heat regarding the ever changing privacy controls pleging the platform. He was happy to report, though, that this week, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” privacy controls in an attempt to remedy what Facebook CEO Zuckerman has publicly called “missed marks.” Facebooks next challenge? “It’s hard to know what to invest in — a better Android app or Facebook Zero.” Facebook Zero is their new, “fast, free, global and mobile” data service.

Filed in Creative Development, Display Advertising, Events, Online Marketing, Research, Social Media | |

Eileen Ciravolo Wins Our First Annual NCAA Client Pool

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Eileen Ciravolo, Audible’s audacious Traffic Coordinator, is the winner of our First Annual NCAA Tournament Client Pool! Moving ahead of 28 other hopefuls, we recently presented Eileen with a silver plated basketball trophy to share with her office, friends, and family. She also got to take home a little something extra – a brand new iPad! What’s the first thing she’ll be doing with her new gadget? “There’s a the Kindle app, so I’ll definitely be using that. And, of course, the Twitter app, too!”

When asked how she came up with her winning round up, blind luck was attributed. “It took me about two second to pick my teams,” she claims. “I think Duke is good.’ So I picked them. ‘I think Texas is good.’ So, I’ll pick them! That was it. I got very lucky.”

Eileen shares a little more about herself with us:

Eileen Ciravolo Wins!

Audible's Eileen Ciravolo Wins!

Audible has been a part of the NETexponent crew for just over 5 years and we hear it’s a great place to be. Tell us more about your life over there: “I’ve been here for almost 2 years and it truly is a great place to work. I’m the traffic coordinator for the creative department. I’m in charge of making sure all the projects that need copy and design work are scheduled with designers and track the progress from kick-off through to completion. My day to day can be a bit hectic since I’m usually chasing someone down for more information or giving them status updates on things. I’m a very organized planner, so I’m able to stay on top of all the moving parts of various projects while keeping things on track.”

We’ve witnessed your basketball prowess. Are you a big into sports? “I’m a hardcore baseball fan – the Mets are my team. I even play fantasy baseball! The MLB app is one that I’ll surely be using on my new iPad to keep track of the Mets and my fantasy players!”

We can’t help but think that being a part of Audible.com would be a dream for any book lover. “Sure is!”

Give us your top 3 Aubible audio books recommendations: “There are so many great books it’s hard to choose just 3! My first listen was President Obama’s Dreams of My Father, which he narrated himself.  Dave Cullen’s Columbine was a harrowing look into the Columbine Massacre. It was a scary but interesting listen.  And to be a bit lighthearted, Waiter Rant by The Waiter was very funny – you’ll learn the secrets of what really goes on in the kitchen and what your waiters really think of you when you’re out to eat!”

Eileen talks about discovering her big win!

NETexponent would also like to send a shout out of Honorable Mention to Joe Crowley of Total Gym. It was close!

Filed in Awards and Honors, Events, NETexponent Clients, NETexponent Fun | |