Tag: featured

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PeerFly has few Peers.

Recently PeerFly was awarded the #2 Network in our Annual Survey of Networks. Their CEO Chad French was pretty damn happy about that, considering he only opened the doors in 2008. We decided that it was about time we sat down with him again and see what he is doing with himself, and what we can expect from his network.

We spoke to you a few months ago; you seemed really excited about the future. How does it feel that half a year later your network has blown up and you’re one of the top CPA networks in the world? It’s been an awesome experience.  When I started building the platform for PeerFly in 2008, I had no idea we’d be one of the top networks in less than 3 years time. I attribute our phenomenal growth to my team and the long hours we put in every day to make sure we’re the best we can be.  We’re never content with where we are at any given moment so we continue to push ourselves to the next level. If there isn’t a next level, we create one. We’ve done so much in 3 years… watch what we do within the next 3!

What do you think that you are offering that other CPA Networks can’t provide? I believe the advantages we have over other CPA networks are two things: creativity, and in-house development. We have a list a mile long of ideas that we want to implement into PeerFly and future assets that are not found elsewhere. We are extremely inventive and think outside of the boxes box! Myself, and two others on my team, have web-based programming backgrounds with varying levels of skill. So, when we come together and conjure up something super creative, we’re able to easily implement those ideas within our system. We’ve never relied on a 3rd party to provide value to our affiliates/clients.

Other things we provide that others don’t are several payment schedules based on revenue, several payment methods, daily payments (over a year now), over 1,300 offers in many different verticals, live chat support, a rewards program, and a lifetime 5% referral program.

As you know, fraud is a serious issue. What is PeerFly doing to combat fraud? What types of fraud are you seeing personally? We have been described as one of the most strict and rigorous in terms of fraud and compliance. To begin, our compliance department is composed of two different segments: approvals and traffic. Among other things, all applicants have to verify their phone number using our pin verification system as well as upload a government issued photo ID. If verification passes, they still have to pass another additional 20+ internal points of assessment.  If an applicant is approved and becomes an affiliate, our dedicated traffic manager audits their traffic closely and works proactively with our clients to ensure quality is where it needs to be.

We don’t really see “fraud” like we used to when we first started. Rather, we see non-compliant traffic. IE; traffic that may be legitimate but is not an accepted method or type as described on the offer page. Some affiliates just don’t know how to follow directions. However, most of the time we’re able to catch it before it becomes an issue and steer that publisher in the right direction.

We’ve talked about those networks that don’t pay their bills. What is your philosophy about this? Paying our affiliates on time is something else that sets us apart as well. It shouldn’t even be an advantage because that’s CPA network predicate 101! But, unfortunately for this industry, it is. For the first two years we were in business, we had an extremely low overhead that allowed us to save, save, save. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that we actually got an office. Even with the office, only a couple of us work there – one being part time. We have had no investors and we’ve bootstrapped everything. Our savings has allowed us to continue to pay everyone on time even when our clients are several weeks or months late on their payment. We’ve been fortunate enough to float money without issues and I attribute that to our non-flashy, low budget, saving mentality style.

For networks that have trouble keeping up with payments and are starting to build a reputation of bad payment issues, you need to step back and reassess what you are doing in this business. The #1 priority we’ve had since day one is paying people what they earned, on time. We will make sure our affiliates are paid on time before our own pockets are paid on time. With the power of the Internet, it’s super easy for a handful of affiliates to take your business down because of your bad financial decisions. I’ve seen it time and time again. Always make sure your output is never more than your input or else you will see failure.

What do you think the biggest mistakes most affiliates are making right now? Giving up. Unfortunately, a lot of people equate this industry with a “get-rich-quick” scheme. They get into it looking to make an easy dollar and then give up when they discover it’s a lot harder than they perceived. I believe there is nothing “hard” about this business. You just have to know what you are doing so you can formulate a strategy. The only thing that separates new affiliates from super affiliates is information. That’s it. You don’t need to have any money, special talent, skills, or degrees. We have affiliates who make $20k a day and it’s not because of their good looks! They understand how to take an offer, formulate an action plan and know whom to target.

Are you offering training for affiliates? Why or why not? What specifically? We’re currently developing a whole new interface and website layout. With the launch of the new design we will also be introducing a “Training & Resource Center” which will focus on providing the information our affiliates need to succeed.  We want to start doing live Q&A sessions, video walkthroughs, a dynamic FAQ system, message board and more. We don’t think our affiliates should be paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars on coaching programs when we can provide all of it plus more for free.

Where do you think affiliates need to go to learn how to be super-affiliates? I believe our upcoming resource center will prove to be a valuable asset and will be able to take our affiliates from “newbie” to “super” in a short time. Other places to frequent for free guidance in this business are forums like: WarriorForum (http://warriorforum.com), DigitalPoint (http://forums.digitalpoint.com) and reading all the latest industry related blog posts at AffDaily (http://affdaily.com) where lots of industry bloggers provide valuable insights and information.

Do you recommend that affiliates try many networks, or stick with a few proven networks? Why or why not? Stick with the proven networks. There should be no need for you to go out looking for or working with new networks that don’t have any history. If anything, let them prove themselves first. If they seem attractive because of payout claims on a certain offer or the types of offers they have, simply ask the current proven network you’re with if they can get those offers or match those payouts. Nine times out of 10, not only will they be able to get that offer but also beat the payout on it as well. The proven networks have a lot more clout and can negotiate better payouts with advertisers. Not to mention – if you work with an unproven or unheard of network, they are more than likely brokering the offer from a bigger, proven network anyway.

What is your opinion of all the FTC lawsuits? How are you guys protecting yourselves from legal actions by the government, and what do you recommend for affiliates? Our industry obviously needs regulation. I want to help build an industry of value, integrity, and sustainability. Not scams, lies, and falsehoods. Advertising powers the Internet so we really have a bright future ahead of us just as long as we can stay accepted and compliant! I applaud the efforts of groups like the Performance Marketing Association, the Executive Council of Performance Marketing and even the Federal Trade Commission for creating standards and keeping both sides straight.

As for us, we work with our attorney to ensure our practices stay within FTC guidelines. We have absolutely no intentions of going outside the realm of veracity and standards this industry relies upon to grow.

Check out Peerfly here

 

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Alex Zhardanovsky went from Epic to Doggie.

I’ve personally known Alex Zhardanovsky for a long time – for almost as long as I’ve been in the industry. During that time, I’ve learned several things about him. First, he’s one of the smartest business men that I’ve ever met: he knows how to get things done, he knows how to take the competition out when necessary but also knows how to build bridges. Secondly, he always has really hot women around him. I’m not sure what it is, but wherever he goes there are models hanging on him like flies on flypaper. After his success in building EPIC into one of the biggest online advertising media powerhouses, he moved onto creating Petflow.com an online pet-food shipping superstore. In about a year, it’s become the #1 online petfood solution and if he wasn’t already rich enough, making him a much richer man. Maybe we can learn a bit from him.

How did you originally get started with the idea of Azoogleads?
AzoogleAds was created because we really weren’t happy with the way that publishers were treated back in 2000/2001.  There really weren’t many “network” options other than Webclients, Adteractive, CJ/Linkshare, private brokered deals and agencies.  There was no real-time repo
rting, no reliable way to know how much you were actually getting paid at the end of the month or if a check was even coming.  We were already aggregating several publishers’ traffic and disbursing commissions, and those publishers were asking us for an online interface that they could log into to see stats of how their campaigns were performing.  So in early 2002, we built the interface, and launched AzoogleAds in July.


Why did Azoogle use its own system instead of using another CPA system like directtrack?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think directtrack as a licensed platform even existed back in 2002.  I believe that Jason Wolfe (the founder of DirectTrack) was still operating MyCoupons.com at the time, but I could be mistaken.  More importantly, we have always believed in building infrastructure that suited us, as out-of-the-box solutions have many shortcomings.  At the time we launched, we were unique, so we really didn’t have to look “different” than any other network.  In hindsight, the fact that we owned our own technology platform allowed us to execute much faster than many of our competitors, because we could build custom solutions for many of our publishers, when others did not.

Do you think that any company can become a major player in the CPA game using a third party system, why or why not?
I am a strong believer in controlling your own destiny and I don’t think you can do that if you build businesses on top of someone else’s technology.  Especially when the technology you are using is consumer-facing.

What do you think about state of the industry fraud wise, with companies being investigated by the FTC, AG lawsuits and so on. What did Epic/Azoogle do that was different to prevent this?
Fraud will always exist, no matter how hard you try to curtail it.  There will always be opportunistic individuals, those who the laws of this (US) country don’t necessarily touch.  At Epic, we spent a considerable amount of resources on ensuring publisher and advertiser compliance, often at the expense of significant revenues.

Is there any company in the CPA game that you can currently point to besides Epic and say that they are doing a good job? What are they doing right?
I really don’t think that anyone stands out, there are hundreds of networks all doing the same thing.  Everyone claims to have high payouts, exclusive offers, fast payment terms, and great affiliate managers.  None of those 4 things are important anymore, as they’re listed on every single networks’ homepage.  I don’t claim to know what the silver bullet is these days, but anyone running a CPA network needs to remember that it’s a technology-enabled services business, and if you don’t have great relationships with all of your partners, on both sides (advertiser and publisher), then you’re just another me-too that no one cares about.

Do you feel there is still space for new CPA Networks to make money? If so, what do they need to provide to compete?
No matter the industry, there is always room for smart people to make money.  The ones that will be most successful in this space, are ones that understand their advertisers and are willing to invest resources in creative design, technology infrastructure and their relationships.

What made you and  your partner Joe decide to start PetFlow.com?
If you’re a dog or cat owner, there’s 3 things that your dog/cat is guaranteed to do every day.  Eat, poop, and sleep.  2 of those 3 things have to do with the pet’s food.  Over 40% of American households have a pet, and under 4% of those households have ever made a purchase online for their pets.   For us, that presented a huge opportunity for a pet food replenishment businesses.  PetFlow is on fire.

 

Will PetFlow be bigger than Epic money wise for you? Why?
Yes. The online advertising industry generates $22.7 billion in sales in 2009. The Pet industry generates over $48 billion in annual sales.  You do the math 🙂

What is PetFlow’s current affiliate model and relationship? Why did you stop using Commission Junction?
We work directly with publishers an do our own media buying.  I still believe strongly in affiliate marketing, but CJ was not a good partner for us.  I wrote a post about why we chose to stop working with CJ.

What is the environment at PetFlow like? What are your employees passions and what makes them get up in the morning and go to work?
The environment here is exactly the same as the one we had at AzoogleAds when we started.  It’s very relaxed.  Everyone knows what they need to do every day and gets their job done.  There are no set hours, but everyone is expected to perform to the best of their abilities.  Our door is always open to suggestions and we try very hard to keep both our customers and our employees happy.   As a budding ecommerce company that interacts with tens of thousands of customers on a monthly basis, we really can’t afford to mess up.

What is your dream car and why?
Audi r8.  I own it, and it’s f’n awesome.

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Lucas Brown is the Santa Claus of Affiliate Marketing. He Has Offers.

I have to be honest, before this interview I knew nothing about HasOffers whatsoever, except that anyone could make their own affiliate network using the system. I thought perhaps it was some low-level system that had some basic features and was nowhere a possible competition for the “major” players. After this interview and some education, it became very clear that HasOffers is a serious competitor in its own right and that Lucas Brown, the CEO of the company knows what he is doing.

What inspired you to make an affiliate tracking software?
In the fall of 2008, my twin brother and I recognized a huge need in performance marketing. Many affiliate programs and networks (including our own) were depending on legacy tracking software that was slow, unreliable and extremely costly to maintain. Since we spent the previous three years developing our own tracking technology for another company, we decided to empower others with our modern technology and make a real impact in the performance advertising industry.

Just as Salesforce.com brought about revolutionary change by providing their software as a service, we are moving the industry to a simpler, more scalable era. Traditionally, starting an affiliate network would require signing a minimum one-year contract, paying exorbitant setup fees, and then waiting for the expensive legacy solution to be installed or integrated. The alternative was to build your own solution from scratch. These very limited options prohibited many online marketers and direct advertisers from getting started with affiliate marketing and learning how to use utilize affiliates as an effective and extremely profitable advertising medium.

We realized we need to build an automated sign-up process that allows companies to create their own white-label affiliate network in minutes, with no contracts, pay-as-you-go. Shifting affiliate tracking to true software as a service vastly lowers the barrier to entry, making it easier than ever for any company to get started. As a result of fewer barriers to entry and lower levels of risk provided by HasOffers, affiliate marketing is growing explosively, increasing advertiser spend and disrupting old models of online advertising.

HasOffers has been criticized in the past for opening the floodgates so “anyone can make an affiliate program?” What do you have to say to those who think this is a bad idea?
There have always been people who were afraid to make technology and information available to the masses.  The argument is usually that some of those masses will use it for negative causes, but the real fear is that those with the illusion of power cannot hide behind expensive technology.

HasOffers is the center of innovation in an industry both run and plagued by old technology. A majority of brand advertising dollars still goes to search and display advertising. The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) suggests that a lack of transparency and education about affiliate marketing limits mainstream advertisers from participating with affiliate marketing. The only way to change this is through education and availability of proper technology for every business size.  I suppose we have a fundamental difference in ideology than most competitors.  It is that the more people involved in our industry, the more advertising spend comes in, and more benefit everyone will receive.

To those critics, I would say that this is an industry based on relationships and trust, and technology should be a standard, not a barrier.

As you know, a competitor was hit last year with the revelations that all the affiliate data of their affiliate networks were stolen and resold. What have you done to prevent this happening from you? Many companies who are now customers of HasOffers went through this stressful ordeal with DirectTrack.  It was certainly a very scary situation for all involved.  Our architecture and security programs are very different from our competitors, and though we cannot ethically discuss these on public record (in the interest of security), our dedicated system and network engineers are extremely protective of our infrastructure.  As HasOffers continues to grow, our larger clients demand extremely thorough security documentation including emergency plans, best practices, data loss prevention, and layered security models, which has also helped us develop an extremely air tight environment for our clients to do business.

What differentiates HasOffers from competitors?
HasOffers tracking technology is far more efficient than any competing platform. Proprietary ad serving and tracking technology allows a single HasOffers server to support over 2 billion requests per month. HasOffers’ efficient ad serving and tracking technology is built in C, enabling it to support 500 percent more requests per ad server than legacy technologies. Requests to ad servers built in PHP or ASP.NET require servers to load 15 MBs of data or more into memory in order to complete each request, while the HasOffers’ proprietary ad serving technology only requires 215 KBs per request. This increased capacity provides a strategic advantage, allowing HasOffers to provide the most affordable ad serving and tracking solution in the industry.  We urge anyone to test HasOffers along side any other system and let it speak for itself.

We are also the first company to provide complete fault tolerance by deploying clients’ ad servers on the Amazon Web Services’ EC2 cloud. We’ve combined this global deployment of the ad servers on the cloud with globally load-balanced DNS. This detects the location of the user making the request to the ad server and directs the user to the ad server in the facility that can respond the quickest.  A user clicking on a tracking link in Germany will be handled by an ad server in the Ireland facility or a user viewing a creative in New York will be handled by an ad server in the Virginia facility. Global deployments of the ad servers with globally load-balanced DNS, increases performance by handling a users request with ad servers that are located thousands of miles closer to them. By dramatically reducing this latency, our ad servers are also able to handle requests even faster than before.

Our team also uniquely understands the value of scalability. While competitors only power an estimated few hundred clients each, HasOffers’ scalable technology has enabled more than 7,000 companies to create and manage their own affiliate networks. Our competitors simply don’t have infrastructures to support this many clients effectively.

What are some of your most notable Customers? Do they tend to be networks or advertisers?
Zynga, AdSimilis, Living Social, Tapjoy, Flycell, Adperio, Palms, adperio, MarketHealth, and the list goes on.

In the beginning our primary customers were networks, within the past year more and more advertisers are adopting HasOffers to manage their in-house affiliate programs. About 55% of our clients are networks and 45% advertisers.

Do you recommend super affiliates to use HasOffers to track their deals?
We do have some super affiliates that user HasOffers to track their campaigns, but they are a minority. There are certainly many solutions focused on tracking the performance for affiliates across multiple networks. We find that super affiliates tend to start their own affiliate networks with us as that is often the next logical step for them.

There are a lot of mentions about your API, What makes your API unique?
Our API is the only complete two-way API, including over 400 API methods and 60 API data models. An API of this magnitude is completely unprecedented in affiliate tracking and is sure to open up vast opportunities for so many companies. The API makes it possible to develop customized applications that run on top of the HasOffers platform. No other affiliate network software has an API this powerful.

The API makes it possible for our clients to transform HasOffers to fit every possible need. Every feature in the HasOffers application is documented and available to use through the HasOffers API. Clients can build applications or customize their current HasOffers application software with the same access to integration for managing advertisers, offers, and affiliates. With the HasOffers API it is easy to create new affiliates, generate tracking codes for new affiliates, and generate any statistics and reports.

Some clients are creating a competitive advantage by implementing completely unique graphic interfaces for their HasOffers account using the API. Other clients are using the New API to build widgets that connect with CRMs and billing systems. A few clients are now building our affiliate tracking software into a gateway monetization system.

What fraud systems are built into the HasOffers System?
Our software gives our clients insight to identify and prevent fraudulent conversions. We classify fraud into two types. Affiliate profile fraud and activity fraud. Affiliate profile fraud analyzes whether the affiliate’s details are suspicious or linked to other fraudulent accounts. This allows our clients to identify potentially malicious affiliates before they are given access to offers. Activity fraud analyzes actual conversion data to identify fraudulent activity. This analyzes IP addresses, conversion times, referring domains, duplicate IPs, comparative EPCs, etc.

We’ve also spent a lot time ensuring our core tracking technology prevents fraudulent conversions. Referral domains can be enforced for conversion pixels and IP addresses enforced for server postback URLs. There are options to limit the number of conversions by IP address and date as well as identify conversions generated by proxies. Tracking links, conversions pixels and server postback URLs can be encrypted with unique hashes. The application also provides ample and filtered information in the reports to give our clients the power to investigate each conversion.

How easy would it be for a network to move to HasOffers?
HasOffers has spent a great deal of time perfecting the migration process for networks.  We realize this is the only real deterring factor for larger potential clients, especially depending on the current system they are using, so we have dedicated on-boarding specialists to help with the process. Most clients considering migrating to HasOffers reach out to us because they are already having tracking issues, frustrations with processes,  or difficulty managing affiliate data, and we realize each business model has unique struggles.  Our on-boarding specialists have not only developed smooth processes for migration across the most common platforms, but they are skilled in adapting to unique circumstances.  This should certainly not be a prohibiting factor in moving a business to a new level of technology and innovation.

Do you recommend that most people move to Server to Server Tracking and why? What are the advantages of this?
For our clients with the technical understanding, we certainly recommend implementing cookieless tracking. With HasOffers, cookieless tracking can also be implemented with iFrames or image pixels, providing a hybrid of client side and server side. This way affiliate third-party pixels can still piggy back on conversions as well. With only server to server pixels enabled affiliates have to implement a server to server pixel as well, which many affiliates don’t have the software or knowledge to accomplish.

If a user does not have cookies enabled on their browser, usually an iFrame/Image pixel will not record a conversion, but by implementing cookieless conversion tracking, users with cookies disabled will still be tracked. We do this by passing a transaction ID (tracking ID) to the advertiser’s landing page on click. Then the advertiser passes this transaction ID to the conversion pixel or server postback URL. Our ad servers look up the user’s tracking information by the transaction ID and record conversions accordingly. This is a great way to ensure conversion tracking accuracy.

What inspired your staff to get up in the morning?
Passion.  After participating in every piece and angle of online advertising, we realized that we should concentrate on the part that we really love, and believe it or not, that’s performance tracking technology.  So we surround ourselves with people who share our passion.  You might describe HasOffers as one big crazy brainstorm on the future of online advertising, and we think that’s the most exciting thing we could be doing.  You can really see the unity it brings our team.

What is your dream car?
I don’t have a dream car. Cars are not a big thing in Seattle. I’d prefer a mansion on Lake Washington.

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M’thinks that Chris Trayhorn Knows Performance

A few years ago someone told me that someone was making a print magazine for the performance marketing industry. I was pretty damn sure it would fail. While blogs weren’t all the rage as they are now, as an experienced online publishers, I was pretty sure no one would want to read something in print. Luckily I was wrong, and the folks at Revenue Magazine, now Revenue Performance were correct. They understood that in our industry, people really love to get attention and putting great photos of them in a glossy magazine would guarantee distribution. Now some 8 years later, Revenue Performance is the magazine that every major company has on their coffee tables and frames in their offices. I decided to sit down with Chris Trayhorn, the Publisher of Revenue Performance and see what was going on over there.

Is this the Affiliate Industry, or the Performance Marketing Industry? Is there a reason to use one term over another?
Performance marketing. Of course. Let’s think big. Chief Marketing Officers have the shortest job lifespan in the C-suite. They’re desperate for a way to prove that they can make a difference. Performance marketing can do that for them – but they need to understand how, so education is key. Essentially, we have outgrown the term “affiliate marketing”. Performance marketing is where the action is.

What positive changes do you see happening in the next few years for the industry?
Huge growth, so long as we focus on getting the message out about what we do. I find it crazy that often when I talk to senior marketers at big multinational companies they have no clue about what can be achieved with performance marketing. As an industry, we need to be taking a message to those people that we offer a real solution to their problems.

There is a plethora of Affiliate and CPA Networks. What do you think about the increasingly low entry requirements for a network now? Is this a good or bad thing?
It’s good that the industry is dynamic and attracts new entrants, but it concerns me that so few have much of what I’d say was necessary experience and /or knowledge. How many new networks CEOs know what GRC is, for example? Governance, risk management and compliance is a recognized and integrated discipline in large enterprises but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it discussed anywhere in the performance marketing space. If networks understood GRC better, we wouldn’t see nearly as many flameouts as we do. And that’s just one example.

We’ve had conversations about gurus in the industry, many of them who have become regular speakers at the Affiliate Conferences. What do you see as the biggest threat from the gurus to our industry?
To grow as an industry we need more publishers to build more audiences and generate more traffic. So we need quality training that new publishers can trust at a price they can afford. So-called gurus aren’t the answer because they tend to promote get-rich-quick approaches which ultimately fail for most students.

But it’s not just affiliates and publishers who need training. Advertisers and merchants need education too. Someone in the network space told me the other day, “I have lots of potential new advertisers. I just can’t train them fast enough.”

That’s nuts. Quality training is key to the growth of the industry. We need to be doing more. You’re going to see Revenue Performance taking the initiative in this area in the near future. Watch this space.

What do you think about the growing flame-wars, blogger attacks on people’s personal lives in the industry?
It sucks, but people are people. That means many of them behave badly some of the time. What are you gonna do?

Do you believe that the average person can still get into the industry, and why?
Sure, but they need to work their asses off and be smart about it. But online is still in its infancy. Mobile is just getting started. There’s lots of opportunity.

What is the biggest threat to the industry right now and why?
Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Google. I’m not the paranoid type but it sure looks to me like they’re moving towards a model where they try to direct all shopping traffic to their own properties. They’re scraping content off other publishers’ websites and then finding ways to present it so the user doesn’t need to visit the original site at all. They promote their own properties in preferred positions. They’ve just bought an affiliate site and are playing with other ways to present content and offers. They’re massive in mobile and have their own operating system. And they’re working hard to make it all work together. Other current concerns like fraud and nexus taxation will work themselves out but I’m not sure who can slow down Google.

What is your history in the Performance Marketing Industry?
My company spent 10 years working with Accenture helping them to grow their CRM practice from $1 billion to $20 billion a year. We also worked with Microsoft to help them launch Microsoft Advertising and publish their original online marketing research. Half way through that time I thought there was room for a magazine with a  trusted voice in the performance marketing industry. That’s how Revenue Performance got started. It was a big risk to launch a print magazine for an online community, but once we got the first edition out, people loved it.

Revenue Performance presents itself as a “professional” magazine in contrast to all the blogs. Why do you see the need of there being a print magazine?
We started publishing the magazine eight years ago – I think that longevity implies that it’s our readers who think we’re needed. There will always be a demand for content that advertisers and publishers feel they can trust in a format that they find useful.

Do you feel that we need an organization like the Performance Marketing Association, and why (or why not)?
I think it’s useful that we  have someone fighting the fight on Internet nexus taxes, but it’s a tough gig: trying to stop legislators bringing in new taxes when state tax incomes are at record lows. I wish them well.

What is your dream car?
It’s a dream motorbike: a KTM 950 Adventure. It’s a huge, black beast of a thing designed for fast back-road riding combined with some off-road stuff too. And it’s sitting in my garage.

If you weren’t involved in the industry, what would you be doing?
Something in online education. The internet gives us the first chance in history to provide everyone on the planet with education and opportunity. I think that’s important.

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Shane Graper Believes in Hybryd Marketing? Is He Going Green?

I’m not sure what is the water in Denver, but companies are sprouting up left and right here. Shane Graper, like George Avery of GetAds left his employer in the wake of the Facebook and Attorney General scandals that rocked the industry. From that he moved onto creating his own company, with its own way of doing business and more importantly with an focus on professionalism. From talking to him and the other folks at the company, HybrydAds is very focused on that professional experience and wants to make it clear that they are not like any other company in the industry.

When did you know that you “really liked” affiliate and performance based marketing? I really knew this was something I liked when I had a crash course at Video Professor in 2004. That is when the light bulbs began to turn on and a career was born.

What has HybrydAds done in regards to compliance that you feel is important? Hybryd has spent countless hours analyzing traffic. We have been able to tie many different bad sources of traffic together. This has allowed HybrydAds to actively seek cooperation between other networks to keep a running list of those bad sources. We can share info without giving away secrets.

What do you look for in affiliates that help you know they might be a good choice to approve? First and foremost, can their information be validated? Hybryd does communicate with every Affiliate so that we know how we can provide the best service. We have moved mostly to a referral-based process to make approvals less painful. We still do approve a limited amount of applications and always welcome referrals.

You used DirectTrack while at Affiliate.com, what made you guys go with LinkTrust instead of the platform you knew? I’ve worked with several tracking platforms in the past so when weighing the choices that were out there for Tracking we looked at four things: Accuracy in Tracking, Growth, Reporting, and Cost. Comparing these across the available platforms LinkTrust won hands down.

Do you see this industry as “affiliate marketing” or “performance marketing” and any reason? Looking at this industry as only affiliate marketing is too microscopic. This industry has evolved into performance marketing from affiliate marketing. The Performance model includes the diversity of marketing that is available across our industry. Others might say its just semantics though.

What do you think of the industry groups like the Performance Marketing Association? Is there a need for a representative group? The PMA is great for creating a collective voice in our industry. I do think that there needs to be a representative group but the trick is getting everyone in the industry involved and cooperating.

If you could pitch an airline to use performance based advertising, what would you do? Performance based advertising could help offer more value to their customers. An airline could for example monetize the viewing of in air TV and movies with products and services. Why not try to improve marketing to a captive audience with nowhere to go for the duration of a flight. I could go on about data monetization but I wont. They are doing a bit of performance based advertising already; I was on a flight recently that tried to sign passengers up for a credit card with miles as an incentive. The only issue is it wasn’t interactive and flight attendants aren’t always the best sales force.

What exclusive offers would you like to introduce to our readership? We have been working hard to develop our own Education portal, DegreeChemistry.com. In addition we are getting ready to launch our own insurance portal that you can get a sneak peak of at SelectMyInsurance.com.

What do you think of adware or contextual advertising? Like any other form of advertising it can be effective if used with in the correct guidelines. We all know how successful the Search engines have been at it.

What are the benefits and risks? The benefits are that it can be extremely targeted and valuable to the consumer. The only concern of course will be regarding privacy.

What are you planning to do for the next 6 months of 2011? Without giving away all network secrets we are focusing pretty heavily on technology.

The Denver area in the last few years has become a new mecca of major CPA Networks, from GetAds, Intela & AdPerio. What do you like about the area and what makes you stay here? There is only one thing that Colorado doesn’t offer and that’s an ocean. Other than that, there is nothing you can’t find or do here. You can drive an hour in any direction and find a different climate or landscape for any activity.

If you could move HybrydAds to any other place besides Denver, where would it be? I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. If we did move it would either have to be a tropical island or a place that has a comparable climate with Denver.

What would be your dream car? My Dream Car would be a Truck. Fully loaded, Full Size, and good on gas. Is that too much to ask for?

Visit HybrydAds Affiliate Network here.
Check out all their offers on OfferVault

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Cake’s Jeff McCollum puts frosting onto Affiliate Software.

In the affiliate and CPA network software game, there have been a few companies that have dominated the game. For almost a decade everyone used DirectTrack, and then came HasOffers and LinkTrust. For a long time, that seemed to be the only choice – until last year, when Cake Marketing started to play in the game, soon making it real name for itself. Since then we’ve seen half a dozen major affiliate networks move over and dozens of other companies become clients in a small period of time. I decided to sit down with their Chief Honcho, Jeff McCollum and find out what they are doing that is making people pay attention.

What inspired your company to make your own performance marketing software?
We had all been in performance based marketing for years and realized the industry was moving faster than the available technology. We were frustrated with the time and resources it took to do the most common daily tasks but were most concerned with the unreliable and an inaccurate tracking.  I had worked in Silicone Valley for many years and knew what was possible if good developers could apply solid technology to the fast growing industry. The one thing I did not account for was the 3+ years it would take to build right.

What can you tell us about your fraud prevention tools?
A lot of thought has gone into the toolset we provide our clients for catching and dealing with fraud quickly and efficiently. The collective experiences of our team in finding some of the more sophisticated and creative fraudulent activity of the past few years has been vital in our efforts to improve the accountability of the industry as a whole. From finding improper marketing methods to examining unordinary conversion rates down to the Sub ID level to locating quicker than average click-to-conversion times, Cake gives you immediate notice of fraudulent activity for you to examine, classify, and ultimately shut down within minutes.

As you know, a competitor was hit last year with the revelations that all the affiliate data of their affiliate networks were stolen and resold. What have you done to prevent this happening from you?
Having built Cake Marketing in house from the ground up using only the best modern technologies, processes and techniques, we are able to avoid many of the pitfalls inherent in older or less capable systems.  Security has been a primary focus for us and by basing our continued development of features and utilities on a solid foundation; we are able to maintain an impeccable systems security record.  As some of our competitors are finding out, it is difficult to adapt a software solution to a changing business climate with constantly shifting rules and goals without sacrificing something, often security.   This is especially true in affiliate marketing where the changes are quick and those who fail to keep up get left behind.  Cake was built with this in mind and as a software service, is equipped to maintain what makes it great while changing to adapt to the market.

In addition, by keeping all of our development in house with every line of code and every decision being made within the walls of our offices, we are able to dedicate ourselves as a team to this goal without the risk of outside security breaches.  This dedication extends itself into all aspects of our platform from the architecture of our data centers, peer code reviews and auditing to the customer support, training and professional services.

Cake sells itself as a fully integrated system, especially made for lead capture and distribution. What is unique about your platform that no other system offers?
Cake Marketing is unique in many ways, but the lead capture and distribution engine is the most powerful of its kind and as an added bonus, completely integrates with our affiliate tracking solution.  Being able to send a lead to an email address or simple CRM is not unique to affiliate marketing platforms, but with other systems you will eventually need custom development or a separately licensed product to send leads the way you really need to.  With other platforms, lead generation is tacked on as an afterthought, while in Cake it was built from the start side by side with the tracking solution and can also be used as a standalone lead distribution engine.  Every possible scenario has been thought out and made to be easily configured within the Cake interface without the need for expensive and time-consuming development.

Feature for feature, Cake can match and beat the top standalone lead distribution solutions as well as the best competing affiliate tracking solutions.  The fact that we do both of these in one tightly integrated approach makes us a solution that no other system can top.

How does your lead validation system work better than other systems? What would you say is the most unique part of your system?
Lead validation is a very important part of affiliate marketing because it affects revenue on so many levels.  It can be used to detect fraud, to clean data, to categorize your traffic or as part of your manual review process.  Unfortunately, this often requires continual updates and changes to your websites and forms as your validation rules change or as new offers are added.  As one of the most unique parts of our validation system, Cake has solved this problem by using the same elegant interface that the rest of the system uses.  After placing a simple Cake supplied script onto your form, all validation will then be handled automatically and any changes you make within your system will instantly effect how your forms work online, including alerting the customer of invalid data so that they can fix it themselves.  Using Cake’s proprietary technologies, you can utilize any of our multitude of validators in this process (many of which cannot be found elsewhere), to seamlessly validate your existing forms.

In light of the revelation that Internet Explorer will be blocking a lot of cookies, and that Firefox is looking to do this in a future release, your cookieless tracking system seems very interesting. I’d love to know more about it, what can you tell us?
From our tracking platform’s inception, dealing with cookieless sessions has been a large focus. Whether users disable cookies completely or enable the Do Not Track option in newer browsers, Cake is able to examine the browser’s fingerprint to uniquely track a session from impression to click to conversion sans cookie. We call this Session Regeneration and it’s built into every aspect of our platform’s foundation. We give our clients specific options to configure how exactly this works, but using our default configuration our clients have solved the problem of missing cookies. Additionally we allow the passing of unique identifiers back and forth between Cake and the advertiser if/when the advertiser supports it to enable 100% tracking accuracy no matter the situation.

I’ve heard some good things about your customer support team, what can you tell me that makes it different?
Our Client Solutions Team (CS Team) is more than just customer service. Our CS Team is truly dedicated to providing the most intimate level of service to all Cake clients. The team informs clients on unique Cake solutions applicable to their unique business needs. Furthermore, our CS Team has significant input into the ongoing product development, leveraging the knowledge gained from client interaction. However, the biggest advantage is we offer all of our clients FREE 24/7 phone support. We know that a great CS Team is vital to our success.

What inspires the management and staff at Cake?
After spending years working for online marketing industry leaders (including NBCInteractive, News Corp., Experian Interactive) we recognized the need for a top tier product which executed to the expectations of senior management as well as provided the blocking and tackling solutions for the front line employees. We are driven each day to meet those obligations. The management team here is competitive and we live for the challenges that come up each day to meet the demanding needs of our clients. Who wouldn’t love coming to work with the most dedicated staff in the market taking on the problems of the most sophisticated marketers in the world and helping them succeed?

IF someone wanted to move over to Cake, how easy would it be? What is the time period involved and do you have any examples of transfers that you can talk about?
We have designed our product to reach full deployment within days. Our goals as a team are to have our clients up and running on a time frame that is comfortable for them. When clients want to be up and running in full steam we can have them up within 48 hours. We understand the anxiety of moving systems and have put a lot of time into creating a comprehensive process. Clients get a dedicated implementation rep to guide them through the training and to import their existing data (affiliates, advertisers, offers, etc.) into their Cake instance.

For affiliates, if they are on a Cake system what will they see in the network that they wouldn’t see in any other program?
We’ve put a lot of time into the design of the Cake Affiliate Portal in an effort to make finding offers, grabbing creative assets, placing pixels, testing offers, viewing reports, downloading new suppression lists, and keeping track of invoices/bills as intuitive, quick, and easy as possible. Seeing up to the second stats, gauging overall performance, and finding new great converting offers are all available in one easy to use dashboard, and when necessary digging in to find more specific information is only a couple clicks away. Additionally, all of this information is available via our Affiliate API for those affiliates looking to integrate this information into their own dashboards.

Specifically the things you won’t find in other systems are:

1.      Pixel placement (traditional iframe/javascript/image AND Postback URL/Server Pixels) to testing with immediate success feedback removes the need for affiliates to wait on account managers to place and test their pixels.

2.      The ease in which per subid/creative pricing is viewable/manageable. No matter how complicated your payment structure is, Cake breaks it down and makes it easy to understand.

3.      One click import into your own Cake system making brokering offers from networks a breeze. No need to manually import links/creatives, it all happens for you behind the scenes!

Why use Cake instead of building your own system?
This is the classic buy/outsource versus build decision. Our product has been built from the ground up over 4 years with millions of dollars invested ensuring that our foundation was sound and provides the most flexibility for our clients. Our product allows for clients to have a customized solution within a SaaS license model. This flexible solution can be fully deployed in weeks saving valuable resources and time. Building an independent solution would likely lack the power and scalability required. Furthermore it would take significant time until full deployment. Why pay full price for the Ferrari when you can lease it for a fraction of the price!

What is your dream car and why?
I am not much of a car guy I drive a Prius. I would much rather have a plane so I could travel easily and often with my family.

If you weren’t doing this as career what would be your second choice?
Starting an organization that would educate, mentor, and lend resources to people in countries of extreme poverty to provide a better opportunity.

Want to learn more about Cake?

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The Four Pillars of Building Trust to Increase Conversions

Human beings are social creatures that seek out companionship and relationships. Our map of reality can be viewed as a series of concentric circles which include the most trusted relationships and those who are in our hearts at the very center.

We crave trust. Without it, we would be consigned to a world where we must examine everyone’s actions with suspicion and assume that they are working only for their purposes and not ours. Because of the sheer number of social interactions that we have with complete strangers, we must at least extend some trust.  Otherwise many acts, both small and momentous, simply could not happen at all.

Even with total strangers in the “real world” we at least have their appearance and body language to go by. But what do you do online? Almost anyone can quickly create a website or landing page and masquerade as a wide variety of businesses. Many of these enterprises are untrustworthy. We are often barraged in the media about various scams perpetrated online and have our guard up.

As an online marketer, your job is very difficult compared to your bricks-and-mortar marketing counterpart. You must not only overcome anxieties, but do so in the most challenging of circumstances.

Online trust must be developed without any face-to-face contact, and it must be created instantly in the few precious seconds it takes a website visitor to evaluate your value proposition.

So how can you build instant trust online?

The following pillars of trust can be employed with great effectiveness.

Appearance

First impressions matter. We do judge a book by its cover. Recent research indicates that people will form an initial impression of your landing page or website within fifty milliseconds. This is almost as fast as visual processing happens in the brain, and can be considered as an instantaneous and automatic response. In other words, we subliminally decide where the page falls on our “cheesy” to “professional” continuum. And this initial reaction extends to a more considered review of the page, and will impact out likelihood of taking the desired conversion action.

Don’t get disqualified based solely on how you look

We prefer well-dressed and groomed job-candidates. We try to put our best foot forward on first dates. The same should be done online.

  • Professionalism of design – Regardless of the intended audience or your business purpose, the visual design should be professionally executed. It should hang together and function as a single unified whole. Fonts, colors, and graphical elements must combine into a single visual “look”.
  • Sparseness & neatness – Clutter can be your worst enemy, whether it is visual embellishments, or dense longwinded text. Less is more. Ruthlessly edit everything on the page until it is pared to its essence and has a natural and unforced feel. Give your page room to breathe.
  • Organization & clarity – Too many choices of what to do on the page can be paralyzing. Similarly, a disorganized page increases the visitor’s “cognitive load” and forces them to spend time simply trying to figure out in what order they should digest the information that you have presented. As the title of Steve Krug’s excellent book on web usability so elegantly puts it – “Don’t Make Me Think”.

Transactional Assurances

Will we be spammed if we enter our email in a form? Will the goods promised ever be delivered after we order from an online catalog? Will our very identity be stolen? Such questions are always in the background when we navigate around the Web.

Relieve point-of-action anxieties before they arise

The mechanics of the conversion action matter. Whether you are trying to collect an email for an online newsletter, or have someone purchase an expensive item or service, reassurances are needed about the transaction.

  • Forms of payment and delivery – Many ecommerce catalogs only show acceptable forms of payment and return policies after the checkout process has been started. In fact, they must be seen before they are needed, and prominently displayed above the fold on every page. The same is true of well-known delivery and shipping methods.
  • Data security and privacy –  The site that you transact with must be certified as safe by outside experts in terms of its ability to protect your data. Having privacy policies and computer security trustmarks from well-known vendors will instantly show someone that you have safeguarded their data properly.
  • Policies & guarantees – Often the transaction is not at issue. It is what happens afterward that concerns people. By prominently featuring your warranties, return policies, and guarantees, you can assuage these anxieties. Often, a visual seal can be created to draw the eye to these important elements.

Experts & Media

Your visitors are not likely to have heard of you. Unless you represent a truly world-class consumer company, people are unlikely to know your brand promise. They do not know what you stand for.

Borrow trust from better-known brands

  • Reviews & awards – Many services and products have won awards or at least been reviewed by relevant industry publications.  Using the award seals or “Reviewed by” language can be very effective.
  • Paid endorsements & spokespeople – Paid endorsements can transfer the trust or at least the celebrity of the spokesperson to the product or service in question.
  • Marquee clients – Using client logos with permission, or at least prominently featuring a written list of clients (unless specifically prohibited from doing so by contract language) will create powerful visual proof of your legitimacy. They confer an implicit halo effect – if you have worked with large companies, of course you can handle smaller “regular” ones.
  • Media Mentions – Media companies are experts at self-promotion and drumming their brands into our consciousness. Any association with them confers a notoriety and solidity to you landing page. Often “media” outlets can also be broadly defined as bloggers or authoritative voices in your specific niche.

There are several caveats to the use of hen using expert and media logos. They must appear above the fold and be seen at the same time as the call to action (not below or after it) in order to provide the context for the content on the page. On the other hand, they must be displayed subtly, so they do not dominate the visual conversation. The logos are often well designed, distinctive and instantly recognizable. So you may have to actually de-emphasize their impact by reducing size, decreasing color saturation (possibly using grayscale), and decreasing contrast with the background color chosen to display the logos.

Consensus of Peers

We often follow the lead of people like ourselves. If we see many friends driving a particular make of car, we are more apt to consider it. If our circle of acquaintances  turn us on to a new musical group, we are more likely to pay attention. Regardless of the actual cultural “tribes” that we belong to, our peers exert a very strong influence on us.

Support automatic compliance by demonstrating “social proof”

There are two important preconditions for “social proof” to be effective: 1) have to be many people who are taking similar action, and 2) they must be as much like us as possible.

  • Objective numbers – “the many” can be demonstrated by showing how many people have bought, downloaded, or started a free trial. Number should be cumulative since the inception of the business or product. Spell out the digits of each number (e.g. “Over 1,000,000 downloads”), and use larger fonts  to draw additional attention.
  • Likeness – Create affinity by demonstrating that the people taking action are similar to your website visitors. This can be done by picking appropriate colors, editorial tone, and graphics to make your visitors feel at home. You can also have a large number of detailed testimonials that discuss common situations faced by similar people.

If you build on the four pillars of trust above, you should have a solid foundation for improved conversions.

——-
Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization firm that offers conversion consulting, full-service guaranteed-improvement tests, and software tools to improve conversion rates. Tim is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization and a highly-regarded presenter at Search Engine Strategies, eMetrics, PPC Summit, Affiliate Summit, PubCon, Affiliate Conference, and LeadsCon. He also chairs  Conversion Conference, a two-day event focused exclusively on improving online conversions.

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