AdReady from MSNBC.com, supplies ready made the creatives, you simply drop in the text, phone, picture, background color and website address you want to go on the Flash enabled ad and voila you are done.  Reminds me of SpotRunner, one of my favorite tools of all time, but that is another post.

MSNBC then displays your ad only to visitors of the site that are from the geographic area you want.  So if you are serving the San Diego area, only those people coming to MSNBC’s properties from the San Diego area will be served your ads on the Channels you specify.  Totally targeted, except the list of cities by state is relatively few and you cannot target by zip code.

But at what cost?  $16.50 per CPM.  With a MINIMUM $50 daily spend, means that for your $50 you are getting 3,030 impressions shown.  This would be fine if you could say, I only want to be on the pages that have keywords related to real estate on them if I were a real estate agent buying the ads.  But alas, you only get the 8 channels, which includes:

- News
- Business
- Entertainment
- Health
- Politics
- Tech
- Today Show
- Travel

Expensive.  YES

Targeted.  SOMEWHAT

Telling your friends you have ads on MSNBC for your home market: PRICELESS

ROI:  Probably Not Worth It.

CLICK THE PIC ABOVE
Make sure you visit the site.   It could actually use to highlight the video better as well as do a better job at getting more newsletter/white paper signups (i.e. prospects).  Overall the site is a very good example of a well done lead generation sitewhen it comes to moving products.  You have to give it up for anyone who can design a CentrifugeConfigurator.

epMotion’s Holger Eggert, Product Manager for Eppendorf says “The feedback from
the scientific community has been fantastic. As well as featuring ineditorials, including nature.com and nationalgeographic.com, there have been countless positive comments about the video in newsgroup posts.”  Maybe this will inspire other B2B social
campaigns.  We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to BizMediaScience blog for this find.

Is the hype surrounding mobile advertising real?  With millions more cell phones than PC’s and laptops in play, marketers need to look at this channel as a vital part of their overall marketing plan.  But how can they overcome the roadbloacks such as display continuity across multiple carrier platforms and long wait times to implement short codes?

Recently I watched Ad Age’s 3 Minute Video Report What Agency Creatives Don’t Know About Mobile Advertising which featured Richard Ting, VP Mobile and Emerging Platforms Group for R/GA.  In it he lamented that there were three major obstacles to marketers dreams coming true of landing their  message on the cell phones of their targeted audiences.

These included:

-          Mobile creative teams are not usually involved in the campaign process from the beginning.

-          The diversity of platforms now widely in use on cell phones and the optimizing of the creative for uniform delivery of their content.

-          Short code campaigns can take up to 12 weeks to receive approval from carriers.

All of these are valid concerns, but there are service providers who can ease these pains for marketers. 

Until mobile is seen as a vital channel to the advertiser or their agency’s strategy development teams not much will be done to change the organizational structure of agencies and their strategy process’ to include mobile teams from the beginning.  They will remain focused on the tried and safe methods of putting up websites, optimizing SEO, sending out emails/newsletters, paying for Search and Display ads as well as  dipping their toes into the Social media space.  The key game changer will be the consumer themselves.  Their acceptance of handheld advertising will be the tipping point at which advertisers will begin to add mobile to it’s core marketing plans. 

The chart below shows the breakdown of offer types and how well they are responded to.  The clear winner is text messaging.  I attribute this to the cell phone’s capability, that is, the difference between a smart phone experience and a standard handset experience.  As iPhone and Smart Phone (i.e. Blackberry) type devices with built in GPS begin to replace older standard handsets, more consumers will be hungry for applications that will empower them to do more from their cell phone than ever before.

Recent research from Compass Intelligence, a global consulting and market analytics company, predicts that U.S. businesses will spend about $11.6 billion on mobile applications by 2012. 

Worldwide Mobile Ad Spending

This is important, but how do marketers today overcome Ting’s main roadblocks to a successful implementation?  Here are several resources that can speed any mobile campaign as well as ensure cross platform functionality.

Mobile Content

In order to optimize mobile content for all handset platforms you will need a company that has major experience and resources at their disposal in order to make it succeed.  SpeedShape provides clients such as Ford, Michelin, Jack Daniels, Chevrolet, Saab and a host of others with services ranging from creative direction and execution to platform specific encoding ensuring smooth and consistent message delivery by campaign.  SpeedShape can ensure that all creatives whether video, Flash, rich creative or any other multimedia presentation you have will look their best no matter size of screen or resolution.

Mobile Platform Development

This is a company that I was introduced to a few months age, InfoWave Knowledgeware.  This is a surprisingly nimble Indian based company whose main focus has been on creating multimedia and mobile technologies, 3D graphics and new media lifecycle management products and services.

 I was particularly impressed with their ability to sort out the cell phone platform issues with mobile phones here in the US and around the globe.  They support over 85% of all Internet Connected handsets in use today in the US.  This includes Windows Mobile, Symbian, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry and now Google’s Android Mobile Platform (set to debut in October 2008).  They even show you a unique demo of how their mobile phone websites are functional, check it out. 

If you really want a turnkey mobile media campaign, they have it.  Mobile Media Campaigns for clients have been created using their 7 Step Approach to building and launching your Mobile Text Messaging Campaign, A Mobile enabled website, or a mobile application.  I really have not seen a technology company be able to seamlessly move into the marketing space as these folks have.  I have to admit, if I had a tech team like this (who understands marketing) many of the projects I have worked on would have gotten to launch faster.

One last thing, not only do they concept, develop and launch mobile marketing campaigns, they also monitor with incredibly detailed mobile campaign statistics and analysis.  This alone is something very few providers can roll into their mobile solutions for marketers.

Alternative to Mobile Short Code Campaigns

If you have ever waited for a short code approval from carriers then you know that a firm launch date is never discussed.  In addition, their no-recourse billing with frequent errors leaves much to be desired.  But since they are seen as the only game in town, most marketers bite the bullet and press on.

There is an alternative, Joel Comm’s TextCastLive Mobile Message Campaign Solution.  They are not much on their website in terms of info, but you can read my original blog post on TextCastLive here. 

In brief, TextCastLive allows you to display a number for the user to text a two word message to.  Those two words can trigger a number of events on the back end and automatically send out a series of timed mobile messages, subscribe them to alerts or updates messages, or even prompt an outbound call to the user if they double opt into it.  Those are only the tip of the mobile interactivity that users can be exposed to.  Joel Comm, is a remarkable online marketing promoter and someone who understands the value of customer relationship marketing when it comes to mobile.

I have always found that mobile messaging is about interest.  Using it to blast out infrequent messaging to your entire list is just not going to work in today’s protect-my-privacy-at-least-on-my-cellphone world.  TextCastLive allows you to “silo” unendingly to customize messages by any parameter, zip code, lifestyle, age, etc.  It also costs far less than Short Code and will be installed in far shorter.

I have had commissions stolen before and have used the Dwarf URL converter to shorten links and hide the Aff ID.  But this goes a giant step or two further.

First, ViralURL.com’s ViralBar allows you to create a descriptive display URL (such as this one for a home writers course I am promoting: http://viralurl.com/bestdeals/writers).  Doing this will allow for better”halo” when a user looks at it on a website or in an email as opposed to a link that looks like this: http://secure1.m57media.com/clients/p2c/u/?caid=XXXX.  Using this link exposes my affiliate ID number (here marked by XXXX) and potentially opens me up to some unscrupulous person hiking it and then hacking into my account with the advertiser or network and switching payments to their account information and deleting mine.  A not so uncommon situation if you have multiple campaigns going simultaneously and you just let them run without being diligent and checking your numbers daily.  I cannot even estimate the amount of money I have lost not protecting my affiliate ID.  But No More!

Now that would be cool if that’s all ViralURL.com’s ViralBar did.  But there’s more.

Click on this link above and notice at the bottom of the page there is now another offer in addition to the one I am promoting.  Now I have twice the ability to sell a prospect.  Since I do a fair amount of email marketing, it is always a good choice to have more than less, particularly if you have an untargeted list.  When the end user clicks on the offer in the ViralBar, you are transported to another offer.  The commissions are all tracked in ViralURL’s subscriber area.

In addition to the additional offer being spun at the top or bottom of the page you send them to, you also get the ability to turn on additional webmasters to this excellent tool.  I believe it is up to 5 deep in terms of referrals.

I like this tool, but I think I am going to like it even more after I see it generate cash.  Right now I am just happy to have an excellent “halo” type URL to use in my text emails and on my sites and know that my affiliate ID numbers are not like Janet Jackson’s mammary at a Super Bowl - exposed.

This must is Elliot Spitzer’s swan song. After making life difficult for many an online entrepreneur, his original out-of-state merchant’s tax law, which originally in November of 2007 was defeated, was passed in the NY state legislature this spring.

The law attempts to break new ground in challenging the Internet’s “grand experiment” that has enjoyed exclusion from taxation since eCommerce was coined in 1992 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. The federal exclusion from collecting sales tax is now being challenged.

The Internet was seen as a growth area for the US and Congress saw fit to pass exclusions for eCommerce to spur growth. It was also as a result of not having the technology at the time to properly collect and distribute sales tax collected online. There are more than 6,000 separate sales and local tax jurisdictions in the United States.

But now the time has come to pay the piper. New York is only the first in a long line of states that want to build their coffers from sales taxes imposed on any merchant that does business online. Cataloger’s have long dealt with nexus because their physical location of warehousing and corporate offices forces them to collect sales tax from customers who live in those states.

The NY law goes further to challenge what physical presence means in order to get circumvent the Federal exemption and collect the tax. This includes online affiliates. Notably, Amazon is challenging the law.

The NY State Online Sales Tax law is borderline unconstitutional and definitely murky enough to choke a catfish. Poorly worded as it is, and overstepping on federal legislators attempts to spur economic growth from online commerce, it is a wake up call to all advertisers. Like Europe’s VAT, which varies by country of origin of the buyer, states will eventually get their way.

The technology exists today to collect and distribute tax revenue from online sales. Recently the IRS put online merchant transaction processors such as Paypal and others on notice that they will be requesting their records to assess taxes on anyone, business or individual who made a transaction over the Internet.

As a consultant to many online merchants I advise that they get closer with their transaction processors to start collecting sales tax voluntarily. Why? Won’t it cost them sales? Yes. Will consumers look for competitors that do not collect sales tax? Yes they will. But there are a few steps that merchants can do to keep customers from bailing.

Merchants who collect sales tax voluntarily need to:

- Explain clearly WHY they are collecting the tax.

- Offer to reduce shipping costs on their first sale.

- Offer a coupon for their next purchase in the amount of the sales tax.

- Realize that a first sale is a gateway to a lifetime of sales from this customer.

Bottom line, it is a risk issue. If, like the NY Sales Tax Law wants, merchants could be held liable for ALL purchases made anytime, that includes PAST sales. Scoffing at this could cost a business all their marbles, since a state sales tax of 5% charged against all online sales could be more than most merchants could attempt to pay. Those who voluntarily adopt will most likely be treated with more leniency if this becomes reality.

The Streamlined Sales Tax is gaining strength, and most likely will provide a ready solution to the state sales tax. This organization is dedicated to providing a reasonable response that can be implemented easily by merchants both online and off. This organization advocates amnesty for merchants by the states that have adopted their agenda. “The amnesty is for uncollected or unpaid sales or use taxes for a seller who registers to pay or collect and remit applicable sales or use taxes on sales made to purchasers in the state.”

Online merchants will all eventually have to collect sales tax, just as European merchants have to collect VAT. Those who resist longest will have the most to lose, but each merchant will need to assess the risk associated with their decision. Lose a few customers now or lose a lot of revenue later to the IRS. The best merchants on and offline know that long term success comes through cultivating a lifetime of sales with your customers. After all, when you collect sales tax from a customer, it ultimately flows back into their state.

During a session entitled Tactical Search: Local and Mobile, Mr. Bayle was asked by an audience member if he thought Apple’s iPhone 3G was a “game changer”. His response was nothing short of telling why Google’s mobile dominance is in no danger of slipping to Yang & Co. He expressed that as a device it is very compelling, but that the phone itself was not the beginning of a new revolution in cell phones and that it actually was annoying to do the “finger spread” that iPhone users employ when sliding through pages they are viewing on the phone. His denial of Apple’s iPhone as a “game changer” was based in the fact that other cell phone companies are coming out with phones that mimic the iPhone’s user interface and that the real game changer is yet to come based on how users integrate mobile phones into their daily routine.

His comments were immediately jumped on by Alison Scholly, VP, GM, Chicago Tribune Interactive who rebuffed him for not looking at how the iPhone has changed the game by forcing phone manufacturers to change their “game” and develop new phones. Bruce Crair, President and COO of Local.com also joined in by adding that the iPhone allows users to use their mobile device more like a remote computer instead of just a communications device dedicated to text and voice utility.

Also on the panel was Google’s Deepak Anand, Mobile Marketing Manager, who could not help from commenting that as applications grow for the iPhone, so will the demand for advertisers to want to play in this space. (If you want to see what Mr. Anand has to say about Google’s mobile plans, read his mobile manifesto.). This proabably explains that when the moderator, Scott Linzer, Director of Search Marketing, AKQA asked the room of 35 or so if they had used Yahoo’s Go for mobile only a smattering of hands went up, but when asked if they had used Google’s mobile search, Maps and other mobile platform apps from Google, nearly the entire room’s hands shot up.

Yahoo! may not see the iPhone as a game changer, but apparently the rest of the industry has different thoughts. Maybe it is because of their lack of functional software platform and operating system for mobile devices like Google’s Android. Or maybe it is because by seeing the iPhone as a game changer, this would make Yahoo! admit that they are so far behind in the mobile space with regards to getting any type of loyalty to their mobile apps such as Yahoo’s oneSearch as part of it’s Yahoo Go 3.0 release.

Mr. Bayle did ask the audience if they had heard of Search Monkey, most did not lift their arms. And when he went on to explain that Yahoo! has added Voice Recognition Search, powered by Vlingo Corp., most in the audience reacted as if they had never heard of such an innovation. I guess Google is just better at the PR thing than Yahoo!. The voice recognition search is a “game changer”, but it seems no one is talking about it.

The first post on ActiveRain.com introduced real estate agents looking to increase their connections to using LinkedIn for their business.  I reviewed how LinkedIn can give them an edge on their competition simply by using their existing network of friends clients and family to start making more sales.

My second post, focused on using LinkedIn Groups to drive more commercial sales.  You can read it here: http://www.jimlillig.activerain.com/archives/2008/08

Today I received a note from LinkedIn that they have a resource center online for maximizing your use of LinkedIn.  Never knew they had this for internet marketers or any company looking to increase their reach to their target market.

You can find the resource center here:
http://learn.linkedin.com/business-development

I will be poking around on this for some time looking for another way to use LinkedIn for social networking for business’.  If you are already using LinkedIn for business and have a success story you would like to share, let me know and I will be glad to post it up.

This particular article actually got me to post up a reply. I have posted it below, and would like your comments on where you think advertisers should go with online video. What direction do you see vieo being pulled in now, and maybe in 5 to 7 years from now.

Here is my comment (read Seana Mulcahy’s article first and it will make more sense):

“There was a time (years ago) when the brand owned the eyeball rather than rented it.”

This is an astute observation and one that I feel is coming full circle with advertisers developing their own content and using the Web as their in-home distribution channel (more on that below).

VidSense (an obvious play on Google’s AdSense) is a brilliant use of recognizable mainstream content that will surely draw in users to watch. Coupled with the omnipresent display advertising on the advertiser’s site they are taken to, it is hard for the user to escape engaging.

I am assuming from the articles tone, that the Brands the author is working for are measuring success by views. Which I am assuming equates to brand awareness. But if you measure success by what actions the user takes when done viewing or while in the process of viewing, this would seem to produce a more accurate picture of the campaign’s effectiveness and ROI. What it should not be is not simply a 2 minute or less diversion from the site they were on.

If they take no action, they are simply an eyeball. So I propose a new term: Engagers. This would go beyond simply viewing metrics and reach further into the consumer’s mindset. To discover what the end user feels they can connect with emotionally about this brand.

It may be subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading a coupon, or directly buying the product online, or playing a game that is featured on the website or in the video itself. I agree that VidSense is a very good idea and one that publishers will adopt IF they can match the VidSense videos to their own content tightly enough to make it look as if it is an integrated part of their website’s presentation.

If I put on my media buyers hat for a minute, I have to ask myself one tough question: If they are coming to my site because of a random video choice (a blind link) on a site that is unrelated to my brand, product or service - are they really the target audience I am looking to attract? With banner/text placements, while far from perfect, at least the advertiser knows the end user MEANT to click on their link (assuming it was branded or at least told them about a topic they wanted to explore more) and discover something about the advertiser.

What I meant by “full circle” at the beginning of this post, is the trend that advertiser’s are returning to an “own the eyeball” 1950’s TV model. Multiple advertisers Like BMW and Converse have created their own content libraries and essentially their own TV networks online. As the media fragmentation that was ushered in by the growth of cable TV continues to spiral, advertiser generated content will become a part of the regular mix of viewing choices as convergence looms (defined as your living room TV displaying content released over the Internet as seamlessly as if it were delivered by your cable/satellite provider as well as an increase in computer users who watch their monitors much in the same fashion they watch TV).

These “owned” shows (and the advertiser’s own network - imagine the Ford Channel - all things automotive, or the Jenny Craig Channel - all things diet and lifestyle), if they are polished enough can and probably will attract their own organic following, in some cases more than some cable networks. And as in-video-ad-serving technology gets better, when the archived show is viewed the advertiser can control the messaging dynamically, even to the point of integrating behavioral and demographical data (garnered from the cable TV provider, ISP or third party software) to personalize the message even more.

VidSense as a revolution, maybe not so much. Advertiser’s not only owning their own shows but creating their own content networks, now that is where you have taken Eyeballs into Engager’s turf.

It wasn’t just the theme that made it fun, but the opportunity to hear some really intelligent marketers map out how they achieve greater and greater success every day blew me away at points.

Best Example. The keynote speaker was Tony Hsieh, CEO of online shoe reseller Zappos.com. From selling pizzas in college to getting Microsoft to buy LinkExchange for large coin in the 90’s, to building one of the most fanatically loyal customer databases online, Tony is someone who should be listened to when he speaks. His philosophy of creating the proper corporate culture from shipping clerk to CEO is going to bullet Zappos past $1B in sales this year. Tony was one of the most personable and approachable of the speakers, and even took part in the Spy Hunt that Yanik concocted on the streets and hotels lobbies of LA. You can easily see why people line up to work there. They create a Culture book, every year and it is their bible to how the company if focused and run. You can purchase it here. A Brilliant Guy building and even more brilliant empire in the online retail space. Definitely one to watch. I mean, when I was getting on the plane at LAX back to Chicago, there was an insert in the security trays you put your computer and shoes into with Zappos sponsoring it. Now that’s good.

Another Example: The panel that featured Declan Dunn, Jonathon Mizel, Ryan Deiss, Stephen Mahaney, Marlon Sanders and Joel Comm. This looked like a Boulder conference of 2000, except at that time, Joel, Ryan, Yanik and I were in the audience just learning from these legends (of course Cory Rudl was also onstage at the time as well) riff off of one another for hours straight on how to increase any offers ability to make money. I do not believe a more seasoned bunch of early adopter internet marketers have graced the stage at once since. Their insight into where today’s markets are headed was worth way more than the price of admission. And that was only the sideshow.

Another Example: John Carter and Hubert Senters, who have to be the funniest duo on the financial news scene. Raw and uncut they explained in detail how they are building an online army of subscribers to their www.tradethemarkets.com and www.tradeforexbusiness.com sites. Both are experienced traders who have spent their entire careers perfecting their skills, which it seems they have made millions doing it. Their step by step, show you the exact tools they use and how they put their video’s, podcasts, newsletters and site content together was extremely in-depth. Even for someone who consults clients regularly on subscription site revenue enhancement, I took away several excellent additions to my toolbelt. I believe they have a training course that they give to others who want to learn their ways. I suggest anyone who is serious about financially focused subscription sites (and those are hot offers in CPA networks now) take their course or enlist their guidance.

Another Example: Dr. Joe Mercola, owner or Mercola.com, the largest health site (except for WebMD) in the US. I have known Dr. Joe for a while now, but never really got to spend the kind of time that I do when I am at Yanik’s Underground’s. Dr. Joe and I are both from Chicago, but beyond that we had a really wonderful discussion on health marketing and expanding the consciousness of the US consumer to begin shunning many pharmaceuticals and start looking at more homeopathic and natural healing methods. His research has uncovered some amazing truths that are not going to be getting him Xmas cards from Merck or Wyeth anytime soon. As a marketer, Dr. Joe has very few rivals, considering his site is Alexa ranked at 8,964. He also let loose with some excellent gems like the always fun www.Blabberize.com, www.Mindmeister.com (a free collaborative Mind Mapping software), and www.sitespect.com (analytics for dynamic sites, the ones Goggle Analytics doesn’t handle).

There were other examples of speakers who gave insights into their success. Such as my old friend Jody Colvard whose gave the straight skinny on being a talk show host online. I walked away thinking even I could do a show (unfortunately I have the looks for radio). Make sure to check out FMGtv.com, excellent example of an online video channel. As Jody and I both agree, the aggregators of video content online into clear verticals (like cable TV does) will be the clear winners.

There was also Barry Dunlop and Dean Hunt from BuzzProfits.com. These guys know buzz better than Cheech and Chong. I have to admit, that many of the techniques they espoused were foreign to me as I do not have any recent experience with buzz marketing (we did have 500 radio stations airing free content which generated 100K uniques a day to Mr Skin.com, I mean lately). A bit of it was review and the rest just pointing out the obvious, which I sometimes actually find refreshing as I often forget the little things that can make all the difference to a campaign. They were both entertaining, and Barry has a great stage presence. I believe they are offering a course as well that pretty much guarantees you will get the word out on your product.

Then there was Mike Hill, whom I have known for nearly a decade. Mike is one of the most brilliant media buyers out there today and worked with Declan Dunne when he ran the web’s first ad agency, AdNet (now defunct). Mike’s Risk Free Trial model, that he walked everyone through is a formula for success every time. And in the arena Mike likes to travel in (mostly behavioral pops/contextual/banners) he is cashing in big time for his clients. Although I am not a fan of Zango’s methods with regards to the cookie hi-jacking allegations, other networks who have tighter standards and less name changes have pulled excellent results for me in the past. Mike is one of the best and it is always good to see him back speaking again.

Even Andrew Lock got into the game, by reviewing some of the resources he uses to get an incredible amount of work done every day. The guy is a machine and soon we will be launching his newest eBay Product. Watch for it, it will be big.

Eben Pagan, author of Altitude and Double Your Dating also spoke along with Headsets.com CEO Mike Faith. Both of which were well received by those in attendance, but really never seemed to create a buzz.

I also spoke at the Underground 4 this year, which makes me the only speaker to have been invited to speak 3 times in the history of the event. My particular topic was Winning The CPA Game and the strategies I have used to help my clients to be successful in that ultra competitive environment. The PowerPoint alone was 145 slides and I found myself rushing to fit in all of the points, but I still got a lot of positive feedback and have several new “students” starting soon in the Traffic Tactics One On One Coaching Program. This is very exciting because it is the most fun for me to take a new offer and craft it for publisher distribution through testing and publisher relationships. Then when it takes off and really starts paying off in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a month range, the response is priceless and always the same, “How did you do that?”

If you feel you or your company or agency for that matter, would benefit from the tactics I and the entire Traffic Tactics Team can guide you to, please fill out our online form and I will give you our exclusive Media Buying Secrets Revealed for free, just for visiting the page. If you send me an email to jim.lillig at traffictactics. com I will schedule you for a free 25 minute no obligation consultation with myself and the Traffic tactics team. There are only a limited number of spots we can do, so send me an email and let us review your business and what the Mass Traffic system can do for your profits.

The conference is always fun, but this year with the addition of several new faces and the return of many old friends, Underground 4 was my hands down winner for the best overall conference of 2008 for both content and circus’. If you didn’t attend, plan to next year, you will be more than glad you did. I will see you there.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I have a new job.

VP Business Development for Traffic Tactics. A full service online advertising agency specializing in Online Media buying, affiliate management, CPA Network offer management, offer shaping and a host of online advertising and educational services that can skyrocket an advertiser’s ROI.

Affiliate Classroom Certified.

According to Anik “Don’t Call Me Yanik” Singal, Founder and President of Affiliate Classroom, the path to enlightenment is through training and support. The Affiliate Classroom Certification Program is an attempt to bring some modicum of standardization to the Performance (Affiliate) Marketing arena.

Since hiring Rachel Honoway, who I had the pleasure of working closely with when she headed up Kowabunga, Affiliate Classroom has taken a more global look at the industry and apparently noticed what most veterans already knew. There is a lack of trained people in this business who can actually competently cover the position of Affiliate Manager.

If I were building my ideal AM, it would probably look something along the lines of this:

One Part Salesperson. (Not some wimpy “I’ll get back to you on that” milk toast, but a true let’s get this traffic moving motivator who knows how to motivate a publisher to send qualified traffic. That is not to say force a round peg into a square hole. Savvy enough to know what will be a good fit, and when to run to the merchant/advertiser to get marketing materials that are a tighter fit with a particular publisher’s site (or class of publisher sites). Mental toughness to know that “NO” only means they don’t “know” enough about how they can be making money from the particular offers.)

One Part Negotiator. (I mean some publishers would make even The Donald look like a patsy with the way they are able to leverage their traffic on a poor unsuspecting rookie AM. This potentially can be the difference between making targeted ROI and not, and also making the AM have to be smart enough to encourage the merchant to better monetize their post transactional activities so the front end margin isn’t the only measurement of a program’s success. That isn’t to say that an AM should just lay down in the face of overwhelming publisher pressure, but look for ways to enhance conversion, lessening the need to increase payout levels. In essence, they have to satisfy both their merchant’s margins and the publisher’s need for increasing their ECPM.)

One Part Private Investigator. (The best AM’s get that way because they do their homework and they know who they want to promote their offers. They do this through thorough research and getting behind what is driving the offer’s sales. Then reaching out to those publishers that will best maximize this with their traffic. Half the battle is prospecting for the “core” super-affiliates that will make the program 80% of affiliate commission revenues. Until the AM can assemble a loyal (as loyal as publishers can afford to be) core group and really service their needs for marketing resources, the program will not have a stable foundation of monthly revenue. The rule is always true: 20% of your affiliates will make you 80% or more of the revenue. I believe it is more skewed toward 10/90 but every program has its differences.)

One Part Marketing Manager: (Affiliate Managers need to understand each merchant’s unique market and the factors that affect sales. Merchant sales cycles are affected by many things. Seasonality is probably the largest factor (Christmas, Mother’s Day), followed closely by occasion based buying (weddings, birthdays). It branches off into various life situation solutions (buying a house, going back to school, need for short term credit). The AM needs to prompt their merchant with schedules for campaigns and creatives so they can be timely in their release of marketing materials to publishers. So many times sales opportunities are missed because an AM has no organized way of tracking their offer’s unique marketing opportunities. Their function is to keep their merchants campaigns fresh, distinctive, updated and converting. Not an easy task.)

One Part Communicator/Schmoozer: (Newsletters and Alerts may not seem like they get read a whole lot, but the truth is, the ones that read it are the ones who perform. An AM needs to have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. It isn’t easy sometimes to write something interesting about the same program (like say the BidFuel eBay offers that have the same landing pages just different names) again and again, but there is an art to good copy and keeping it real. Great AM’s try to help their publishers succeed by giving them knowledge on the latest technology, software or techniques that they can use to increase their business. The poor ones simply send out the same tired copy and do nothing to increase a publisher’s knowledge base. The Schmoozer part is the actual out from behind the computer personality that generally likes people. If you don’t like people, don’t be an AM. I close more deals at the bar than any other place at a conference. It is usually where the action is and the smack is being talked about, but it is also a great place to bet introduced to the underground affiliates (e-mailers & seo guys mostly) that show up at events and keep a low profile. Those are usually the most productive and long term relationships.)

In all they have to be superhuman and possess all the traits that even a Lee Iacoca couldn’t live up to. But having all of this being laid out to a newbie (or even a crusty veteran like myself) makes it easier to get a sense that it isn’t an insurmountable task. That with some guidance and the proper tools and attitude, almost any offer can have success in the performance marketing arena.

This is what Anik and his team at Affiliate Classroom have tried to do with the AC Certified Program. I have worked with Anik since his first product launch a few years ago and even supplied him with an hour or two of original material for the Affiliate Manager Bootcamp training videos. Some of which is contained in the latest course.

The Certification training and testing gives any AM a head start in making good choices with the offers that they are entrusted with promoting. It isn’t going to miraculously change an unmotivated slacker into the next Joel Comm, but it will instill the confidence new and veteran managers need to be successful. I also like the way that Anik is moving in channels that will make this a de facto standard in the industry and that will help legitimize the otherwise “Wild West” stigma that performance marketing has been saddled with.

Networks displaying the AC Certified logo will be showing both merchants and publishers that they are not just about volume of offers and flipping from one vertical to the next adding no real value for their cut of the pie. The AC Certification will stand for a dedication to a standard that hopefully will be adopted much like the ISO9000 stands for the highest quality training and service delivery in industrial verticals. Those networks or merchants not sending their AM’s for certification will be conspicuous by their non participation and support of creating a higher standard for our own industry. Or those would be AM candidates that have not taken it upon themselves to get the training on their own will lose out on the best paying positions because they have not had the baseline knowledge transfer that a certified professional does.

In my work with Project Blackbook, I have also strived to apply a higher standard of measurement to transparency in our niche of the online marketing space. To report on how deep and wide the reach and footprint is of performance marketing in today’s US and International markets. Creating these types of industry wide initiatives that can move the entire space forward is really what I see our industry needing if we are to take advantage of the massive shift in ad dollars from TV, Radio and Print that is coming in the next 3 years. Keeping the “Wild West” image is only eroding what confidence we have been able to garner with truly large ad budget brands. The AC Certification is a step in that direction to eliminate the lack of trust the advertising community has in general with the performance niche.

The Affiliate Classroom Career Center is an initiative that will hook up certified AM’s with programs that need to have the best trained people on board. As I understand it, from now until the end of April, all postings will be free of charge to introduce the Career Center to Merchants and Networks. After April, the cost will be $300 per month per posting. All AM resumes will be posted for free. To get your free listing, simply click here.

Below is the Press Release for the launch of the Career Center from Rachel.

College Park, MD – March 11-, 2008 – The Affiliate Classroom, a leading publisher of educational tools for the interactive advertising industry, is offering employers the chance to post their open Affiliate Manager positions in the company’s AC Certified Career Center at no charge on March 14th, 2008.

As previously announced, Affiliate Classroom launched an innovative training and certification program for professional Affiliate Managers called “AC Certified.” Through the AC Certified program, new and veteran affiliate managers can receive an education in managing affiliate programs, earn their Affiliate Manager Certification and pursue an affiliate management career.

The company will be launching the Career Center portion of the program on April 1st, 2008. Employers who are seeking Affiliate Management staff can begin posting open positions on Friday, March 14th.

All job listings added on March 14th will be shown throughout the month of April free of charge. Employers can continue to add jobs to the Career Center after the 14th at a rate of $300/month for each job.

“In these trying economic times, it’s encouraging to see that Affiliate Marketing continues to grow and that retailers, advertisers, networks and agencies are continuing to hire for well-compensated Affiliate Manager Positions,” says the company’s VP of Marketing, Rachel Honoway. “While other jobs are being cut back, companies are struggling to fill open Affiliate Management positions. We see AC Certified and its Career Center bridging this gap and highlighting the strength that this industry shows in its ability develop and succeed despite an economic downturn.”

According to The AffStat 2008 Report (www.AffStat.com), which compiles results of an annual affiliate marketing benchmarks survey produced by Shawn Collins, 2/3 of Affiliate Managers earn between $40,000 and $120,000 per year in salary or a combination of salary and commission. The $50,000 to $60,000 range saw the largest number of respondents, accounting for 22% of the total while 16% of the respondents reported annual earnings over $100,000.

More information about the AC Certified Career Center can be found here.

About Affiliate Classroom, Inc.
Established in October of 2004 as a private company, Affiliate Classroom is a leading publisher of educational tools for interactive marketers. The growing product suite includes courses, books, live seminars, digital magazines and online forums for affiliates, merchants and advertisers participating in the affiliate marketing industry, as well as materials for PPC (pay per click) search marketing.

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