Google Launches YouTube Video Targeting Ads

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YouTube Video Targeting

Google has just launched a brand new type of ad unit for AdWords that is now in Beta, called the YouTube Video Targeting Tool.  Every time there is a new ad marketplace that opens up, there is a massive displacement that can be taken advantage of by savvy marketers.  The people that jump in early are going to have a definite advantage in this game.

One of the coolest things about the new YouTube Video Targeting Tool is that you can get very specific with your targeting, right down to selecting individual videos.  You can also target by demographics, channels, and some other methods.

You can choose from two different ad units, InVideo Overlay and In-Stream Video.  The InVideo Overlay can be setup as Text Ads or 468×60 image ads.  The In-Stream Videos are a “15/30 second in-stream video + image companion”.  I’m not exactly sure what that boils down to, since I haven’t had the chance to actually put any ads live yet.

People have been marketing via YouTube for quite a while now, especially in the Ringtones space.  The tried-and-true method is to rip the music video of your favorite artist, put a watermark on it with your Domain leading to the Ringtone offer, and try to get as many views as possible through both natural and artificial means.  This method has become less and less effective as YouTube has been getting wise and closing some of the loopholes used to inflate views to videos and game the rankings.  This new Video Targeting marketplace could be a game-changer for people that have been looking for a way to have a sustainable business model on YouTube without worrying about the impending Account Bans and Video Bans that come with the old method.

The only odd thing I noticed when playing with the interface is that when I searched for some of the YouTube mega-hit videos like the “JK Wedding Dance” and the infamous “Leroy Jenkins” video, they didn’t appear in the list.  Also, most of the videos that were in the list seemed to have relatively low view counts.  I’m assuming that this is because the program is in Beta still, and hopefully the big videos will be fair game once the program has the kinks worked out.

So what are you waiting for?  Head over to http://google.com/videotargeting and check it out!

The Curve Ball

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In the affiliate marketing game, you get thrown some major curve balls.  Usually these only happen once or twice a year, sometimes more in a really bad year.  It’s when the status quo gets shaken up.  Things that you took for granted are either gone or severely changed, and suddenly your income is taking a major hit.  Usually the curve ball happens when a traffic source dries up or gets wise to the ways that you have been exploiting it.

Google loves to throw curve balls in the form of “quality score updates” that destroy your campaigns and take up a bunch of your time.  The latest one was thrown by Facebook after the Techcrunch Scamville Post (sorry Arrington, no link love here) and the follow ups that have been the talk of the industry this entire month.  It’s one thing to hear about it on a blog, and it’s another thing entirely to have it affect your business in a very real way.  As a network owner, the Facebook shakeup certainly put a large dent in our bottom line.

But that’s where my favorite part of the affiliate marketing business comes in: adapting to change. The people in this industry have an uncanny ability to adapt and update their business models to deal with the ever-changing online landscape, and this is no different.  Sure things will be slow for a while, but unlike your Average Joe in a 9 to 5 job, we have power to do something about it.  When Average Joe gets sent a curve ball, like getting laid off for example, it is devastating.  Suddenly his income is gone and he is completely at the mercy of somebody else to get it back.  He has to find another company to hire him and demonstrate to them that he is worth the risk.  All affiliates have to do is reach inside themselves, grab the motivation it takes to get things going again, and get back to work.

That’s why I love this business.  Sometimes it takes a curve ball to realize that there is a whole new opportunity right around the corner, or an income stream that you may have overlooked when your steady campaign was rolling.  At the end of the day, you are in control.  It’s your business and you are the boss.  Even if you are working 80 hours a week for yourself, that’s better than working 40 for someone else.  Next time you are thrown a curve ball, remember the alternative.

Ad-Tech: Day 1 is for Posers

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Ad-Tech NY 2009 has come and gone, and I had the pleasure of flying out to NYC from sunny CO to check it out.  This was the first Ad-Tech show to take place at the Javits Convention Center, since their contract with the hotel ran out.  This was a good thing, since the entire Exhibit Hall could be on one floor and it felt very alive for the entire show.

My partner and I were joking that “Day 1 is for Posers”, because we got so much quality networking done on Day 2, without the massive registration lines and aisle blockage that you typically get on Day 1.  For me and my company, it was a very successful trip and we are very excited about the next few months.

We even got to enjoy some time off at a live taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and a great afterparty at Pacha NYC. and a cool stop at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (including the weird/trippy/geeky/awesome Breezeway Interactive Light Display room).  Instead of showing you boring pics of the Exhibit Hall and close-ups of the food we ate, here are some of the highlights of the trip for me:

Times Square from roof of 30 Rock

Times Square from roof of 30 Rock

More NYC Skyline from 30 Rock

More NYC Skyline from 30 Rock

Blue Panel in the Breezeway Room (30 Rock)

Blue Panel in the Breezeway Room (30 Rock)

Breezeway: The Coolest Room EVER

Breezeway: The Coolest Room EVER

Breezeway Control Panel

Breezeway Control Panel

Outside NBC Studios

Outside NBC Studios

Afterparty at Pacha NYC

Stilt-walking Clown at Pacha NYC

Dance Floor at Pacha NYC

Dance Floor at Pacha NYC (Yankees on TV)

More Pacha NYC Madness

More Pacha NYC Madness

Demand InsideAffiliate On AffBuzz

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Justin Barr created a great little website called AffBuzz.  It is essentially a blog aggregator for the Affiliate Marketing industry.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely check it out.  It’s a great time saver and a good way to keep up with what’s going on in the world of affiliate marketing.

There’s only one problem: INSIDE AFFILIATE IS NOT LISTED ON AFFBUZZ!  There are about 70 blogs listed, including the likes of JohnChow.com, but no love for yours truly.

As faithful readers of this blog, if I’ve helped, entertained, educated, enlightened, enraged, stupefied, or otherwise touched you with my posts, please do me a favor and CLICK HERE then fill out the form to tell Justin to add InsideAffiliate to AffBuzz.

Power to the people!

How To Write A Post About Local Affiliate Marketing

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During the last few months, there has been a rash of blog posts cropping up left and right about local affiliate marketing.  There have been good ones and bad ones and then all the guest posts by Dennis Yu.  All of that aside, if you are an affiliate blogger then you owe it to yourself to write one of these bad boys.  Here’s how it is done…

1. Tell your readers how there is a whole new world of affiliate marketing right in their backyard, where they can be their own boss and not have to worry about the big bad networks and advertisers scrubbing all of their leads.

2. Make sure to mention that Dentists, Lawyers, Massage Therapists, Insurance & Real Estate Agents and anyone else who commonly works off of referrals are the best worst possible candidates because they understand the value of a good lead.

3. Explain to them that this is going to take some good old fashioned salesmanship on their part, because they most likely have not harnessed the power of the internet yet. If that doesn’t scare them away, then mention that there will always be squabbles over what counts as a lead at the end of the month.

4. Bring up the fact that Google Voice is amazing and that you have been using it for local lead gen forever, even though 99% of your readers can’t get an invite.

5. Throw some massive numbers around, like how the keyword “San Francisco DUI Attorney” is going for over $20 per click on the search engines.  If you have the stones, substitute in your own keyword or niche to scare them away from competing with you.

6. ???

7. Profit!  Enjoy shooting fish in a barrel until the next wave of young pups learns what you have been up to and spoils all the ROI for you.

Day Parting & Campaign Caps with Zango

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Have you ever been testing out a new PPV campaign with a budget of $25 a day and found that it’s all used up before 5pm?  This is one area that PPC withGoogle AdWords has spoiled us: you can choose whether you want Standard or Accelerated ad spend, and with Standard it will evenly price out your clicks through out the day.  Most PPV networks do not do this.

Today I noticed that with Zango you can actually do day parting, which is choosing which hours of the day you want your ads to be displayed.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend turning this on right away if you are testing a new campaign, but it certainly is handy if you are blowing through your daily budget without getting any conversions.  In many verticals, it is not until the evening hours that they really start converting.  People are home from work, kids are home from school, people are surfing the net without worrying about the boss looking over their shoulder.  Besides, it’s more likely that the home computer is where the AdWare client is installed anyway.

To do this in Zango, just login to your account, click on the campaign name you want to add day parting to and click Edit Campaign.  Right above the Save Changes button you will see a new link called Advanced Options.  Click this and it will pop up a window with all the different days of the week and hours of the day.  You can also turn specific days of the week off, like if you only wanted to run your ads during the weekend.

Along with day parting, there are also Campaign Caps on this menu.  This will let you set a daily budget for specific days which overrides the Campaign-level daily budget.  This is great if you are finding that certain days provide a large amount of conversions, and you want to crank up the ad spend to take advantage.

It may not seem like much, but little tools like this can really help you optimize your campaigns and squeeze every last bit of ROI out of your PPV traffic.

Staying in the Game

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Last night I was awake until 4am because every time I laid down to sleep, my lower back would revolt.  My wife had been telling me that I needed to go to the Chiropractor, and for some reason I put it off until I was in a large amount of pain.  I tend to do that…  So today I went to the Chiropractor and he adjusted me, and we ended up talking for about 30 minutes about my situation.  It turns out that my hours and hours upon hours of sitting at the computer and lack of exercise has led to a greatly curved lower spine, which is not good.

According to him, unless I turn things around quickly by doing core exercises and regular adjustments I will be in a world of hurt by the time I am 40.  This especially sunk in because he said something similar the last time I saw him, about 6 years ago.  Things are only worse now…

So now it’s time to shape up!  No, Internet Marketing doesn’t compare physically to being a lumberjack, but it does take its own kind of toll on the body.  I had already decided to give Weight Watchers a try, and I’m about 2 weeks into that so far.  Now I’m going to add in some core exercises so that I’ll be ready when my son is born in January.  I’ve got to be in shape so we can toss the ‘ol pigskin around in the yard, right?

I guess today was just kind of a wake up call for me.  I want to stay in the game now, work hard, and crush it so that I can enjoy my later years.  That means that I need to face facts and start taking better care of myself.  It’s super easy in this industry to forget about everything but what is happening online, but until we can digitize our consciousness and upload it to the cloud, there’s still a little bit of physical maintenance that needs to be taken care of.

HasOffers: A Legit Review

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Since HasOffers released their affiliate tracking platform, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the company and the product.  Most of it has been stirred up either by DirectTrack competitors or people that use DirectTrack other platforms.  I thought I would pitch in my 2 cents worth since I have been using HasOffers everyday for about 4 months now.  This is not a paid post, and there are no affiliate links in this post.

Campaign Setup

HasOffers offer listings

A lot of a network’s time is spent setting up campaigns.  Besides checking Stats, it’s the one activity that I do on a very regular basis, often daily.  Since I’ve started using HasOffers they have updated the Campaign Setup a couple of times and added new features, but it is still very clean and to the point.  You put in the name, description, tracking link, set your prices, geo-targeting, etc. and you are good to go.  There are some unique features such as browser targeting (even including mobile browsers), Campaign Groups for geo-targeting multiple offers, and allowing campaigns to convert multiple times.  Most of the time I don’t use these features but it is nice to have the option.  Once you have it set up and hit submit, it takes you to the pixel where you can copy & paste it to send to the advertiser, or you can just click once and have it emailed to them automatically, which is very cool.  Also, it creates a test link for you which saves a lot of time.

Tracking

Tracking is probably the most important aspect of a network platform.  Does it track?  In a word, yes.  HasOffers is very accurate in tracking conversions.  The default pixel type is an iFrame pixel, which seems to work better than the Script pixels that most other platforms use.  It supports 3rd party pixels for Affiliates, and on my network I have it setup so that affiliates can place these themselves with automatic approval.  Also, you can choose whether you want HasOffers to track All Clicks that come through an affiliate link, or just Unique Clicks.  I have mine set to All, since affiliates always complain that their clicks aren’t tracking otherwise.

Creatives

The File Manager is where you upload creatives for your offers.  It runs on a CDN server, and they host all your creatives so you don’t need to have a gallery somewhere else.  It supports Image Banners, HTML Creatives, Flash Banners, and Offer Thumbnails (so that a picture appears next to the offer name in the interface, similar to LinkTrust).  I particularly like the Flash Banner setup, it is super simple.  All you need to do is upload your SWF file, tell it what the height and width are, and it does the rest.  I’ve used some other setups that are a royal pain for Flash.

Reporting

HasOffers reporting

I really, really like the reporting in HasOffers.  First of all, it’s fast.  I can tell it exactly what information I want to see, and it displays it quickly.  Coming off of using DirectTrack, the difference is night and day.  I used to spend a good hour or two a day just waiting for DirectTrack to load reports.  I like it better than LinkTrust’s reporting as well, which I’ve always found a bit cumbersome to use.  On the affiliate side, the reporting allows them to pass a “source” variable (such as Google or Yahoo) as well as 5 separate sub id variables if they choose, and they actually work.  The #1 reason that affiliates login to a network is to check their stats, and this is one area that HasOffers really shines.

Affiliate Interface

HasOffers (TriFoxMedia) affiliate interface

HasOffers looks and feels very different than LinkTrust or DirectTrack.  Both of those systems have been around for a while, and they are starting to show their age.  On the contrary, HasOffers has a decidedly Web 2.0 feel to it, with soft edges and animated bar graphs for revenue and total leads generated right on the home page when affiliates log in.  It looks great right out of the box, but network owners can use their own custom CSS & logos to give it their own look.  Also, a new feature was added recently to select from a variety of different Themes to change up the look with one click.  I have received quite a few compliments from affiliates who are logging in for the first time, it just looks a lot fresher than the other platforms.

Last Word

I think that a lot of the venom that has been spewed at HasOffers is due to the fact that they are offering their entry-level product for free.  This means that the barrier of entry to creating a network has been lowered to almost nothing.  I think there is some truth to this as well as some exaggeration.  A network is based on trust and relationships above all else.  It doesn’t matter what software they are using.  Anybody who spends a lot of time and money promoting offers from an affiliate network that just popped up yesterday and has no reputation in the industry is just asking to get ripped off.  Do your homework, run with people that you trust and you will have much less risk of things going wrong.

You may have heard that HasOffers’ parent company, Adapp Solutions, is owned by the owners of Tatto Media affiliate network.  This is true.  Does it mean that Tatto is going to steal all of your data?  If you are using any 3rd party tracking platform at all, the security of your data is a concern, but the fact is that a large part of the networks in the industry are powered by them.  These service providers all put a lot of work into making sure that your data is secure, and HasOffers is no exception.

I have used both DirectTrack and LinkTrust extensively, and I like HasOffers better, hands down. Sign up for a free account now!