Tag Archive for "Merchants"
The economic news has been depressing the last couple of months. The financial industry is melting down, stock market plummeting and not a day goes by that we don’t hear about a major company laying off a significant part of their work force.
Most merchants are preparing for what could be a major recession. If you’re responsible for your company’s online marketing, chances are that you will or already have been asked to analyze where best to spend your online marketing dollars.
So how can AvantLink help, and why should I invest my marketing dollars in AvantLink’s performance marketing Affiliate network?
1. True performance marketing.
We are a true performance marketing network. This means that once you pay the network integration fee, you don’t pay any monthly minimums or any other hidden fees. We don’t have nickel and dime charges you find in other networks that add up to significantly higher marketing costs. This is recession proof marketing in that you only pay for results.
2. Thorough network level Affiliate screening.
Because we screen Affiliates thoroughly at the network level, you don’t have to spend time screening and filtering Affiliates at the program level, ultimately saving you money. This also means that the vast majority of Affiliates in AvantLink are active, ethical, and savvy marketing professionals.
3. Industry leading support.
We fully support the Affiliates and merchants in our network. Affiliates know they can come directly to us with questions about tools, ads, reporting, tracking, etc. because they know we will respond promptly. This translates into a greatly reduced support workload for you.
4. Innovation.
We are your partner for innovation. We are constantly working on new tools, and better functionality. If Affiliates or merchants come to us with innovative and feasible technology ideas, we will develop them. Many of our tools were created in exactly this manner. We’re dedicated to getting Affiliates and merchants the technology they need to increase sales.
5. Brand protection.
By default, our network level terms do not allow Affiliates to bid on your trade name, domain name or mis-spellings. Most networks have many rogue affiliates who try to get away with bidding on trade/domain names wherever and whenever possible. Not paying commissions as a result of trade/domain name bidding translates into huge savings, and more protection for your brand.
In a recession it’s more important than ever to spend your marketing dollars wisely. AvantLinks’ true performance marketing network model means your marketing dollars are only going towards results. For more information, or to speak with an AvantLink sales representative, please email sales/at/avantlink.com. Mention this article and get a special discount on integration.
Scott Kalbach
Founder/CEO
Post Your Black Friday & Cyber Monday Promotions at ABW
Cool idea from the team at AbestWeb.com. If you have promos running for Q4 check it out. If you haven’t gotten to know the community at ABestWeb.com yet… It’s time to get involved, and get your promos in front of Affiliates with this special offer.
Trust wrote:
This thread is open to all merchants so they can post any Black Friday or Cyber Monday coupons or promotions only.
Merchant:
Promotion:
Short Description:
Dates Valid:
Join Program: (insert link)No signatures
No commenting on the deals. If you have any questions, contact the merchant or AM.
We have some exciting news coming to you live from 2008 Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas (where there was a great session we just attended this morning about the demand and effectiveness of video marketing!).
Introducing a new Ad Type on the AvantLink platform: Merchant Video Ads!
With the Video Ad Tool, merchants can now upload any video ad or product tutorial for their Affiliates using the following formats: .avi, .flv, .mov, or .mpg. Once loaded, the video ads will be available to Affiliates through the Affiliate tool center.
Affiliates, to access video ads follow these simple steps:
- Login click ‘Tools’ from the main menu
- Under Ad/Link Tools click on ‘Get Merchant Ads’
- Select the merchant, then ‘Video’ on the Ad Type drop down
If the respective merchant has video ads configured, the campaign will be returned with a preview selection and the ability to get html. Video ads will be served through one line of JavaScript that should go on your web page(s) where you want the video to display.
See live Video Ad Tool examples below from the merchants who now offer this advanced campaign functionality for Affiliates:
Backcountry.com
Moosejaw.com
ToolKing.com
Here is a summary of our Video Ad Tool functionality:
- Merchants can upload their own videos (any .avi, .flv, .mov, or .mpg formats)
- The videos are then converted to Flash format and hosted on AvantLink’s servers
- Merchants can specify a banner image to be displayed prior to the video playing (or we default to their merchant logo if they don’t specify one)
- All of the standard ad attributes (title, destination URL, keywords, expiration dates, etc.) apply to Video Ads just as with any other AvantLink ad campaign
- Affiliates will be able to select a video ad and embed it into a page with a single line of JavaScript (just as they would an image ad, for example)
- While the video is playing, clicking on it will send the user to the ad destination URL and set the appropriate tracking information to give the affiliate credit for any subsequent sales
- When the video finishes it comes back to the merchant logo or banner. If/when the player is clicked at that point the end user will go to the merchant site as well
Please let us know if you have any questions or comments. As always, we welcome your feed back.
You may have already noticed, but we rolled out some improvements to our already robust reporting tools in AvantLink. These improvements include visuals for an array of charts, sale item details & hit trail data.
Look for this icon: 
in our reporting interface to access available charts/graphs. Charts/graphs now available include:
- Daily Ad Impressions and Click Throughs
- Daily Sales (# and Dollar Amounts)
- Breakdown of Ad Impressions by Tool Type
- Breakdown of Click Throughs by Tool Type
- Breakdown of # of Sales by Tool Type
- Breakdown of Sales by Tool Type
Look for this icon: 
in our reporting interface to access report details. The detail icon shows up if there are detail/sub-reports available for that report.
Two more things to take note of:
- All mentions of “Page Views” in our reporting interface are now now labeled “Ad Impressions”.
- There is new row hover/click functionality that is a combination of stylesheet and some PHP code changes. These formatting changes makes reading your report data easier.
Let us know if you have any questions or comments.
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