Affiliate Marketing Manager

Offshore Drilling

2008-07-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

This gives me mixed feelings. Overall i'm an Obama supporter, although I am slightly disappointed by his tack to the centre ground over the past ten days or so. There are many clear issues where I back Obama - healthcare, wealth distribution and abortion being just three, however there are two issues where I feel slightly uneasy about the Obama policies, free trade and the environment.

Free trade is something for another day but on the environmental issue there is an important aspect that many Americans miss (highlighted in the article):

"Environmentalists have reacted with alarm to Mr Bush's call, saying offshore drilling would take at least a decade to have any effect on oil supply"

It's going to take at least ten years for anything to change, that is Obama's main opposition to allowing offshore drilling and continuing along the lines of oil exploration. I see the point and I also completely advocate both Obama and McCain's sweeping promises on renewables and energy conservation, but in my opinion Obama is looking at this as 'all or nothing', but surely an energy policy that allows for oil exploration whilst also investing heavily in renewables is the best way to go? The world has changed, very, very few people now consider oil or other fossil fuels as being the sensible energy model for the 21st century, so with that in mind there is nothing wrong in allowing drilling to take place to discover and sell the final reserves - as long as ths is coupled with a progressive renewables policy. In fact a sensible solution would be to allow the oil companies to drill for the remaining oil but impose a levy on them which is then 100% reinvested in Government backed renewables schemes, that way all parties win:

1) Short term employment gains
2) Investment in US companies
3) Increased renewables investment
4) An proactive PR appearance

However, let's all remember that this is going to have zero impact on the price at the petrol station, the US reserves are small fry compared to the Middle East and the petroleum market will no doubt be a very different beast in ten years time.

So this is one issue i'm with McCain on, next week Free Trade!

Data Data Data

2008-07-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

Being a Radiohead fan, this caught my eye. The guy on the 'making of' video says that "Radiohead would be the only band brave enough to try this" - he's quite right!

It's really well done and a great example of creativity, technology and outright melancholy combining!

Google Affiliate Network - From the top

2008-07-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

More here from the horses mouth regarding the Google affiliate network, two interesting bits from me:

1) Google’s technology opens the door for new types of distribution and widens the different ad units we can develop.

The technology innovation and convergence with other Google products is without doubt the most exciting bit in my opinion, plus the potential reach and application. For example a new ad unit could be rolled across the Google Content network on a CPM /CPC basis and the Google Affiliate Network on a CPA basis - then optmised depending on performance and campaign strategy.

2) But I can’t resist speculating, does this mean MSN will come knocking on a network’s door? I can almost see CJ laying out the welcome mat now.

As a CJ client this is interesting to see speculated, in the UK market the AOL & Buy.at deal is still making waves so a bigger move like CJ & MSN would shake the industry up to an even greater degree . Rather than the mooted consolidation in the smaller UK networks (speculated about for over 18 months now) will a seismic changes take place with one of the bigger guys?

Semantic Search

2008-07-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

A good outline of the next logical step for search - the semantic realm. Microsoft explaining the rationale behind their purchase of Powerset and how the future is all about context and intent and immediate satisfaction from search results.

On another topic this (particularly the last couple of paragraphs) demonstrates the huge projects now being undertaken and potential implications for understanding the world (no less) for the huge mass of data being collected each and every day.

Possibly the coolest gadget of all time??

2008-06-30T15:39:00.000-07:00

I read an article about this over the weekend, why did nobody think of doing this before?!

Google Affiliate Network

2008-06-30T15:09:00.001-07:00

So a significant move today for Google with the rebranding of the Performics Affiliate operations as 'Google Affiliate Network'. It's not totally unexpected and certainly had seemed to be on the cards for a while, but what seems slightly surprising is that Google are associating themselves with that most dirty of phrases 'affiliate' - I would have thought they would have tried to differentiate the affiliate side of the branding or not used 'Google' as the main asset of the brand. It certainly is suprising to see the words 'Google' and 'Affiliate' sitting quite so comfortably on a logo!

In terms of what this means for the industry then no doubt many affiliates will think that this is the start of the slippery slope for their business models and the traditional network, affiliate and even agency models. I agree to a certain extent but think there is a big enough pie for all comers to have a slice. The obvious convergence plan for Google's technologies; Adsense, Adwords, Affiliate Network, CheckOut, Analytics and display activity with DoubleClick integration will benefit advertisers in the long run. The holy grail for nearly all online marketers is a ratifiable and comfortable 360 degree view of the customer, which channel / medium is contributing to the sale and in which order - back to the old queston of where is the money best spent? A burgeoning affiliate offering from Google that offers a merchant:

1) A new publisher base
2) A different approach to account management from the traditional networks
3) Cost and scale benefits with other Google products or beta projects
4) A 360 degree view of the customer through; organic search, paid search, CPM activity, content network and also CPA affiliate activity
5) 100% ratifiable stats from Google Analytics

Will be quite hard for most merchants not to at least consider. Ultimately the majority of online advertisers are still looking for more comfort about how they're splitting their spend. In many cases it will be good news for affiliates, with better stats around the true incremental value of affiliate activity then publishers might not be so readily cut out of the mix (or have commissions reduced) as they are at the moment - a theme explored by this rallying cry for affiliates to show their true worth in times of budget cuts.

It's an interesting and logical development but i'd be more worried if I was network side, how do you possibly compete with the Google full service arsenal? BTW Has anyone any thoughts on when this will be coming to the UK market?

The power of the internet in a sentence (or two)...

2008-06-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

I've heard many lengthy jottings and articles about what the essence of the internet actually is, but I think John Battelle has hit the nail on the head:

"...the web is not organized top down. It's organized bottoms up. Distribution is not something you use to push shit AT people, it's something that happens when people organize TOWARD something. That's the whole point of the web, ain't it?"

Succinct and to the point...

Taking data 'import' to a whole new level

2008-06-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

An interesting piece discussed on the Freakonomics blog over the past couple of days regarding ImportGenius. This new site collects and displays the contents of all the import and export containers shipped into our out of the US.

A very very powerful set of data to look at industry trends, competitor movements and a tool that investors will be looking at more and more to gague company buoyancy if they are export or import dominated.

The Wisdom of Crowds

2008-06-23T12:27:00.001-07:00

I've just finished reading The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, a book that combined a number of my interests, namely social development, fresh business thinking, the stock market and behavioural economics. The basic premise of the book is suggested by the title - the fact that the best decisions are made by 'wise' crowds rather than one person, groups that are diverse in opinion, depolarised and have independent decentralised constituents make better decisions.

One of the bits that stuck out for me was around the IEM, something i've heard about before but never really taken an interest in. In short it's a future's market set up for academic research that focuses on the US Presidential Elections and various other smaller markets. It allow users to invest up to $500 in buying shares in the next US President. The IEM embodies the core of Surowiecki's premise; that a non-pressured group who are not saturated with the same potentially biased information can weigh up their own experiences, opinions and views of the problem (Who is more likely to win the Presidential election?) and make a judgement call on the value of that position within this market. The sum of all this individually held information is then collectively expressed in the snapshot of the price for each candidate ($0.62 for Obama & $0.39 for McCain at the time of writing).

There are many other interesting bits and pieces within the book but in terms of application to business it makes the point that businesses that pay lip service to decentralisation and the usefulness of local knowledge don't really benefit from it. A decentralised business structure that enables a flow of appropriate information from top to bottom should be crowned by a board that isn't run by an autocrat but one that really takes on board the views of others and allows dissenting voices. Nothing too revolutionary there you may think - people listening to other people is always good, that's true, but then ponder on the value that businesses now put on chasing the superhero CEO who can do it all? Why do they renumerate Chief Execs so well as if they hold all the answers whilst embarking on what can be an arduous series of feedback loops? Surowiecki's argument is that often listening to other views goes hand in hand with the process of encouraging consensus to a prescribed view anyway and that the whole pitch of the listening process is basically designed to reinforce the original view.

So in short let's not be too gloomy about what a group of people can do, the aggregation of knowledge nearly always outperforms the single smartest member.

I decided to start a blog

2008-06-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have a pretty interesting job, not very interesting and nothing to get too excited about if you're not in online marketing but it's pretty interesting. I also like to think that i'm quite a rounded chap with a view on many things in the world, so why not start a blog with no explicit ambition other than to give my views and thoughts an airing?

In terms of the interesting job then I manage the website Holidays Uncovered one of the UK's leading holiday review websites. I also manage the affiliate programme and online partnerships for Thomson and a whole host of other TUI Travel PLC websites such as Portland Holidays and Simply Travel. It's obviously very important to stress that any opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not at all affiliated to TUI Travel PLC. I plan to give a relatively frequent view on what is going on in the affiliate marketing arena, online marketing more generally (apparently something called 'search' is quite popular these days), social networking trends & views and also the travel industry so i'm sure i'll never be short of a subject or two.

Outside of work, online marketing and social network sites my hobbies (and no doubt future topics I will write about) are US Politics, football (Coventry City imparticular), reading and also running.

So feel free to question, prod, criticise and ask for clarification on anything I write in this blog, enjoy!