5 Star Affiliate Blogs

I’ve been yukkin it up over at the MAD Magazine for the Blogosphere. I thought I’d show you this Protection Paranoia cartoon since I have not done a Friday Funny for awhile

Heres the cookie eating report I blogged about last week fresh off the press from Ben edelman. The biggest affiliate networks have affiliate tracking cookies detected most often.

Vinny Lingham has asked Ben Edelman to conduct a new study about the impact of anti-spyware software on affiliate cookies.

Its a continuing challenge to educate consumers that cookies are OK and are not spyware. Through the education we will separate fact from hype.

Hey all you Parasite and Spyware Warriors. Founders of a well known spyware – adware – parasite distributor are finalists for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & Young.

The group’s goal is to discuss all issues of importance to the affiliate marketing industry and of course, one of the most pressing issues is parasites and Adware. Adware hurts our ENTIRE industry and EVERYONE’S income! Not just affiliates – but also the networks that allow the adware are suffering from lower revenues due to their own actions.

1st the bad news – The most recent version of SpyBot Search and Destroy (a very popular anti-spyware program) is reported to be blocking cookies for all the major networks: Commission Junction, LinkShare and Performics.

Is it OK to serve full page pop unders of CJ links? NO. It’s considered cookie-stuffing or setting forced clicks – besides that it’s bad for our industry – Why???

Any initiatives that help clean up the advertising industry will result in more long-term revenue for affiliate marketers. Restricting or eliminating Adware download apps

YES I am still obsessed with cookies. Whether you do PPC or other types of advertising they are the foundation for tracking in the online marketing industry and I KNOW affiliates are missing out on lots of sales due to cookie issues. There has not been a big rash

Brian Livingston does a more in-depth report about ShopatHomeSelect and CJ and parasitic bahavior in general. Ben Edelman says As with its prior terminations of 180solutions, Direct Revenue, and eXact Advertising, CJ

These guys contribute to the growing need for more consumers to buy anti-spyware to protect themselves. Many of these programs block honest marketers links or delete affiliate cookies. The ClientMan Spyware software that was distributed also hijacked search engine requests

Today I will be covering the CJU Award winners and my favorite 4 sessions. I will also share some new products and services that are coming from CJ and other companies, as well as links to some of the other good blogs about CJU so you can hear the news from different angles.

An affiliate manager on a forum I frequent asked for advice and the pros and cons of approving 2 affiliates for his program that are considered to be “parasites” but have high EPC rankings. There were lots of good comments that I wish I could quote – but I can’t. However, since it stirred up such a reaction…

Happily I report the media has virtually lynched Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter Mossberg for his report that basically said all tracking cookies are bad and should be deleted – especially 3rd party cookies…

No wonder consumers are confused about spyware, adware and cookies. This article just makes me see red! LEGIT Anti-spyware companies call a spade a spade and get sued over it…

“At a forum held Wednesday by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), panelists and attendees suggested a variety of potential solutions to convince computer users to keep cookies, but they reached no consensus…

Ralph Wilson just published a great article about merchants and direct linking. Many merchants want to “use” their affiliates for link pop even though they are only paying them for sales. I don’t really believe that motivation is fair. However, there are several pros and cons to this linking method. One of the pros to direct linking IMHO is protection from adware that targets network links as well as anti-spyware/adblocking software that blocks network links or deletes cookies…

…of the 70 percent of consumers who use some form of anti-spyware software, 79.5 percent say they run the software daily or weekly, 57.6 percent delete every item pointed out by the software, and 48.3 percent delete cookies through the software…

Users aren’t eating cookies as much as previously reported. The following article on cookies is based on new Atlas research which shows users dont delete cookies as often as they say they do. The Jupiter Research cookie report I blogged about on March 14th stated that “as many as 39% of online users may be deleting cookies monthly.” This new report and the following diagram suggest the real cookie story may not be quite as bad as Jupiter’s data showed.