Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

Posted by: Shelly Spafford, Senior Customer Service Representative

Most affiliates understand the need to run effective promotions in order to make sales. However, many affiliates may not understand how the information they can gain through the use of Tracking IDs can help them promote products more successfully. In this post, I’ll explain what they are and how they can be a huge help to your business.

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Posted by: Jeff Leget, Director of Operations

Microsoft is gearing up for another major release of Internet Explorer. A recent blog post at 5 Star Affiliate Programs discussed concerns regarding this upgrade. Like the recent Firefox upgrade, the new IE8 beta promises to have additional security features that make browsing safer. With each browser release, ClickBank and other Internet advertisers are left wondering how those new security features that make “browsing safer” will affect now-common advertising practices.

At ClickBank, we always try to stay a step ahead of the latest browser releases. We recently tested the IE8 beta and confirmed that it did NOT affect ClickBank affiliate tracking in any way.  We performed the same tests on Mozilla Firefox several weeks ago and came to the same conclusion. ClickBank does not use 3rd party cookies to track affiliate commissions. Since the Hoplinks our affiliates are asked to use direct a consumer’s browser to a “clickbank.net” Web address, without the use of popups or embedded tags, ClickBank is able to place legitimate 1st party cookies on consumers’ PCs, for accurate affiliate tracking. When cookies are disabled or otherwise blocked, ClickBank uses other proprietary methods to track affiliate commissions.

The larger issue here is the public’s opinion that cookies themselves are “bad.” Most Web sites today use browser-based cookies to track user preferences, search history, etc. Wikipedia states, “Cookies are also subject to a number of misconceptions, mostly based on the erroneous notion that they are computer programs. In fact, cookies are simple pieces of data unable to perform any operation by themselves. In particular, they are neither spyware nor viruses, despite the detection of cookies from certain sites by many anti-spyware products.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie for more information.

This consumer misconception about browser cookies plagues many online retailers. When consumers blindly disable cookies, online retailers have difficulty providing a targeted and personalized experience to the consumer. ClickBank vendors and affiliates can do their part by making sure they explicitly abide by our privacy policy and refrain from any unscrupulous advertising practices. At ClickBank, we’ll continue to do our part by testing new browser releases, maintaining quality technology, and building a recognizable and trusted brand.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

Many of our product publishers and affiliates turn to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, such as Google Adwords, to help drive quality traffic to their sites. While there are many ways to improve the performance of PPC advertising, one of the most useful, but occasionally overlooked, methods is a technique called daypart bidding.

Daypart bidding, also known as Ad Scheduling in Google Adwords, is a tool that is offered by both Google and MSN’s AdCenter. It allows you to adjust your bids in a particular PPC advertising campaign, based both on the day of the week and the time of day. You can turn off campaigns completely, or boost your bid to double your normal bid or more. It’s quick and easy to use, and gives you a great deal of control over your advertising.

While this technique can be especially useful for businesses with specific operating hours, it can also be very advantageous for online-only businesses like ClickBank clients. Since ClickBank reports the time of day of every sale, it can be helpful to analyze what days and times deliver the most value for you, and then adjust your advertising bids accordingly. For some people, this may be during normal business hours, but depending on the product it could be late at night or on the weekend.

Once you’ve identified your “prime time,” you can adjust your bids to make sure your product or site is getting maximum exposure at that time. Likewise, if there’s a particular day or time that your site just can’t seem to convert, you can turn down your bids during those times to save your advertising budget for more effective periods.

One great thing about daypart bidding is that you can make use of it even if you don’t have any kind of Web site analytics installed. All you need are the PPC advertiser’s traffic reporting and ClickBank’s sales reporting to start improving your advertising efforts and getting the most return on your investment. To achieve the biggest improvements, though, you should combine ClickBank’s reporting with Web site analytics and testing to get a complete picture of your site’s traffic and sales.

If you haven’t already tried daypart bidding, give it a shot and see how much more you can get out of your budget!

Posted by: Laura M., Advertising Manager

For publishers who are just starting out or want to expose their product to thousands of affiliates, advertising in ClickBank’s Marketplace has always been a great option. With that in mind, ClickBank is proud to announce the expansion of its advertising program to include Marketplace sub-categories. Now affiliates will be able to more easily connect with publishers who fit their niche.

On July 1, we added 160 new advertising slots on our “Money & Employment” and “Computing & Internet” sub-category pages (8 ads per sub-category). Throughout the rest of the summer, we will continually open up more sub-categories until all of them are available! The next sub-categories we will open up for advertising are “Home & Family” and “Marketing & Ads” on July 15. Make sure to seize this opportunity to get your product in front of interested affiliates, as spots in the Marketplace fill up quickly!

For details and pricing information, please visit:
http://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html