comments Written By: Scott Jangro
May 26, 2006

Commission Junction’s JavaScript Link Follow-Up

News of Commission Junction’s Link Management Initiative (background here) has caused a great deal of speculation from all around the industry, from in-the-mud advertisers and affiliates on message boards and blogs to those who comment from the sidelines.

I mentioned the ABestWeb message board thread, yesterday, which has spun into several other threads offering a range of rants, raves, and aspersions as well as trying to offer constructive suggestions on how Commission Junction should be implementing this change. A Webmasterworld thread has picked up steam as well.

Threadwatch published the story, and what started with a grateful comment about the “lack of whining”, turned into several comments mostly speculating about why Commission Junction has done this and plus some unapologetic whining.

Whining is understandable. This change is not a small one for ANY publisher. Even the most technically savvy publisher will be investing heavily in a technology change to accommodate a “no plain link” policy. This is starting to feel like the P3P privacy policy craze that hit us a few years ago.

What strikes me is that while Commission Junction has offered up lots of benefits of the new link-type, they have not exactly said why they are making such a drastic change to the basic infrastructure of their tracking system. While it’s natural to speculate as to why they’re doing this, many sound like they’ve been in the room with CJ while they’ve been planning all this. Very presumptuous.

Jeff Molander is quick to fit this to his own agenda, stating (not merely alleging) that Commission Junction “has decided that enough of its biggest advertisers care seriously about having broad affiliate control and restricting datafeed affiliates within the realm of search so as to warrant elimination of a good number of affiliates”.

What? CJ has decided to eliminate a good number of affiliates? Will that happen? Maybe. That is their purpose? No — NFW, in my opinion of course, because I don’t know either. (Pardon my French.)

There are ClickZ and MarketingVox articles this morning which are merely echoing Molander’s words, who, again, sounds like he actually knows more than he does. But at least ClickZ had the great idea of actually speaking to a person at Commission Junction. (By the way, Kate, it’s Gerstenberger, with a “b”.)

“CJ is appeasing merchants”, “Google hates affiliate links”, “CJ wants to control all”… Speculation is fine, but let’s remember that’s all this is. Somebody’s probably right…or maybe not.

Let’s also keep in mind that we haven’t yet actually seen the technology change yet.

This is business and I plan to roll with the punches, though I could do with a few less haymakers these days.

I’m looking forward to seeing some technical specs and in the meantime will enjoy my long weekend.

Viewing 5 Comments

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    I whined. ;-) I'm sure some of the new features are great - it's as you said, that the old features and having to change them rots. I'll admit I have old websites generating sales that I won't even remember about to change. I am still holding out hope that either we are missing a piece of the puzzle or that they'll make this a new policy and grandfather all old links in.
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    Has anyone considered the legal implications of this?

    Surely having JS links without alternative HTML goes against the American Disabilty act. It certainly goes against the equivalent DDA here in UK.

    Also the W3c WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) states

    ... "6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page...... "
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    Very intersting point, Bob. I saw that raised on A4U.

    I wonder the same thing.
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    Hi Scott

    Yes it's same idea but taking it from a local (UK) issue to a global one.

    In UK, apart from government and a few major corporations, the accessibility issue in web design is not taken too seriously.

    The Disability Discrimination act does not specifically mention websites but I'm sure they would be included under "offering services to the public".

    As far as I am aware the only sucessful case concernering disabled access to the internet has been Macguire v Sydney Olympic Committee. But I'm sure many sites (possibly ebay) are aware of the implications and would not wish the bad publicity that would be created by becoming the second.

    Section 508 of the American Rehabilitation act ha similar provision to the WCAG guidelines. I am not sure of the implications of this on non-governmental websites in the US.

    Bob (Donk)
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    Like the UK, I get the feeling that there aren't very many entities here in the US that take accessibility seriously. (There are some, for sure, including the US Gov't). You don't have to browse very far to find something that's inaccessible. It's too bad, but that's the way it is, and I doubt that implications are very strong.

    And, if push came to shove, I think this "provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page" would be an out for CJ. It's up to the publisher, not CJ, to make their sites accessible. And if you're going to have critical content that's served by javascript, like a text link, you should provide an alternative in the <noscript> tag. It just couldn't be a CJ link I guess.

    Not that I want to argue on their side, but that's how it seems to me that this would go.

    In any case, it would be sad to have to rely on something like the ADA for this. If feels like a desparation move that just shouldn't be needed when there are so many other reasons not to go this route.

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