Performics Releases OrangeLinksSM
12 June 2006 – 1:38 pmToday, Performics announced that they are releasing “OrangeLinksSM“. In a major technological breakthrough, Performics has learned the RGB value for orange and will be forcing all affiliates to update their links so that they’ll be Orange in color.
According to Larry Adams, Affiliate Product Manager at Performics, “The OrangeLinksSM will add significant value to our affiliate network,” Adams continues, “Our advertisers will be able to easily find their links on affiliate websites because they’re bright orange. And affiliates will not confuse them with Commission Junction links and risk removing them as a result of the Link Management Initative.”
“And we hope Google human reviewers will appreciate being able to easily discern whether an affiliate website is ‘thin’ or not just by squinting and looking at how Orange a website appears.” concludes Adams.
But what about good old Blue links? How will the affiliate community react to this?
Performics did confirm that OrangeLinks will be HTML links, the preferred link style of affiliate marketers (just prettier.)
And what’s really behind this Orange Link Initiative? Inside sources indicate that the Orange links will appeal to affiliate marketers in The Netherlands, where Performics will be making their entry into the European marketplace.
ok, seriously now…
What Performics is calling OrangeLinks, looks like a pretty cool feature announced today. Performics will be allowing affiliates to create customized rules for remote delivery of pre-generated (or “live”) links based on criteria they set in the Performics Connect Commerce interface. As an affiliate I can specify what types of link (banner sizes, text, etc.) as well as which merchants, certain types of links, or just brand-new links. Pertty cool.
But I wonder, why not a linking API? Now that would be nice.
They’re serving the least common denominator, I guess — email.
Unfortunately, the timing of this coincides with Commission Junction’s Link Management Initiative, and people will undoubtedly compare the two when there’s really no relation whatsoever. This is an optional new feature for Performics, not a required technology or infrastructure change.
I must say, it is nice to see innovative fuctionality coming out of a network, rather than headaches.
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10 Responses to “Performics Releases OrangeLinksSM”
They have an FTP option, as well.
There are some valid comparisons with CJ’s LMI.
CJ’s LMI is intended in part to help keep affiliate sites up to date, and one of their stated motivations is “additional ways to find and select links” (although I don’t see how LMI helps).
Performics’ OrangeLinks truly will help affiliates keep their sites up to date and file and select links. (Without any of the nasty side effects that would come with JavaScript.)
Bravo to Performics (and their Affiliate Advisory Board) for coming up with such helpful functionality!
By Michael Coley on Jun 12, 2006
You’re right, Michael, you could make those comparisons, though what I meant is as far as a “link change” goes, there isn’t one here.
But yes, most importantly, I echo your contrats on a good feature.
By Scott on Jun 13, 2006
It was certainly good news after the CJ stuff. We have already FTP with Performics to receive Datafeeds which helps, but I agree, an API should be provided at one point.
Why pushing files around on the Internet and on the services, if you could simply “give” it to me in real-time, when I need it?
I need to look at this a bit more in detail for more comments.
You beat me blogging about it. It has it’s advantages to be an Affiliate working from home, doesn’t it?!
By Carsten Cumbrowski on Jun 14, 2006
Michael, CJ offers a Links feed for Links that are categorized by the Merchant as promotional btw.
They have that feature for a while now but as always never mentioned anything anywhere, including the online help (you have to ask haha … happy fortune telling).
That’s CJ policy as it seems. Don’t tell anybody about the good and useful features implemented secretly, because partners might get the idea to want and use it. Not to mention that this could result into positive feedback.
I wonder what will happen to it after LMI.
I hope I did not make CJ mad, because I mentioned the feature, but honestly, I don’t believe it to survive the LMI (Do you hear me CJ?).
By Carsten Cumbrowski on Jun 14, 2006
Carsten, you haven’t told any big secrets on CJ here. And those who haven’t heard about it aren’t really missing out, IMO. It’s loaded with garbage and is missing some of the fields that are really needed in a promotions database. Generally, it’s pretty much useless. Too bad, because it’s a great idea.
I’m not patting myself on the back when I say that the Be Free offer system was done right. (I wasn’t the owner of that project, only gave lots of input). Not only does it have the right organization for the data, but it was monitored closely and only real promotions were allowed in there.
Unfortunately, we/they never got around to building an API for that (though it’s pretty easily scraped), and now BF is disappearng. Alas.
>> You beat me blogging about it. It has it’s advantages to be an Affiliate working from home, doesn’t it?!
For sure, and this is the least of it. What did you do yesterday? I went bass fishing.
But is it about “beating” each other to a story? When I write something, I prefer to offer more than just a news story. I like to spend some time on adding something to the story (for better or worse, perhaps worse in this case.) Judging from your recent stories, you’re the same way. So go ahead and write about it. (And if you’re second and like what I wrote, drop me a link. I’d do the same for you.)
That’s one of the things that can be frustrating about writing on Revenews. It can be a race to be first. Several times I’ve spent time writing a thoughtful story about some event only to be beat by another who wrote a much lighter piece. Then I feel funny putting a second story in right afterwards in the same blog.
That’s an advantage of having an independent blogs, and it’s no problem if we write about similar stuff. In fact, I think we (the independent affiliate marketing bloggers) should be helping each other out a whole lot more and start to eliminate one of the disadvantages — getting eyeballs.
By Scott on Jun 14, 2006
Yes, I know about (and subscribe to) CJ’s promotional datafeed. Unfortunately (for the reasons you listed and more) it’s virtually useless.
1. It’s only sent out once a week. I’ve been told repeatedly that I can’t get it more often than that. These are PROMOTIONS. They’re often short-term. Weekly just doesn’t cut it. Daily would be quite a bit better, but the best option would be a real-time API.
2. Many merchants don’t properly categorize their promotions, so I miss some.
3. It doesn’t have all of the fields I would like.
4. There’s a ton of garbage in there.
BeFree’s Offer Management system has always been my favorite. ShareASale’s Coupon/Deal Database is pretty good, too.
It’s good to see the other major networks heading in this direction now.
By Michael Coley on Jun 14, 2006
The thing regarding the CJ secret was meant sarcastic, but the fact remains, that CJ does not a very good job with providing information about new features or additional options for existing ones.
I found out about the feed and some other helpful stuff by coincidence. If you search the CJ help you will not find it.
The Feed is not very good, but so is the product feed (although it got better). Btw. There are also Commission Details and Transaction Details Feeds.
Michael, We get the Feed daily, but ours is setup to provide only changes and not full feeds. I don’t know when you asked or how you asked, but it was certainly different when I asked in February.
You might want to check this Page
http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/affiliatemarketing.asp#docus
and learn more
I never saw the BeFree Offer Management System so I can’t tell much about it. Scott, If you have any Docu, please send it to me. I have already some stuff collected for Coupon and Promotion Feeds and may be write something up like I did for Product Feeds. See this:
http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/scraps/200601_Datafeeds_for_Affilates.asp
I also wrote some stuff regarding Webservices, API’s etc. which I have to work on a little bit more, before I can make at least a stub out of it.
p.s. The “you beat me” was also just a joke, but I hear you regarding ReveNews. Different posts usually provide different views and details, which is a good thing. If the other blogger spelled out a paragraph or so already, just cut your own shorter and link to the other post.
That is what blogging is all about. Conversation and Community.
By Carsten Cumbrowski on Jun 15, 2006
OK, i was asleep for a while so I’m weighing in late!
scott said: “That’s one of the things that can be frustrating about writing on Revenews. It can be a race to be first. Several times I’ve spent time writing a thoughtful story about some event only to be beat by another who wrote a much lighter piece. Then I feel funny putting a second story in right afterwards in the same blog.”
You should not be put off by this, Scott. Your entries are insightful and offer a more in-depth look at the content - so what if one of the other’s ‘broke’ the story - that’s irrelevant - they’re mostly just first to get the press release anyway LOL. I beleive that Revenews is supposed to be about providing insight into the news/technology that affects our industry. Anyway - sitting in South Africa I never get to break anything either LOL!
I love your blog and am going to link to it from the Forge Blogs!
By jonathan miller on Aug 23, 2006
What would be a lot better is an automatically updated display, where you could specify the size, of rotating links with each of your affiliates. Since promos seem to die off rather quickly, it would attract more people to the program. The way it is now, any small bit I might make is totally negated by having to spend my time updating links every couple of days. What I don’t like about CJ is the tracking cookie, but so far they are offering a much easier management solution.
By VirusHead on Mar 24, 2007