I just finished listening to the first episode of Affiliate Insider on Webmaster Radio hosted by Linda Woods.
These longer audio programs are tough for me to listen to regularly as they take up a big chunk of time, but I wanted to at least give the first show a listen.
Affiliate Marketing isn’t the most exciting of subjects, so it takes a good personality to make it a fun listen. I actually haven’t interacted with Linda very much over the years, so I didn’t know what to expect. She did a great job.
It was nice that she had Chris Henger of DoubleClick Performics as her first guest. I consider Chris a good friend, and he’s one of my favorite industry people to chat with, so it was nice to hear his familiar voice.
Ultimately, the show is only going to be as good as the subject matter and the expertise behind it. Linda and Chris talked about what to expect in 2008, and the the changing landscape of the publisher business.
Chris also talked about some of the important initiatives coming for Performics. In 2008 they’ll be specifically focusing on ease of use to connect the advertiser to the publisher with a goal of saving time for publishers. This will manifest itself in more investment in product feeds, making it easier for publishers to get and filter feeds, continued use of their OrangeLinks and continuing to deliver feed based assets, messaging, and communication.
All good stuff.
They talked about the importance of content in affiliate marketing, and the phenomenon that non-shopping related content generally does not equate to high sales in affiliate programs — that publishers and their audiences are not always primed for shopping.
They finished the show touching on Social Networks and their role in affiliate marketing. Both expressed that the space is still young and people are still figuring out how to monetize the social networking space.
Listen to the show to hear the details on these topics. I’ll be tuning in to check out the next one.
