As promised, CJ has launched their Link Management Initiative on June 23 (a bit early for them, still the 22nd on the west coast).
Here’s what a basic link code looks like.
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.dpbolvw.net/placeholder-1299? TARGET=_top&MOUSEOVER=N"></script>
My first observation is they’ve got a parameter in the src url called “placeholder-xxxx”, where xxxx = a number. Each time I create a link, this number increases by a few. I’m guessing that each time someone generates a link, this number goes up by 1. I’m in the door early with the 1,299th link generation. I guess I can put any number in there and get some random links that someone else has created. We’ll put that aside for now, and play with that later.
Here’s what that link actually does,
A small graphic link.
Let’s give a text link a try. I’ll insert the basic tag right in the middle of a sentence. The tag looks exactly the same as above, just a different number in the src url.
One of my favorite hosting providers is bluehost. Give them a try.
I don’t know if it’s wordpress or what, but in my browser, the text link appeared as a new paragraph. I put no line breaks in my code. That’s no good. It does look better in Firefox than Safari.
Time to create a LMI test page.
The above text page has very basic CSS, with no strange formatting on the script or image tags. The bad formatting appears to be happening on a basic page.
Link Generation
Here’s what a text link generation window looks like. Javascript links are the default. There’s a link to get a “legacy” formatted link, as well as a few options for customizing the display.
Controlling the Link
There are fields in the link creation interface that allow you to customize the link in the following ways:
SID: You can put an SID tracking parameter in the link as before. This causes an SID= parameter to be placed in the Javascript src URL, which then carrys into the links that are served by the javascript.
Link text: You can override the default text of a text link by putting your own text in the interface. You can control which of the text is link text with some simple markup, <link>…</link>. The text you put in gets encoded into the Javascript URL.
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.jdoqocy.com/placeholder-2057?TARGET=_top&TEXT= This+is+a+%3Clink%3Elink%3C%2Flink%3E+in+ the+middle+of+a+sentence.&MOUSEOVER=N"></script>
Image URL: You can specify a different image url for image type links. This url gets put in the src url as a parameter.
Email Links
There is an option in the link creation tool that allows you to select email formatting. This eliminates the javascript and you get a plain HTML link. (which is looking better and better all the time.
Keyword Links
The Keyword link “get html” window looks just like it did before, and the links did not change at all.
Summary
That’s enough for one post. I’ll follow up with some additional tests.
In short, my first impressions are that I’m discouraged by the formatting problems caused by these links. There may be workarounds. So far, I’ve seen nothing that changes my mind about the feasibility of Javascript links as the only link. I’ll admit, I haven’t given it a full workup yet.
If you agree, sign the no LMI petition.
And see here for a more Technical look at the new LMI links.
