Performics Releases OrangeLinksSM

by Scott Jangro on 12 June 2006

Today, 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.

  • 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.
  • 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?).
  • Scott
    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.
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