The Commission Junction Link Management Initiative (LMI) has prompted a strong reaction from affiliates. CJ is planning a change their link structure from plain HTML links over to mandatory use Javascript links. While some may feel that "links are links", or that it must be fine because similar offerings, like Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network, are using this technology for delivering their advertisements, affiliate marketing is as broad and diverse in methods used as there are applications on the Internet. A single inflexible technique like Javascript links are inconvenient at best, impossible to use at worst.

Affiliate marketing involves promoting and presenting a link to a product or service on a website, email or in an advertisement. Some promotions take the form of simple banner or text link advertisements, others are search boxes and rich content like a product showcase. And even others are links tightly integrated into a web application like a coupon database, a comparison shopping engine, or text links placed in context into paragraphs of text like in a message board, a blog, or other content-based website.

An advertising network can do something like require remotely loading Javascript link code. However, for an affiliate network, in an industry whose value comes so much from the ingenuity and creativity of it's members in presenting offers, to make it so difficult to work with them is unimaginable.

Unfortunately, any discussion about the pros and cons of the LMI invariably gets technical very quickly. People without the time or inclination to really understand the details will avoid the issue, leave it in the hands of others, or dismiss the complaints as irrational with a generalization like "this is how Google does it" or "this is where the industry is moving."

This document will attempt to offer some insight into the practical application of Javascript links vs. Legacy links.

Basic Link Placement

For publishers who cut and paste the occasional banner or text link on their website in an advertising fashion, the LMI isn't really that much different and in fact offers some benefits.

Here are simple examples of how links are formatted.

Legacy link: <a href="http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-0000-0000">link text</a>

Javascript link: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.jdoqocy.com/placeholder-1299?TARGET=_top&MOUSEOVER=N"></script>

The benefit of the Javascript link in a basic advertising context is that the content is not hard-coded into the page. Therefore, the merchant or network can dynamically change the content in useful manner. That is why contextual advertising uses this method. It's critical to the functionality.

However, if an affiliate goes at all beyond the use case of putting an advertisement on their website, such as integration with their content and needing to manipulate the HTML within the link, the deficiencies of Javascript quickly become apparent.

With Legacy links, the link's HTML is directly available and included in statically in the affiliate website. This allows the affiliate to quickly and easily edit the link text, font size, color and style, with HTML using their web development tools. Legacy links give affiliates all the control they need to present the merchant offer in best way possible.

The HTML code in Javascript links is not available at editing time and therefore the web developer is working blind as to how the link will appear. Further, in order to do something as simple as change the link text or the font color, they need to encode that information into the Javascript link. Doing something as simple as typing in text or using tools to format it quickly become unnatural and onerous.

In order to change the link text and font in a legacy link, it's simple. The affiliate simply changes the HTML code, here:

This is <a href="http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-0000-0000">link text</a> in the middle of a sentence.

But in order to change the link text in a Javascript link, it's much more complex.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.jdoqocy.com/placeholder-2057?TARGET=_top&TEXT=This+is+%3Clink%3Elink%3C%2Flink+text%3E +in+the+middle+of+a+sentence.&MOUSEOVER=N"></script>

An affiliate has two options editing text in a Javascript link. They can go into the CJ interface and type the text into the link creation tool. That will encode the text and incorporate it into the Javascript link. Or, they can manually do what the CJ interface does, which is to URL encode (change characters that will break a URL into safe codes) the text and insert it into the Javascript request. URL encoding is not easy to do manually. Certain characters like ampersand, colon, space, etc. must be changed into a three digit code.

What would you rather work with for editing basic link text?

This:

This is link text in the middle of a sentence

or this:

This+is+%3Clink+text%3Elink%3C%2Flink%3E+in+ the+middle+of+a+sentence

All you need to do is time yourself in doing this operation with Javascript links vs Legacy links to see that if you had to do this a dozen or more times in a row that it would be way more work than it should be to do something so basic.

Changing the image in a link involves a similar process, but to me, text links are the more typical use case by far when creating a compelling affiliate page that converts well.

More info: See here for screenshots and more detail on what is involved with modifying JS link text and graphics.

Database driven websites

Affiliates who have large complex websites with lots of coupons, offers, merchants, and products typically turn to a database driven solution to manage the large volume of content. These affiliates build large databases of affiliate links that get programatically incorporated into the site content. For example, a shopping site may have a page comparing the price of a certain model of Adidas running shoes across eight different merchants. This page will have no less than 8 affiliate links, probably more. The link text will probably vary to reflect the price or the merchant name. There will also be links using more than one affiliate network.

Sites like this are built with standard templates for the presentation of a product. The product name, description, price, and merchant name all go into the page content. The portion that is the link requires the simple replacement of the link text and the click URL into an HMTL anchor tag. This is a simple operation when all links are simple HTML links. When a completely different linking technology is involved, the website front- and back-ends will need to be redesigned to handle the new types of links. Additional coding will need to be added to the website to identify CJ links vs. other networks and code the link with Javascript (doing all of the encoding described above) instead of using a standard linking method.

Third-party Website Tools: Blogs, Message Boards, and CMS systems

Many websites publishers employ third-party website creation tools. The most common of these are Blogs. Virtually all blogs use a third-party solution like Wordpress and Moveable Type. Other Content Management Systems are available to separate the coding of a website from content creation. In doing so, the publisher loses direct control over how certain types of HTML can be presented on a website. And, because of the potential that Javascript code has in affecting the presentation of a web-page, many of these tools do not allow the insertion of Javascript into the content of a page.

Message boards are even more restrictive in this as content is added by many users. In this case, Javascript code poses a security risk and must be disabled.

In some cases it would be merely difficult to insert CJ Javascript affiliate code. In other cases impossible.

Local Redirects

Many of the complexities involved with incorporating affiliate links into the content of a website can be lessened by using local redirects. A local redirect is where a click is sent first to a script on the publisher website which then does any lookups or tracking required before redirecting the user's browser through an affiliate link. For example, the complexities of managing many different affiliate links from different merchants and network providers (such as the price comparison example above) can be mitigated by using local redirect code.

Standard HTTP redirects are accomplished through a method (HTTP GET) that Commission Junction is planning to prohibit. In order to perform a redirect that is compliant with CJ's potential future mandate that a POST request is used, a special technique is required (a Javascript method). This technique is not only more complex, but is far less reliable than the standard method. This means lost traffic.

Employing redirects requires advanced technical skills, beyond the scope of many affiliate marketers. It's not that they would be unable to acquire these skills, it is more that it would require significant effort and time away from other efforts, and in many cases adds more complexity to their website than necessary.

More info: See here for details on a method for redirecting in the manner that LMI would require.

Email Marketing

Email clients will generally not allow the execution of Javascript code and it becomes impossible to promote via email with Javascript links.

Commission Junction has acknowledged this limitation and will be allowing plain html links in email messages.

Pay-per-Click

Affiliates who promote through affiliate links in PPC search engines will not be allowed to use anything but a simple url as the click URL in an advertisement.

Commission Junction has acknowledged this limitation and will be allowing plain html links in PPC advertisements.

Reliability and Availability

Javascript is good for performing advanced techniques on a website, such as dynamically changing content. The popular techniques that are commonly referred to as "Web 2.0" use Javascript to accomplish effects that help simplify and streamline a complex web interface. The benefits of using Javascript in those cases outweigh the fact that many users use browsers that either do not support Javascript or who have disabled Javascript. While that number is relatively small (CJ claims 1% of visitors), the number of users who have browsers that support Javascript but DISABLE it is much larger. In many studies and surveys, these numbers exceed 10%. See here for a summary of some of those studies.

Performance

Javascript links, in their standard implementation from CJ, require a remote call to the CJ servers for the display of every link.

With Javascript links, if a web page has only 6 affiliate links on it, that requires at least 7 requests for the data to display. This increases linearly with every additional link. Many affiliate sites legitimately have dozens of affiliate links on a page.

With plain HTML, regardless of the number of links, there is only one page request.

1. browser request -> server-response -> browser displays html

With Javascript links, with 6 links on a page, there are at least 7 remote requests:

1. browser request -> server-response ->
2. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
3. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
4. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
5. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
6. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
7. browser-request-javascript -> CJ server creates code and responds -> browser executes javascript
8. page displays (only after all javascript is fetched and executed)

In the latter case, if any of the javascript requests get held up, that will prevent the display of the entire page, or a portion of it, depending on the browser and where the code is displayed on the page.

SEO & Accessibility

When a web-page is read by anything other than a Javascript-enabled web browser, obviously, any content that is delivered via Javascript cannot be viewed.

While that's fine when a simple advertisement (like a banner ad or a contextual ad) is served, but this is an important factor when actual important website content is delivered via Javascript.

Consider the case where you have a paragraph of text, including some affiliate links. Here's an example with only three in-context affiliate links (links are simulated):

When exercising with my iPod nano, I frequently have trouble keeping the basic earbud microphones in my ears. I don't know if this is unique to me, but it's distracting and frustrating to be continually pushing the earbuds back into my ears with every small tug or bounce of the wires. To resolve this, I have purchased and tried the Koss KSC22 earphones and Philips HS301 Ear Hook headphones. Here's what I've found...

That same paragraph with standard CJ Javascript links would appear like this to a search engine spider or a browser that doesn't execute Javascript.

When running with my, I frequently have trouble keeping the basic earbud microphones in my ears. I don't know if this is unique to me, but it's distracting and frustrating to be continually pushing the earbuds back into my ears with every small tug or bounce of the wires. To resolve this, I have purchased and tried the and . Here's what I've found...

The content has become useless to machines and humans alike.

Summary

Without giving critical thought and a deeper look at the the concept of a mandatory switch to Javascript, it's easy to gloss over the Link Management Initiative as one simply requiring adaptation to a technology change and evolution of the Internet.

The fact is that mandatory Javascript links breaks the very essence of web-design by removing the most basic element -- the standard html link.

By applying the logic used by Commission Junction to keep plain HTML links available for PPC and email, it isn't difficult to see that the same is required for web pages as well. After all, what is PPC but the renting of small space on another website? How is this different than promoting an affiliate link on your own website?

While there are many useful cases for a Javascript link, web design tools, web development techniques, current browser support, performance implications, and basic SEO and accessibility guidelines dictate that standard HTML links remain available for affiliate marketers.

What Next?

• If you think this will impact you in any way, I encourage you to let Commission Junction know (and if you're a publisher, let your advertisers know). Do this in any way you see fit. Send an email, make a phone call. One way is to sign the petition. If you just want to vote with your feet, that's fine too, but I think it's still too early for that.
• Do your best to become informed about the Javascrpt links. Read other blogs and message boards (watch my blog for a comprehensive list soon). Most importantly, try them out. Speaking out has infinitely more weight when it comes from a position of knowledge.
• No matter who you are...sign the petition