Sorry for missing a week of writing, has been a hectic few weeks for me.Anyway, decided it was time to look over the comments that people have left regarding Facebook, Myspace, Performance Based Marketing – curious what people are saying? I was, and you'll find people's comments very interesting.
It was revealed that Facebook, the mega social networking site, had topped over $800 million in revenue for 2009. Since it is not a public company, they have not publically revealed this, but according to my source over there, this number is accurate and that the revenue number for 2010 is already trending at what could be a $1.4 billion dollar year. However, he did point out (since he is a reader of my blog) that there is some sign that the revenue for the last half of the year might actually be less than the first half of the year based on the enormous policy changes that Facebook has had in its relationship to Affilaite Marketing. As I’ve pointed out before, Facebook has taken a very aggressive stance on Affiliate marketers, and I might know why.
If you read the comments from my friend Rob Cotter @ FixionMEdia, a boutique music ad network you’d get that he’s not a “huge fan of the CPA model, as marketers are vying for free advertising. If I’m reading The Economist, I don’t clip out a BMW ad and send it to their corporate HQ so they can pay The Economist for the lead. It’s ridiculous.” On the other side, we have Evan the CEO of Experience Advertising, who says that “Any media rarely backs into the target CPA… better focus on putting together CPA partnerships.” They are both going back into the whole debate of CPM vs. CPA, in which publishers will demand premium prices for their inventory, but marketers and a growing amount of agencies want accountability. Is it really CPA vs. CPM? Are the two worlds really that far apart? From the comments, you’d think that the two sides are at war and can’t come together.
As the former owner of a Comscore rated display ad network, and now the manager of a major performance marketing network, I seem to have unique insight into how networks and performance/affiliate companies work. Before owning the major network, I was actually a multi-million dollar affiliate of my current company. I’ve a great deal of experience in making CPA-based campaigns work on “brand CPM” inventory – and the real issues in dealing with running CPA/Performance marketing campaigns on CPM display inventory. Thus, as part of my tireless mission to inform and educate the public with my brilliant analysis, here is the first of a two part series on the issues of CPA campaigns and display marketing. Read on!
Over the last few weeks, despite only posting once in a while, IndustryPace.com has grown larger than many of the major performance and brand marketing publications. Ranked in the top 100,000 of US websites, I must say, is pretty damn spectacular for a personal blog by a writer who barely has time to read his own blog, let alone write in it. That being said, it’s obvious that with over 40,000 readers a month, I’m hitting the nail on the head and forcing some people to think (or change their business models?).. or at least writing well enough that some people find it interesting. I’d like to challenge readers to work with me on brainstorming topics and more importantly, solutions and partnerships in brand and performance marketing. This will be a perfect opportunity to feature your company, what you do exactly and how everyone in the industry can work with you—and more importantly, how we can all work together.
For those who didn’t know, Google recently bought AdMob, the small but highly innovative mobile advertising company for the extremely inflated price of $750 Million. For those who don’t know, that is the gross national product of the country of Kiribati, a small country made up of a bunch of atolls. While AdMob hadn’t quite made anywhere around that amount of revenue, Google wanted to gobble it up before someone else did and to have a quick way to access the growing revenue stream available on Mobile Applicatications. Part of this strategy was to be able to access the significant population of IPHONE users. However, recently Apple came out with new developer rules that will prevent ADMob and Google Adsense from being displayed on Iphone applications… and thus a significant issue with ADMob’s revenue stream. However, perhaps things aren’t as they seem…
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:47AM | tagged Affiliate, General, wickedfire In 2000 I launched ADBUMb, which quickly became the largest and most recognizable affiliate marketing publication out there – was all about performance based marketing, all about what was going on in the industry. And it had a lot of photos of hot girls in the industry partying. In 2005, in an attempt to mature my audience and my own business, it was changed into the publication ADOTAS.com which still lives today in another form, albeit much smaller and a bit more boring. Writers such as Missy Ward and Shawn Collins who launched Affiliate Summit wrote almost weekly for me. Everyone in our industry read my publications – and I knew everyone and everything about the industry. Yet, having spent a few days on WickedFire however, I feel like a newbie all over again. WickedFire and the new generation of Affiliate Marketers know it all.
