Affiliate Marketing and Search in New Zealand - Search Engine Room

I had the pleasure of attending and was a speaker at (although not for affiliateprograms.co.nz) the Search Engine Room conference yesterday and have to say that I was impressed.

The level of expectation from search industry professionals that the search market in New Zealand is ready for double digit growth over each quarter in the next year is a positive step forward for the New Zealand market.

Search advertising is over 40% of online advertising spend elsewhere in the world however in New Zealand it is still under 30%. Online advertising spend as a percentage of marketing budgets in New Zealand is still well under the worldwide norm with New Zealand online spend at around 7% and the rest of the world between 13-15%.

Will affiliate marketing increases impact on this? It surely will.

Many affiliates spend time bringing viewers to their site through search engine advertising. In New Zealand this has always meant Google Adsense however now with the updated Yahoo! Search Marketing tools available it will need to include YSM as well.

As more affiliate programs are created and more affiliates come online looking for ways to source targeted traffic then search advertising spend in New Zealand will only inrease.

As discussed in a previous post, affiliates need to steer clear of search advertising for branded keywords as many programs expressely forbid this in their terms and conditions however search advertising for long-tail keywords in the New Zealand market are still relatively light in competition for the top positions. While this is true at the moment, it is not likely to stay that way for long, as more marketing managers from companies around New Zealand begin to jump on the band-wagon of search advertising.

With companies in attendance like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! as well as innovative New Zealand companies like Eurekster and SLI-Systems. It was great to see the first search conference become a successful and interesting event.

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Using the Google Referrals system - validation period

Recently Google announced on the Adense Blog that they are implementing a “validation period” on the referrals system for non-Google products.

The Google Referral System lets you (through Adsense) connect directly to advertisers with a revenue share, CPA or hybrid (CPA + revenue share) commission agreement.

The idea of implementing a validation period is that Google can reduce the level of commissions paid to the publisher until it is convinced that the publisher is in fact passing through valid traffic and sales;

For some publishers who display referrals for non-Google products, the earnings you receive for the ad may now be less than the maximum referral value displayed for that ad. This is because our system will initially place a restriction on referral earnings as we monitor click and conversion data to determine that the conversions generated are valid. Once this validation period ends, you’ll begin earning the maximum value of the conversions as displayed in your account.

Nothing particularly surprising about that. It’s quite common in affiliate programs to have a tiered commission structure where an affiliate receives a better commission once they are sending through a certain level of qualified traffic.

Here’s the interesting bit;

We can’t say precisely how long the validation period will last, but will make every effort to ensure that it’s as speedy as possible. It will vary by publisher since site activity is different for everyone, and we anticipate that the majority of you will be minimally affected. However, advertisers will only be charged the maximum referral value once a publisher has completed the validation period.

Now my first question on being put into a validation period is “How long is this period going to last?” and Google have said “We don’t know” or at least “We won’t tell you”.

As an affiliate publisher, one of the key metrics I need to know at any given time is how much money each of my referrals is generating so that I have a basis for deciding on the performance of the advertising I’m running.

It’s easy to see why Google have done this, they are protecting the advertiser to the highest degree possible by saying that they will not increase referral revenues until they deem the maximum referral value has been earned.

Fair enough from an advertisers point of view but very hit-and-miss from a publishers point. Perhaps there is a way that Google could bring some level of transparency into at least the amount of referral revenue a publisher will receive during this validation period and possibly even, on an account by account basis, the expected validation period time-frame?

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.nz Internationalised Domains

If you hadn’t heard about it yet, the DNC (Domain Name Commission) for New Zealand are starting the process towards bringing in the ability to include (for a start) five different characters into the .nz domain space. These are; the the macronised vowels ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū which are not currently available in the .nz domain market.

Having New Zealand domains include these is a logical choice given that a large number of Te Reo Māori words include these characters. If you are interested in having your say about whether or not they should be introduced you can submit directly to the Working Group.

This brings up a few interesting questions in the affiliate marketing world in New Zealand as you may now have people who have been trading on words without these characters where, if they are not the first in to register the new domains, may end up with intellectual property issues (e.g. copyright, passing off) if another company or an affiliate decides to use the domain for the same purposes.

In the affiliate world, being a “domain affiliate” can be a lucrative business. Many affiliates have made a lot of money from buying up domains, both for type-in traffic (where people just type the domain directly into their browser in the hope of getting the site they are looking for) as well as for generic keywords which other companies consider a valuable item.

There are people on both sides of the fence in terms of calling some of the above domain-squatting or not. It is usually a case-by-case basis to be able to call it that as there are many legitimate reasons for registering valuable domains.

For an affiliate program, this can be a double-edged sword and some treat the matter very differently to others. Many affiliate programs will have in their terms and conditions that an affiliate cannot receive or pass-through traffic generated through the use of the companies brand name. Others are not quite so restrictive.

In the case of a large multi-national company who is receiving significant traffic from its branding, then protection of the brand from the affiliate is quite a logical choice (particularly when PPC traffic and branded keywords are involved). However it can be taken too far by some smaller affiliate programs when there is no real need to become so restrictive about the branded domain.

Take the registering of domain names which are similar to the brand name of the company. Not many companies have the resources to register every domain name which is mildly relevant to their brand. For example, I’m sure Google will have registered the googlr.com domain (for type in traffic mistakes) when your average company would not have the funds to register all typo’s or hyphenated domains relevant to their brand (e.g. google-analytics.com).

This is where a bit of flexibility from an affiliate program in regards to their affiliates domain and brand usage can go a long way to help both parties increase revenue. I have seen many cases where a good affiliate was trading off a hyphenated brand name and the smarter companies were happy for the affiliate to use those sites and their traffic, so long as the affiliate is sending the traffic to the brands own website.

So, if you’re looking at whether or not to try and register every domain you can think of that looks even close to your brand, try opening an affiliate program instead and you may find that you problem will be solved with an increase in revenue!

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Blogger offer Adsense per post

Adsense Insider, the Google Adsense Group keeping advertiser up to date with developments has announced that it’s now possible to use a widget inside Blogger to add Adsense following each and every post within a blog;

We’ve heard your feedback about wanting to insert Google ads between your blog posts, and we’re happy to let you know that Blogger now supports this implementation through the AdSense widget.

This would appear to me to be breaking the Adsense terms which limit the number of instances of different formats of Adsense on any one page. If there are many posts on a page I would assume this would mean many copies of the Adsense advert thereby breaking their own conditions?

I have not yet seen the implementation of this so will check it out soon and follow-up to see if this is in fact what Adsense have done.

If it is, it seems like yet another step by Google to giving preferential treatment to people using Google’s own products to the point of breaking terms and conditions.

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Search Engine Boot Camp and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)

The search engine market in New Zealand is finally starting to heat up a little…

I attended the Search Engine Boot Camp in Auckland, New Zealand last week and was impressed with the level of understanding on online search issues at the conference. While the seminars were pitched at a mixture of SEO and SEM understanding levels it was refreshing to see that some difficult questions were asked and some very useful technical points were on offer for webmasters or developers who are reasonably new to the search world.

There were a few stand-out speakers with the keynote from Craig Wax, Managing Director of Yahoo! Search Marketing in Australia and New Zealand. Craig took the attendees over the imminent launch of the Panama system from YSM for the New Zealand market. If you haven’t heard about it, Panama is the build name for a whole new approach to the YSM bid system (formerly the Overture bid system).

This new version of YSM brings in most of the tools which we expect to see from working with Google Adsense and also offers a few more. The largest change for Yahoo! is the addition of a Quality Score system, similar to Adsense, which means the bidding is no longer going to be a pure price war.

Panama is launching “in the near future” and will launch at the same time as Australia.

The key reason why the Yahoo! Search Marketing platform has not been successful to date in the New Zealand publishing market is the inability to target New Zealand only locations. In the current system advertisers are forced to target “Australia and New Zealand”. This will be a welcome change although it is likely to take some time before Panama has enough advertisers bidding for broad keywords to have the same level of cross vertical exposure that Google Adsense has in New Zealand.

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Advanced Google Operators

Google Search has many advanced operators, which are allow words with special functions available when using their search.

This is a little off topic but very useful as a reference to the advance operators on Google. I’ll be using this myself as it’s good to have a visual reference somewhere.

Here is a list of the Google advanced operator examples;

If there are any questions about these you can find out more information here.

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Updated advertising policy on Adsense

Google Adsense have updated their advertising policy with a couple of quite substantial changes.

The simplest one is the ability to add more than one (up to three) link ad units across a site. Previously these have only been allowed as one link ad unit per page. With the high click-through rates received from link ad units when correctly placed on a website, this will be a popular move with online advertisers (in all markets including NZ).

Conversely I have already read a few blog posts where other bloggers are saying this is pushing the Adsense program too close to the situation where a user is being tricked into a click (due to the similarity between the link ad unit format and a typical navigational function within a site).

Probably the biggest change is that Google is now requiring its Adsense publishers to conform to Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines which it uses for Adwords advertisers. From Adsense;

…you might already be familiar with these guidelines, which are intended to provide a better experience for users, advertisers, and publishers alike. If you use any kind of online advertising, know that these guidelines encourage publishers to, among other things, create sites with simple navigation and substantial, useful content.

Many different elements go into a “Quality Score” which are based around a very well established although incredibly subjective ideas on usability and content control. For example;

Starting with your ad, each interaction you have with your potential and existing customers should be geared towards building a trusting relationship. To avoid leading users astray:

* Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
* Openly share information about your business. Clearly define what your business is or does.
* Deliver products, goods, and services as promised on your site.

The key question here will be the implementation of decisions from Google representatives. No two Google reps are likely to see the same site in the same light. Hopefully there are some very tight guidelines around more than one person being involved in removing a site.

As you can imagine, it’s going to be the almighty dollar that rules the decision on how the site is dealt with. If you’re making Google a fortune through Adsense I would expect a friendly phone call to discuss your usability however for all of the “for Adsense” sites which have been built up over the last few years, watchout!

See more details directly from Google here.

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New Zealand SME Expo ..

I was at the Auckland small business expo for the day yesterday and have to say I was impressed with the level of online presence in the expo.

Many exhibits (there were 500+ I believe) were pushing their website as the main point of contact for the company. It makes sense to do this however I wasn’t sure how prevalent it would be in the New Zealand SME market before I arrived.

There were a lot of web development firms who were pushing their abilities to design, develop, promote and do anything else you can think of with an SME’s online presence however I was surprised that not a single one was promoting the use of affiliate programs for SME’s to bring in traffic to their site.

apnfinda had a heavy showing at the show however this was probably the only company there who were interested in online advertising and promotion. Every other online company (and there were a lot) were only interested in the development dollar and on discussions with most of them the all said “Oh yeah, we throw in some Google Adsense for the website as well but marketing is really up to the site”.

What a waste!

All these SME’s wanting to promote their websites, all these web development companies and only one online advertising company?

The Director of apnfind in his local search seminar was onto it, discussing the confounding problem that NZ business only spends 2.5% of its marketing budgets on online advertising where Australia is on 8.9% and the UK on 18%. This was especially shown to be lacking by the actual percentages of media consumption in New Zealand where online sites take roughly 40% of the media time of consumers.

Very insightful.

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New Version of Google Analytics

If you don’t already, you should be using the free Google Analytics tool as (at the least) an additional statistics package for your affiliate website. It offers so much more than many costly packages and it’s free!

This week Google have announced a completely new version of the Google Analytics interface and reporting on the Google Analytics Blog).

After an initial look through it’s an impressively updated GUI which does bring a lot of the features available already to the forefront of the reporting. The ability to email results will be very useful.

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Google Adsense / Google Adwords tidbit

I learnt something new yesterday which may have been common knowledge to a fair number of people but changed one of the assumptions I had about how the Google Adsense program shows adverts.

We’ve all seen how Adsense can sometimes show only a single advert in a large advert box. So you’ll end up with a skyscraper advert (120×600) which only has a single advert in the entire area in huge text.

Now here’s the thing; I always assumed that this was due to the lack of inventory (that is people who are bidding for the adverts that are listing on your sites keywords) however it turns out that this is actually a feature of Google Adsense where, if an advertiser is bidding well more than the next few bidders, then that advert will take precedence over both of the next adverts and only it will show. This can also happen if a Google Adwords advertiser is specifically targeting adverts to your site.

I can’t say I really like this feature much from a design stand-point as you can end up with some pretty glaringly ugly adverts on your site when you though you were going to have some nice text listings. The main positive is really that this will increase the revenue on your site.

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