Tuesday, November 30, 2010 | 8:30 PM
Labels:
Publishers
Monday, November 22, 2010 | 2:48 PM
Labels:
New Features,
Publisher Tools,
Publishers
We’ve just released a new feature that automates the process of finding new advertiser programs. The Publisher Opportunities Center generates a list of recommended advertisers that have the best potential to generate conversions from your website traffic. Recommendations are based on internal data including publisher-advertiser category matches and the advertiser’s performance with your peers.
All Google Affiliate Network publishers can visit the new Opportunities beta tab after signing in to Google Affiliate Network. If we have adequate information on your website, the list of recommendations will be available immediately. From this screen you can view information about the recommended advertisers such as program-wide 3 month and 7 day Earnings Per 100 Clicks (EPC), a standard logo banner, primary category, links to the commission information and program terms, as well as a simple click to join button. You can also export this list as a CSV or TXT file. Note: You’ll also see a link to ‘Dismiss’ a recommendation if you’re not interested in a particular advertiser. Once you ‘Dismiss’ the advertiser listing, it is permanently removed from the Opportunities tab. 
If you don’t see any recommendations it means we need more information about your website. You will be prompted to fill out a short form. Recommendations will be quickly generated based on your response.
Results will be updated daily, so publishers are encouraged to check their recommendations on a regular basis.
We will continue to iterate on the beta and we invite you to provide your feedback in our Help Forum.
On behalf of the Google Affiliate Network team.
posted by Sheila Parker, Product Manager
Friday, November 19, 2010 | 3:57 PM
Google’s Search Trend data provides a wealth of information on what consumers are searching for. The ThinkHoliday site highlights trends in retail and insight into the types of product searches that consumers are conducting this holiday season.
Publishers can leverage search trend data or content on their website that’s related to specific products and find products available through Google Affiliate Network advertisers. Our newly enhanced Product Search feature enables publishers to find products and build links to specific products across all approved advertiser relationships. Starting today, users will enjoy an even faster experience, with more relevant results for their product search. We strongly encourage publishers to use this feature to build product specific links for placement on their sites and start promoting this season’s most popular gifts.
How it works:
The Find Products feature allows publishers to access advertisers’ product feeds within the Google Affiliate Network interface. Publishers can view product price, image, image size, category and description in addition to tracking and creative urls.
To search for a product, sign in and go to the Products tab. Enter the name of a product you want to promote on your website and click ‘go.’ Your product search results will appear ranked by relevancy to the keywords entered.
Please note that providing specific criteria generates better results. You can search by criteria such as keywords, brand, advertiser name, product name, UPC, ISBN, MPN and/or SKU. To exclude products place a minus (-) in front of any of your criteria. For example, "digital camera -accessories".
Ever wonder how specific products perform?
Google Affiliate Network publishers can gain insight into the conversions for specific products from many Google Affiliate Network advertisers via the Product Detail Report. You can navigate to the Product Detail Report via the navigation bar on the left side of your screen. (Sign in, visit the Reports Tab >> Product-Related >>Products Detail)
This holiday season presents an opportunity to focus on the specific products that your visitors are looking for. By leveraging Google’s search trend data, the enhanced Find Products feature within your Google Affiliate Network account and product level reporting, you can optimize your affiliate ads for the best performing products.
The Google Affiliate Network Team
Posted by Sheila Parker, Product Manager
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 | 7:16 AM
Labels:
AdSense Features,
Placement Targeting
With the holiday season fast approaching, everyone is spending more online. As consumers start shopping for gifts, searching for holiday activities, and booking vacations, advertisers are putting more of their marketing dollars online to reach these potential customers. This means there is an increased demand for the ad space on your site and an opportunity for you to earn more. To help you capitalize on this trend, we recommend you try Google AdSense, and specifically take advantage of placement targeting.
As Google Affiliate Network publishers, you all currently have an AdSense account that you may or may not use. By utilizing AdSense, and specifically placement targeting, during this time of year you can capture more revenue by capitalizing on the increased demand for ad space. 99% of Google’s 1000 largest advertisers run display campaigns and focus a lot of their budget during the holiday season. As a result, you can take advantage of this holiday increase in advertiser spend, and help advertisers placement target specific sections of your site using a feature called ad placements. By creating an ad placement, you’ll make sections of your site available to be targeted directly by AdWords advertisers. Using Google AdSense in combination with the Google Affiliate Network will allow you to have two revenue streams that will be housed in the same AdSense account. Our technology and vast network of advertisers ensures that only the highest paying and most relevant ads are delivered to your users. Additionally, with Google AdSense you have a high degree of flexibility and control as you dictate where and when Google ads appear on your site. Enabling placement targeting within your AdSense account further allows you to provide written descriptions of your site, general demographic segment / audience information, and indicate where ads will appear on your site, all of which encourages advertisers to spend more of their marketing dollars on your site, as they have more insight into your traffic.
Check out this video to learn more about placement targeting and how you can get started. The sooner you do so, the sooner advertisers can see your ad placements and potentially include you in their holiday campaigns! One important note if you decide to run Google AdSense ads in addition to your Google Affiliate Network ads, please make sure to review the AdSense program policies before you get started, to understand some of the important differences between these policies and the Google Affiliate Network program policies. For example, publishers running AdSense ads may not click on their own AdSense ads (or encourage users to click on their AdSense ads.) On the other hand, publishers may encourage users to convert through their Google Affiliate Network ads (and this is what many affiliates do best!).
Posted by Kristin Hall at the request of the AdSense team
