Google Data » Google Affiliate Network

An update on Google Affiliate Network

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:35:00 +0000

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we’ve invested significantly in CPA tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer. We’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers.

To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. And there are other products that can help you achieve your goals. Affiliate publishers can continue to earn AdSense revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we’re continuing to invest heavily in them.

Thanks for your support of our affiliate product, and we look forward to helping you grow your business in the future.

Posted by: J.J. Hirschle, Head of Google Affiliate Network

Calling all SF Bay Area residents: help test our new local, same-day delivery service

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:57:00 +0000

(cross-posted from the Google Commerce Blog)

We all rely on the web to turn our intentions into actions quickly and easily. From planning a spring break or a trip to the movies to finding the perfect gift for someone we love, the world is increasingly at our fingertips. And over the last few years, we've worked hard to bring the speed of the web to the real world. With Google Play, for example, you can now buy or rent books, movies and TV shows in seconds.

Today we're starting a new experiment, Google Shopping Express. It's a local delivery service that we hope will make it possible for you to get the items you order online the same day, and at a low cost. It's incredibly early days and so the service is only available to a small number of people in the Bay Area.

As a tester, you will be able to shop online, in a single place, from retailers such as Target, Walgreens, Staples, American Eagle and Toys“R”Us/Babies“R”Us -- along with locally distinct shops such as San Francisco’s Blue Bottle Coffee, and the Bay Area’s Palo Alto Toy & Sport and Raley’s Nob Hill Foods, and get your items delivered that same day. So hopefully, no more trips across town for simple errands.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area (in the city of San Francisco, and the Peninsula from San Mateo to San Jose) and would like to help test this new initiative, please sign up here. We’re still working out our long-term pricing plan but early testers will get six months of free, unlimited same-day delivery. The pilot will expand as we work out the kinks, so please stay tuned.

Posted by Tom Fallows, Product Management Director, Google Shopping Express

Google’s new Think Insights: Your go-to destination for digital marketing

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

(cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog)

This week marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more — all to help you make the most of the web.

Also, check out Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions, in which Nielsen and Google analyzed over 6000 mobile searches and the actions that resulted, drawing connections between mobile searches and the conversions that they drive.

For mobile marketers, you can explore the Mobile Ad Types section for mobile-specific research, case studies, articles and more. Start by viewing our featured story, The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive's Guide to Winning with Mobile by Jason Spero, Google's Head of Global Mobile Sales & Strategy.

While you’re visiting, don’t miss the Mobile Ads product page, which contains the latest in mobile solutions to help grow your business and build brand momentum with mobile.

For marketers who want to turn “light bulb” ideas into lightning or just want to check out the best in digital marketing -- we hope that you visit often. To stay up-to-date on the latest content added to the site, please subscribe to our monthly Think Letter.

Posted by: The Think Insights Team

Thank you for your feedback!

Google Affiliate Network — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

We appreciate your time and valuable feedback in helping us make Google Affiliate Network better!

GAN Blog Post: Video tips from the Google Affiliate Network Team

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce a new video series: “The Google Affiliate Network Minute”, featuring members of the Google Affiliate Network team sharing some basic optimization tips. In each short video, you’ll find helpful suggestions on how to get the most out of your Google Affiliate Network account. So far we’ve posted 3 videos for advertisers and 3 videos for publishers.

Publisher video content

Advertiser video content

You can find all of these videos (and more) on our YouTube channel.

Posted by: Dan Filowitz, Manager, Google Affiliate Network

Announcing the Notifications tab for advertisers

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0000

A few months ago, we launched our Notifications system for publishers. Today, we’re pleased to announce the Notifications tab for advertisers. This notifications system makes it easier for advertisers to stay informed about important program changes to make the most of their affiliate marketing efforts.

Types of notifications
If you're an advertiser, starting today you’ll receive a notification whenever you have pending publishers in your account. For example, if you have over 10 pending publishers, a message will appear in your notifications reminding you to take action. You’ll also get a notification if publishers report an order that may not have tracked in your account. Other examples of the notifications you’ll receive include errors pertaining to any offline files you may have uploaded.

Accessing notifications
From the Advertiser Home, you’ll see a notification alert in the upper right corner of the interface that shows the number of pending messages. When you click the alert, you can see more information along with a link to see all notifications.

When you click the Notifications tab, you'll see a basic summary and detailed view for each communication. You can search across notifications so you can more easily review and act on these alerts while you’re working in your account.

This launch is a continuation of a series of enhancements to communications in the Google Affiliate Network interface. We've listened to feedback from both advertisers and publishers that a central communication hub could increase efficiency and reduce the need to rely on email for important communications. As we mentioned last year, our vision is to move more communications into a central location in the interface so you can better track and maintain your affiliate relationships and activities.

Send your feedback
We welcome your feedback. If you have any suggestions, let us know what you think by posting a comment here or in our forum. Advertisers, sign in to your account today to access the Notifications tab.

Posted by:
Joel Ingram, Software Engineer

Mark your calendar: Affiliate Management Days San Francisco

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

We hope to meet fellow affiliate managers and marketing executives at Affiliate Management Days San Francisco on April 16 to 17, 2013. Members of the Google Affiliate Network team will be attending the conference, and we'll also be participating in the following panel:

The Role of the Affiliate Network
Affiliate networks have evolved to play many different roles over the years and are a key partner for both merchants and affiliates. Panelists from different networks, including Google Affiliate Network, will discuss what role the network should play in areas such as affiliate screening, fraud monitoring, program management and more.

You can review the conference agenda and register on the Affiliate Management Days website. Register by Friday, February 22nd to take advantage of the early bird rate, which will save you up to $500 from the onsite price.

Google Affiliate Network advertisers can use this link to register and receive an additional 20% discount on all 2-day passes.

Posted by:
Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

eFlorist grew their affiliate revenue by 40% after partnering with Google Affiliate Network

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on our blog.

eFlorist operates a robust network of 1,800 florists across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Consumers across the globe have an affinity for the Romsey, UK-based retailer, thanks to their e-commerce site and same-day delivery in 135 countries. With goals focused toward further capitalizing market position and affiliate program growth, eFlorist’s Marketing Manager Paul Isaia turned to Google Affiliate Network in 2012.

Paul had three key reasons in mind when transitioning the eFlorist affiliate program to Google. He wanted to grow affiliate-generated sales by 10% within one year, improve the quality of their publisher base, and leverage reporting insights to uncover new growth opportunities.

After first launching the eFlorist program with Google Affiliate Network, Paul noted that he "was very impressed with the reporting as well as the tools to recruit new affiliates." Paul focused on building publisher relationships, using the Recommendation engine to identify new affiliates, and partnering closely with the Google Affiliate Network team to make sure his program had a strong network of high-value publishers. Within a few months, eFlorist also began to use their Google Merchant Center product feed to scale their product catalog to affiliates.

While executing these initial measures, eFlorist started to see a notable sales impact in their program. Within six months, the results spoke for themselves: eFlorist’s affiliate channel revenue grew 40%, well above their initial 10% benchmark. In turn, affiliate marketing’s share of total online sales grew from 15% to 20%, satisfying Isaia and his team.

To learn more about Paul Isaia and eFlorist, read the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Executive

Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network: Advertiser best practices

Google Affiliate Network — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:31:00 +0000

This is the third post in our ‘Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network’ series. Today, we’ll focus on best practices to help advertisers make the most of mobile in affiliate marketing.

As we continue in our series, today, we’ll cover affiliate mobile strategies for advertisers. As a direct-response focused advertiser, you might already see the evolution of mobile and the rise of mobile e-commerce.

With more mobile devices being activated each day and two out of three smartphone users now accessing the web on their devices, today’s mobile user is primed for online conversions. Half of US smartphone users use m-commerce apps, and our research at ourmobileplanet.com points out that purchases directly via mobile continue to increase, with 35% of smartphone users having made a purchase on their phone.

Mobile optimization tips
Visitors to a mobile or tablet site might be at a different point of the purchase funnel than visitors to a desktop site, so it's important to have an optimized site to match user intent and behavior. Plus, optimizing for mobile might also help you increase your conversion rate through all of your marketing channels, including affiliate.

We recommend reviewing the tips and best practices shared in last week’s post covering ways you can optimize your website for mobile.

In addition, it’s important that your website makes it easy for the consumer to convert and focus on information that might help conversion. You can find more tips & best practices in our GoMo Guide for advertisers at howtogomo.com.

Next, we’ll cover tips specific to affiliate marketing and mobile.

Affiliate conversion tracking
Advertisers using affiliate marketing must always ensure conversion tracking functions as expected. Google Affiliate Network advertisers are required to successfully implement and track conversions on their desktop sites in order to launch their account, and they must also implement Google Affiliate Network conversion tracking for any separate mobile sites they may create. See our Conversion tracking implementation guide for more information.

Add mobile creative sizes
It’s important to make mobile ad sizes available to your publishers. The Google Affiliate Network interface includes mobile ad sizes as standard ad units to make it easier for link creation and publisher discovery. You can find a list of standard ad sizes for Android, iOS, and other devices with full HTML browsers in our Help Center.

Partner with mobile-optimized publishers
Many traditional affiliates have mobile-focused sites, and we also distinguish publishers with mobile apps with the “Mobile application” segment. You can use this filter in the UI to discover virtual gaming apps, price comparison apps, retail catalog apps, and deal and product apps. See our Help Center for more information on finding mobile-focused publishers.

Additional tools
Google Affiliate Network extends the opportunity for advertisers to use pay-per-call via our Partner Marketplace. If you offer a toll-free number on your website and want to capture affiliate conversions via phone, review our Partner marketplace today to find partners to help you track pay-per-call activities.

As mobile continues to evolve, we look forward to providing more tips and tools to help you make the most of affiliate marketing for mobile.

Posted by:
Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network: Publisher best practices

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:00:00 +0000

This is the second post in our ‘Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network’ series. Today, we’ll focus on best practices to help publishers make the most of mobile in affiliate marketing.

We kicked off our blog series earlier this week with details on the importance of mobile for affiliate marketers. As publisher, you already understand the growing market in mobile e-commerce. Below we’ll share some insights to help you mobilize your website.

Optimize your website for mobile
Visitors to a mobile or tablet site may be at a different point of the purchase funnel than visitors to a desktop site, so it’s important to have an optimized site to match user intent and behavior. What’s more, optimizing for mobile may also help you increase your conversion rate through all of your marketing channels, including affiliate.

Before you get started, find out what percentage of your visitors are coming from mobile devices. Next, consider how your site might look to mobile users.

When building your website to support different devices, consider if you want to utilize responsive web design, or if you should create a separate mobile site. Once you’ve decided on a configuration, be sure to consider some of our additional best practices for mobile users: simplify your landing pages and use strong call-to-action language to attract mobile visitors.

You can simplify navigation by:

Adding hierarchy and vertical scrolling to aid information access
Be thumb-friendly by designing your site so even large hands can easily interact with it
If applicable to your website, make your site local
Avoid using flash, since not all mobile websites support it
Minimize load times for the convenience of your mobile viewer
Learn, listen and iterate by building your site with input from your audience

And, if you’re wondering whether to first create an app or a mobile site, build the site first as it will offer more cross-platform reach than apps. See our Help Center for more information on optimizing your mobile website.

Tell advertisers your website is optimized for mobile
Once you’ve optimized your site for mobile users, it's important to make sure advertisers are aware. You can easily update your Website description in your Publisher profile so advertisers that view your profile can see that your site is optimized for mobile.

Get mobile affiliate ads
We’ve made it easy to quickly access standard mobile ad sizes. You can find mobile affiliate ads by clicking the Links tab and using the Size filter to find standard mobile ad sizes. You can also get mobile ads using Link subscriptions and the Links API. See our Help Center for a list of standard ad sizes for Android, iOS, and other devices with full HTML browsers.

A publisher's experience with going mobile
Pageonce, a popular app to track your money and pay bills, uses affiliate marketing to show targeted offers. Pageonce finds that their "users are much more engaged and focused on their mobile device. They know what they want and they want to be done quickly and efficiently,” says Steve Schultz, the company's Chief Operating Officer. Over the past year, Pageonce has built a healthy mobile ad revenue stream through Google Affiliate Network. Steve shares some tips for mobile success: "Messages need to be tight – there’s no room for extra copy, landing pages need to be optimized for the mobile experiences and offers have to be relevant."

While these tips are a great starting point for optimizing your mobile site you can find more tips & best practices in our GoMo Guide for Publishers at howtogomo.com.

Posted by:
Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

Stay connected with Google Affiliate Network on G+

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000

We've launched our Google+ Profile page. On this page, we hope to engage more with our followers, provide relevant and timely updates, share insights and research, and share more about the Google Affiliate Network product and our team. Whether you're an affiliate advertiser, publisher, agency, partner, prospect or industry insider, we hope you find our content to be relevant and insightful. We encourage you to follow us on Google+.

Posted by Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network: Why Mobile?

Google Affiliate Network — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000

This is the first post in our ‘Go Mobile with Google Affiliate Network’ series. Over the next few weeks, we'll highlight best practices to help advertisers and publishers make the most of mobile in affiliate marketing.

There’s no question about it: mobile is everywhere and continues to grow. As more devices are activated each day, users are able to connect to the web in new ways. Two out of three smartphone users now access the web on their devices (Our Mobile Planet, Google & Ipsos, 2012) and more websites are producing smartphone-optimized content, presenting businesses with exciting new opportunities. In fact, a recent study states that over 85% of marketers reported that they plan to increase their mobile advertising budgets in the near future (ANA/MediaVest, 2013).

You can see additional key statistics about US mobile consumer behavior from the 2012 Our Mobile Planet smartphone research in the infographic below.

Click to download US Mobile Consumer Behavior infographic

Mobile's impact on e-commerce
More consumers are using their devices to research and shop online, and smartphone research influences buyer decisions and purchases across channels. Mobile shoppers are primed for online conversions -- 96% of smartphone users research products across multiple devices, and 37% of users that research on smartphones lead to purchases on their desktop (Google & Ipsos, 2012). The latest eMarketer research predicts that the share of mobile sales for all retail e-commerce may increase from 11% in 2012 to 15% in 2013 (eMarketer, 2013).

Businesses are increasingly redefining their marketing strategies to engage the new, constantly connected consumer across devices. Below we’ll share some mobile best practices for the affiliate channel to help you be better positioned to reach consumers across the multiple paths to purchase.

Make your website mobile-friendly
It's critical to have an optimized site that’s customized to mobile users, not just because of the size of each device, but because the context reveals a different consumer mindset. Visitors to a mobile or tablet site may be at a different point of the purchase funnel than visitors to your desktop site. This is especially important in a conversion-oriented channel like affiliate marketing.

Consider how your site might look to mobile users. Are you offering an optimized experience? 79% of consumers say they will turn to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience and 55% say a poor mobile experience hurts their opinion of a brand (Google/Sterling Brands & SmithGeiger, Sep 2012).

Building a separate mobile website is an appropriate solution for many businesses, but it’s also important to understand how responsive design might fit into your plans to GoMo. In this blog post, our Mobile Ads team summarized how responsive design allows you to create a single website that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet.

You can learn more specifics on going mobile at howtogomo.com. If you’re more technically inclined, take a look at our Webmaster blog post, as well as detailed recommendations on the Google Developers help site.

Go Mobile with your Google Affiliate Network program
In addition to website optimization, advertisers using affiliate marketing need to ensure conversion tracking works as expected. Just as Google Affiliate Network advertisers are required to successfully track conversions on their desktop sites before they launch their accounts, Google Affiliate Network advertisers must also implement our conversion tracking pixel on their separate mobile websites.

In addition to conversion tracking, it’s important to use ad sizes common to mobile devices. To help publishers get mobile ads more easily, we've included common ad sizes for Android, iOS, and other devices with full HTML browsers as standard ad sizes in the Google Affiliate Network interface. For a list of all standard ad sizes for mobile, see our Help Center.

Posted by:
Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

Easily find Google Trusted Store advertisers via new badges in Google Affiliate Network

Google Affiliate Network — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:00:00 +0000

We're excited to announce an easy way for publishers to identify advertisers within Google Affiliate Network that have earned the Google Trusted Store badge. Starting today in Google Affiliate Network, a badge will appear next to Google Trusted Store merchants in the U.S. that are also Google Affiliate Network advertisers.

About Google Trusted Stores
The Google Trusted Stores program helps shoppers buy online with confidence. The Google Trusted Store badge is only awarded to stores with a proven track record of reliable, on-time shipping and excellent customer service. So when shoppers see the Google Trusted Store badge on e-commerce websites, they know they’re buying from a store that provides a consistently excellent shopping experience. They also know that Google stands behind them when they shop, providing up to $1,000 of purchase protection in the rare event of a problem.

Benefits for publishers
The Google Trusted Store badge is a helpful tool you can use when considering advertiser affiliate programs to join. Look for the Google Trusted Store logo when browsing the Advertisers tab to find advertisers that are validated and certified by Google as providing a great shopping experience for consumers.

Benefits for advertisers
Advertisers have benefited from higher average order sizes and improved conversion rates after becoming a Google Trusted Store. If you’re an advertiser that delivers an excellent shopping experience and would like to learn more about the program, check out the Google Trusted Stores website for more information. If you earn the badge, it will automatically appear within your Product Listing Ads on Google.com and Google Shopping, as well as within the Google Affiliate Network interface.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback about this new feature, so don’t hesitate to share feedback via our Google Affiliate Network forum.

Posted by:
Bill Goudie, Systems Engineer

See performance by OS and browser with Platform reports

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Today, we’ve released new reports to help you better understand the impact of desktop and mobile platforms in your affiliate program. With Platform reports, you can have full visibility into performance associated with desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers, right from within our interface.

You can review Platform reports to see OS and browser activity associated with clicks, actions, transactions, sales, fees, and more -- all based on the timeframe you specify. The Activity report provides a breakdown of performance based on the OS used. The Activity detail report drills deeper, breaking out performance by OS like Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS and browser type, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Publisher benefits
Publishers can use Platform reports to efficiently identify top performing advertisers by OS, helping them make more informed decisions as to which advertisers to promote through different platforms. Want to see which advertisers perform well in different operating systems? Review the Advertiser report to access performance metrics for advertisers based on platform.

Advertiser benefits
Advertisers can see conversion performance by browser and operating system through Platform reports, making it easy to gain new insights – like whether or not visitors from mobile browsers convert at a higher rate than desktop browsers, or if the average order value associated with mobile is higher than conversions from desktop. Advertisers can also access Publisher and link reports with platform data, helping them identify the best publishers to partner with and the types of links to make available.

For example, let’s say an advertiser finds that traffic from smartphone or tablet browsers converts at a higher rate or is associated with a higher average order value compared to desktop browsers. In this case, platform data may be useful in helping the advertiser decide whether or not to work with more mobile-focused publishers.

As with all our reports, Platform reports can be easily exported to .txt or .csv for further analysis.

By breaking out visitors by OS and browser, Platform reporting may help provide direction on your mobile strategy. For example, you can use insights from Platform reports to consider whether or not to design a website to accommodate both mobile and desktop traffic, or to design a separate, mobile-friendly website.

If you have feedback or suggestions on these new reporting features, let us know what you think by submitting feedback in the interface or through our Product forum.

Posted by:
Kurt Spoerer, Senior Product Manager

Dynamic links: Serve the right ad to the right user at the right time

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:30:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce the release of Dynamic links, helping you serve more relevant affiliate ads to users. Dynamic links enable new ways to create and serve ads that use Google’s best-in-class display advertising features, giving advertisers the ability to serve geo-targeted ads, rotate and optimize creatives, automatically schedule and update ads, and more. Dynamic links can contain multiple creatives and also support Flash.

Publisher benefits
Since Dynamic links automatically update based on changes an advertiser makes even after the ad has been placed on a publisher website, publishers will be able to serve the right advertiser creative to their audience, helping increase the opportunity for conversions and revenue via the affiliate channel.

Optimized, Scheduled or Targeted ads
Advertisers have three unique options when creating Dynamic links.

Optimized – Set up the ad so creatives rotate evenly at first. As links generate activity, higher-performing creatives will get more exposure.
Scheduled – Set up all limited-time promotions so publishers only need to use one tag to show the most up-to-date affiliate ads.
Targeted – Set up country or US state specific targeting for localized creatives. Each creative can contain its own custom location targeting to country or US state.

Features available with Dynamic links

Inventory selection – Advertisers can create Dynamic links for any ad size and can associate any number of creative images or Flash rich media assets with their ads. Ads are available both as Link templates as well as Publisher-specific links, and publishers can easily preview each creative within a dynamic ad.

Ad trafficking – Ads from participating advertisers are available via the Links tab in the Google Affiliate Network interface. The ad serving code is a standard Iframe/JavaScript tag, and publishers only need to implement the tag once.

Reporting – Performance reporting is easily accessible in your Google Affiliate Network account.

Publishers can access Dynamic links from the Links tab in the UI, under the Browse all links sub-tab.

If you’re a publisher, just sign into your account, click the Links tab and filter by Dynamic links to find available Dynamic links. Once you select an ad, it’s easy to get the code and post to your website. For details on posting Dynamic links to your website, review our Help Center.

If you’re an advertiser and want to get started with creating Dynamic links, see our Help Center article with detailed instructions for How to create Dynamic links.

We welcome your feedback -- as we continue to iterate on this exciting new feature, we want to hear from you in our Product forum.

- Posted by: Matt Hansen, Software Engineer

Meet the Google Affiliate Network team at Affiliate Summit West 2013

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Google Affiliate Network is excited to join our fellow affiliate marketers at Affiliate Summit West from January 13-15, 2013 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

At the conference, you'll have a chance to hear from our team. Kristin Hall, Head of Publisher Development, will lead a talk on Publisher Segmentation Ideas, providing insight into how to tailor communications and optimization strategies to effectively reach the right publisher partners. Members of our account management team will also be on hand to meet with our valued advertisers, publishers and partners. Be sure to stop by our booth.

Visit the Google Affiliate Network booth:
Affiliate Summit West
Google Affiliate Network
Booth #327 and 329
map »

Attend the presentation:
Session: Publisher Segmentation Ideas
Location: Florentine 3 and 4
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm
Date: Sunday January 13, 2013

See you soon!

Posted by:
Josh Pyle, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Last-Minute Google Affiliate Network Holiday Tips

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:12:00 +0000

As we’re nearly halfway through the holiday shopping season, online shoppers have come out in full force this year, with Black Friday online sales totalling $1B and Cyber Monday 2012 taking the crown as the biggest online shopping day ever, with nearly $2B in sales and 30% growth year over year. With a few weeks left in 2012, we wanted to pass along a few tips to help you make the most of your affiliate program and capture as many incremental holiday sales as possible.

Holiday Tips for Publishers

Easily search for relevant links tagged with upcoming seasonal tags for Green Monday (12/10), Christmas/Holiday (12/25), Boxing Day (12/26 - UK, Canada), Post-holiday sales, January sale.
Use the Special offers filter to search for the most compelling links to feature on your site.
Use insights from our recently-launched reports to help optimize your program.
Quickly create product links with our new Google Affiliate Network Link Builder Chrome extension.

Holiday Tips for Advertisers

Be sure to tag and share your seasonal links for upcoming shopping days, including Green Monday (12/10), Christmas/Holiday (12/25), Boxing Day (12/26 - UK, Canada), Post holiday sales, January sale.
Review recommended publishers to find new publisher opportunities based on similar categories and revenue potential.
Check out our recently-launched reports which enable you to compare performance across different metrics and timeframes and see geography based click and conversion data.

It’s gearing up to be an exciting end to the holiday shopping season and we hope these tools and tips will help you take full advantage of your affiliate program from now into 2013!

Posted by:
J.J. Hirschle, Head of Google Affiliate Network

Days before Thanksgiving, Online Shopping is in Full Swing

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

(Cross posted to the Google Retail Advertising Blog)

While retailers might still be carting out decorations and Black Friday deals have yet to hit shelves, the holiday shopping season is already in full swing. Searches for "holiday gift" on Google have already spiked 156% since the first of November, and searches for "Black Friday" are up 546%.

In the days leading up to the biggest shopping event of the year, we took a look at early trends in holiday shopping using Google Consumer Surveys and found that it’s shaping up to be the first Nonline holiday season. People are shopping earlier and shopping smarter, both online and in stores. Case in point, while 80% of shoppers plan to research their purchases online, 69% of apparel shoppers still plan to make their purchases in a store while 36% plan to purchase online.

Shopping earlier, shopping smarter
Although we're only halfway into November, many consumers have already purchased their holiday gifts - 14% of people who plan to shop for toys have already made purchases, 11% for apparel shoppers, and 6% for electronics shoppers. Most plan on completing their shopping primarily in December, but Thanksgiving weekend shopping remains strong. We found that 28% of people who plan to shop for electronics plan to make their purchases primarily during Thanksgiving weekend, 18% for toy shoppers, and 17% for apparel shoppers.

In addition to shopping earlier, people are using smartphones to be smarter about the purchases they make. We found that 80% of shoppers use their smartphone or tablet to shop before buyingonline or in a store. If you’re a retailer, most people that walk through your doors will already have an idea of what they’re looking for in mind.

Smart marketers are helping customers pre-shop items online before getting to the store. Macy’s is using search ads to drive people to their Black Friday sale preview whether they’re on a laptop or mobile device. Holiday card searches jump after Thanksgiving, and new ad formats are allowing Storkie Express to raise awareness of their Hidden Dimension app, a new tool that animates theirpaper holiday cards. Running the mobile app extension on search ads has boosted downloads for their app across screens.

Discounts and free shipping seal the deal
Consumers still see shipping costs as a barrier, and for some it can be a deal breaker. If the a site doesn’t offer free shipping:

48% will look for it on another site with free shipping
32% will visit a nearby store to buy the product
20% will still purchase the item from the site

Most shoppers felt that they are seeing the same amount of holiday discounts and coupons as they did last year (70%). However 22% of shoppers feel that they’re seeing fewer deals for holiday sales and promotions - which opens the opportunity for retailers to reach consumers with special offers as they’re actively hunting for deals this week. This is particularly impactful for toy retailers, as 40% of shoppers always compare prices on toys before making a decision.

Shoppers go online to beat crowds
As more people cross-shop online and in stores this season, many view online shopping as an easier way to shop. Consumers described holiday shopping online as easy, great, and convenient, while they described holiday shopping in stores as crazy, hectic, stressful, and exciting.

However, having an easy-to-use mobile website is essential to keeping shoppers on your site. More than 46% feel frustrated when mobile sites are hard to navigate. And as we’ve seen from past research, mobile shoppers will quickly move on to another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away.

You can find these stats and more by viewing the full report on Google Consumer Surveys. Find more of our holiday shopping research here.

Posted by Jon Sadow, on behalf of the Google Consumer Surveys team

Searching for and sharing the best seasonal links

Google Affiliate Network — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

With the holiday season quickly approaching, the next few weeks are pivotal for driving sales through affiliate marketing. We’re excited to announce that we’ve made it even easier for publishers to quickly find and advertisers to easily share seasonal links through the Google Affiliate Network interface.

Finding seasonal links
If you're a publisher, you can now easily find seasonal links to promote -- just in time for the holiday rush. For example, click the link below to find available Black Friday links:

https://www.google.com/affiliatenetwork/viewlinks?atags=black_friday

This link will take you to the Links tab in your publisher account and automatically filter the results for links tagged for Black Friday. Advertisers are tagging additional links this week, so keep checking back to find the most updated list of Black Friday promotional links.

Advertisers have the capability of sharing these seasonal links with you directly via email. We hope this new feature, along with the structured promotions features launched earlier this month, helps you more quickly and easily find great advertiser offers.

Tagging and sharing seasonal links
If you're an advertiser, you'll find that it's now really easy to tag links and share them with publishers.

To add seasonal tags to your links, Click the 'Links' tab, then 'Browse all links'. Find the links you want to tag and check the box to the left of each link. Next, select the ‘Tag’ button at the top of the page, choose any appropriate seasonal tags, and click 'Apply'.

It's easy to share your newly-tagged links with publishers. Click ‘Share’ at the top of the page to get a link you can share with your joined publishers. Then, share the link via email with any publishers in your program so that they can easily view the seasonal links you just tagged.

On behalf of the engineering team, we want to wish you a happy holiday season. If there’s anything more we can do to help, please let us know in our Product forum.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Announcing the Notifications tab for publishers

Google Affiliate Network — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Communication is a key component to Affiliate marketing, so it's no surprise that advertisers and publishers exchange a lot of email. With the peak shopping season coming up, it’s critical for publishers to stay informed of important advertiser program changes to make the most of their affiliate marketing efforts. To make it easier for publishers to keep track of important account notifications from within the Google Affiliate Network interface, we’ve launched a new Notifications system.

Types of notifications

If you're a publisher, starting today you’ll receive a notification whenever an advertiser makes a change to their account that impacts your relationship or commissions. For example, if an advertiser invites you to join their program, this invitation will appear in your notifications. You’ll also receive a notification when an advertiser makes a decision on your application to their program. Other examples of the notifications you’ll receive include Commission rate changes or updates to Advertiser Specific Terms.

From the Publisher Home, you’ll see a notification alert in the upper right corner of the interface that displays the number of pending messages. When you click on the alert, you can see more information along with a link to see all notifications.

When you click the Notifications tab, you'll see a basic summary and detailed view for each communication. You can search across notifications and advertisers so you can more easily review and act on affiliate-specific notifications while you’re working in your account.

This launch is the first of a series of enhancements to communications within the Google Affiliate Network interface. For a long time, we've listened to your feedback that adding a central communication hub could help increase efficiency and reduce the need to simply rely on your email inbox for important communications. Today's launch is the first step we're making towards this hub. Our vision is to move more communications into a central location in interface so you can better track and maintain your affiliate relationships and activities.

Send your feedback

We welcome your feedback. If you have any suggestions, let us know what you think by posting a comment here or in the Google Affiliate Network forum. Sign in to your account today to access the Notifications tab.

Posted by:
Joel Ingram, Software Engineer

Introducing new reporting enhancements

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:00:00 +0000

We made a few updates to our reports over the past few weeks which include features useful for both advertisers and publishers. These new reports include Order-level payment reports for publishers, Multi-metric reports for comparing performance across different metrics and timeframes, and Geography reports to help both advertisers and publishers understand more about where user clicks and conversions are coming from.

Order-level payment reports

With our new Order-level payment reports, publishers can easily see which conversions their accounts have received payment for. Order-level payment reports contain a comprehensive listing of conversions that show the month in which conversions were paid out.

When you view the report, you'll first see order-level payment information for your advertiser relationships from the month when you received payment. The report pulls this information based on the timeframe you specify, so you can access order-level payments from the past.

Multi-metric graph reports

Multi-metric graphs allow you to quickly see performance across two separate axes. Set the graphs to review metrics based on the previous week or previous year’s performance for a specified time frame to identify changes in performance. You can also review against specific metrics, such as Publisher fees, clicks, conversions, and more.

Geography reports

With Geography reports, you can gain insights into where user performance originates from, in most cases down to the state or province level. See performance volume by geographic region so you can optimize and refine your affiliate program. You can review geographic locations associated with clicks, actions, transactions, sales, and more.

To get started, select your desired metrics and time frame above the world map. All metrics will populate in the table below.

If you have feedback or suggestions on these new reporting features, let us know what you think by submitting feedback in the interface, or through our Product forum.

Posted by:
Kurt Spoerer, Product Manager

Introducing structured promotional data for links

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:15:00 +0000

It’s no secret that special promotions and coupons are integral to the affiliate channel. If you're a publisher with a shopping-focused website, you know how important it is to present accurate, comprehensive promotions and coupons to your visitors.

Today, we're happy to announce a more structured way to get links with offers, promotion codes, and discounts so you can more easily automate and display the latest advertiser promotions. You now have the ability to search and filter by special offers, promotion codes, and discounts – including Link templates and Publisher-specific links. Read on to learn more about how you can now access structured promotion data.

Accessing links with structured promotional data

When you search the interface, you can perform queries that weren't previously possible. For example, try searching search for an Apparel link with Free shipping that has a Promotion code where the discount is greater than 25 percent off. This could be helpful if you have a website where you only want to promote coupons with a significant discount.

We’ve also updated the recommendation engine to help you find more relevant promotional links. If you're a shopping-focused publisher, you'll see that links with special offers, promotion codes, or discounts are more visible.

Links API

Structured link data is also available through the Google Affiliate Network API, so you can programmatically access and display offers, promotion codes, and discounts to your website in real time.

Link subscriptions

You can also get links with special offers, promotion codes, and discounts via Link subscriptions. To access structured link data through Link subscriptions, sign in to your publisher account and upgrade to Link subscriptions Version 2.

Send us your feedback

As always, your feedback is very important. You can click on “Details inaccurate?” in the interface to provide feedback at the link level to help us quickly resolve any potential issues.

If you have feedback or suggestions, let us know what you think by posting a comment here or in the Google Affiliate Network forum.

We’ve worked hard to make these changes to help you achieve greater success this holiday season. Sign in to your account today to access these new link features!

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Holiday optimization tips for publishers

Google Affiliate Network — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:19:00 +0000

With the holidays quickly approaching, advertisers are trying to reach more customers. Now is the time to make the most of Google Affiliate Network – use the below insights and tips from our recent interface updates and optimization checklist to boost your performance this holiday season.

Update your publisher profile

Your website description is the first thing advertisers see, so always keep it current.
Make your profile visible to more advertisers by opting into Recruiting communications.

Discover and apply to more advertiser programs

Use the Recommended advertisers tab to find new advertiser programs, sorted by category and earnings potential.

Get links and keep them fresh

Review Recommended links to see Staff picks and Exclusives.
Use automated services like Link subscriptions, Product subscriptions, and the Links API to easily keep links, special offers, promotions and products updated.
Get banner and dynamic links. The larger ad sizes for banner and dynamic links are more visual and easier for users to read and interact with.
If your site has an active user base and you’re driving a lot of conversions for an advertiser, ask them to create a co-branded landing page to help increase conversion.

Optimize your website

Make sure your website is updated for peak promotional seasons, and set aside inventory for Google Affiliate Network ads.

Track performance and take action on reporting insights

Use Creative reports to review link performance and find the top-performing creatives and links for your site.
Review your analytics to determine your most relevant content and top performing links.
Identify top-selling products through Product-related reports, then optimize for these products.
Order-level payment reports show you the list of orders that have been paid out in any given month.

Sign in to your publisher account today and take advantage of these optimization features. Cheers to a successful and productive holiday season!

Posted by:
Emily Harris, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing the Manage Inquiries tab for advertisers

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Many savvy shoppers shop online through loyalty and reward programs, since their purchases can lead to incentives like miles, points, or other reward-based currencies (typically referred to as a passback).

As an advertiser, you know how important it is to make sure customers are satisfied with their purchases. If they shop through loyalty programs, you also know how it’s important that they receive their passback. To that end, you may sometimes be contacted by loyalty publishers' customer service teams asking to confirm orders for customers who may not have received their passback. To ease this process, we've released the new Manage Inquiries tab to streamline the order lookup and resolution process so you can quickly review and take action on inquiries.

The Manage Inquiries tab shows all pending order inquiries, and publishers also have the option to provide notes to help you research and take action on the inquiry. You’ll also receive a weekly notification email if a publisher has added an inquiry to your account.

Reviewing inquiries
You can start reviewing inquiries by taking the following steps:

Click on the Orders tab, then the Manage Inquiries sub-tab.
Review the list of Pending inquiries.
Review your own reporting to decide whether or not the inquiry is already associated with a valid order.
Click on the Action drop-down and take the appropriate action on the inquiry. You can select the order and approve it as-is, or edit the order amount and approve, or decline the inquiry. You can also use the “select all” function to take action on multiple inquiries at once.

If you have a large number of inquiries, you can save time by exporting them to .csv, specifying the actions in the file and uploading it to the interface.

Learn more about managing pending order inquiries in the Help Center.

Posted by:

Gabe Black, Software Engineer
Mark St. John, Software Engineer

Quickly create links with our new Chrome extension for publishers

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:45:00 +0000

If you're an affiliate publisher, you might be looking for the most efficient ways to promote great products. With this in mind, we’re happy to announce the Google Affiliate Network Link Builder, a new Chrome extension that makes creating product links fast and easy.

Publishers have long been able to create links by signing into Google Affiliate Network and creating a Publisher-specific link (PSL). Now, the Google Affiliate Network Link Builder enables publishers to create affiliate ads that link directly to unique product pages -- right from an advertiser’s website.

If a great product catches your eye while browsing, why shouldn't a PSL be anything more than a click away? With our new Chrome extension, it isn’t. The extension displays a button in the corner of your browser window. If the advertiser's program supports deep linking, you can easily create a PSL for any product you’re viewing by clicking the button.

Get started

To start using the Link Builder, just follow these steps:

Sign in to Chrome with your Google Affiliate Network publisher login and password. Here’s a step-by-step process for signing in to Chrome.
Visit the Chrome Web Store and download the Google Affiliate Network Link Builder. This will add the icon to your browser.
Next, visit an advertiser website where you have an existing affiliate relationship and search for a product.
Found a cool product? Use the extension by clicking on the icon and a pop-up window will prompt you to create a PSL with one click.
And that’s it! Copy the PSL, and you can begin promoting it right away.

How it works

The extension works entirely by making calls to Google Affiliate Network’s public API, and the only requirement is that you be signed in to Chrome with your publisher account. Once loaded, the extension downloads all your advertiser relationships into memory and then recognizes when you have an affiliate relationship with a website you’re visiting. The extension's open source code is available for all to see, as an example of how to use Google Affiliate Network's public APIs.

We encourage our users to study and use the code to support their creative endeavors. If you have questions or feedback, please let us know in our public support forum.

Posted by:
Ben Collins-Sussman, Engineering Manager

Join our holiday season advertiser webinar

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Believe it or not, the holiday season is almost here. If you’re interested in making the most of Holiday 2012 for your affiliate program, join our free webinar hosted by Google Affiliate Network experts to help you plan and strategize for the busiest shopping season of the year.

We’ll be hosting this webinar three times over the next few weeks:

Session 1: Thursday, October 18th at 9:30 AM PT / 11:30 AM CT / 12:30 PM ET Join

Session 2: Wednesday, October 31st at 11:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM CT / 2:00 PM ET Join

Session 3: Thursday, November 8th at 12:00 PM PT / 2:00 PM CT / 3:00 PM ET Join

Our holiday season advertiser webinar is designed to arm you with the tools you need to get the most out of your affiliate spend for the holidays and navigate the season successfully. Come and learn tips and tricks on how to optimize your program for continued success.

Posted by:

Josh Pyle, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Beauty Encounter launches an affiliate program to achieve branding and direct response goals

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on our blog.

Beauty Encounter is a specialty retailer who has earned a reputation as a popular shopping destination for affordable beauty and fragrance products. Founded in 1999 and based in Fountain Valley, CA, they evolved from a family-run wholesaler to an online fragrance retailer. As their online business developed, they wanted to increase their brand exposure and reach new customers while trimming their cost per customer acquisition. They launched an affiliate program in June 2011 to achieve these goals.

For Chief Technology Officer Thu Truong and her team, affiliate marketing ended up playing a vital role in the growth of their e-commerce efforts. Not only have they acquired new customers at a desirable cost, but they have also expanded their online presence. Truong states that their affiliate program has “given us access to productive affiliates, which is like having tens to hundreds to thousands of marketers spread knowledge of our brand name to online shoppers who normally would not know about Beauty Encounter and what we have to offer.” Throughout the first months of launch, the Beauty Encounter team established a solid set of publishers to achieve their branding and direct response goals.

In addition to analyzing performance and recruiting new publishers, Beauty Encounter launched an incentive program to motivate their top publishers. Truong explains, “We offered higher commission rates and exclusive offers to affiliates with a strong track record of driving sales for us. The incentive program motivated our top publishers to increase exposure of our brand and promotions, and really allowed these partnerships to flourish.” In the end, the results spoke for themselves. After just five months, Beauty Encounter saw their affiliate conversion rate increase by over 7%, ultimately helping to boost their total online sales by 7% as well.

To learn more about Ms. Truong and the Beauty Encounter affiliate program, read the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

Quickly find similar links and advertisers

Google Affiliate Network — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 22:22:00 +0000

We know that being able to find relevant, high-performing affiliate links and advertiser programs is important to publishers, which is why we're excited to share some new enhancements to our recommendation engine.

Now, when you sign in to your publisher account and click the Links tab, you can find similar links. For example, if you find a link and want to see if there are related links you could also promote, just click on ‘Similar links’. If more links are available, you’ll immediately see different sizes and as well as links with similar performance potential.

We've also enabled the ability to search by category. When you find a link you like and want to find more links in that category -- just click the category you’re interested in and it will automatically set the filter to what you want.

To help you quickly and more efficiently find similar advertisers and advertiser categories, we've also extended this feature to the Advertisers tab.

We've also made these new features available to advertisers. If you're an advertiser, just sign in to your account and click the Publishers tab to also find similar publishers. You can also search by publisher segment and publisher category.

We hope these new changes will help you quickly and easily find links and build affiliate relationships, and we look forward to continuing to enhance these features.

As always, let us know what you think by posting a comment here or in the Google Affiliate Network forum.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
Robin Anil, Software Engineer

Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger now in the UK!

Erica Sievert — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we launched Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger in the US and added new enhancements in June. The positive results and feedback we’ve received are very promising, and we’re excited to announce that this gadget is now available to Blogger users in the UK!

To refresh your memory, Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger is a gadget that makes it easy for Blogger users to insert an affiliate ad into a blog post and earn a commission when someone clicks the link and makes a purchase on the advertiser’s site.

Watch the video below for a quick refresher:

Here’s how to get started:

If you’re a Blogger user in the UK (or the US), go to the Earnings tab in Blogger and sign up for AdSense if you don’t already have an account.
Once you have an AdSense account, you may see the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger gadget when you write a new blog post.*
Write a new post and select a relevant affiliate ad from the 'Advertise Products' gadget.
Publish your post, and voilà! You may earn a commission when someone clicks your affiliate ad and makes a purchase.

Participating UK advertisers:
Advertisers including Bestbathrooms.com, Cheapsuites.co.uk, Crooked Tongues, Diamond Manufacturers, eFlorist, Hudsonreed.com, Perfume Click and The Snugg have already come on board, and more are joining every day.

If you’re an advertiser interested in participating in Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, please reach out to your Google Affiliate Network account team or contact us if you’re not already working with us.

Posted by:
Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

*Note that this gadget will only be available to select UK and US Blogger users whose blogs match available ad categories, so you may not immediately see the gadget even if you have an AdSense account.

Your use of the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger program is governed by the Google Affiliate Ads For Blogger Online Program Terms and Conditions. Please review the Office of Fair Trading's Q&A that discusses a blogger's obligation to disclose financial benefits you may receive for endorsing products or services. As a reminder, under your Google Affiliate Ads For Blogger Online Program Terms and Conditions, You must comply with all applicable laws relating to the disclosure of financial benefits You receive for endorsing any products or services. For example, when you include a Blogger Affiliate Ad on Your blog, you will clearly identify, in a manner prominently displayed with editorial content on your blog such that it would be unavoidable to the average user, that the Blogger Affiliate Ad is an advertisement.

Exclusive promotions for fall

Erica Sievert — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Google Affiliate Network exclusive promotions are back! Over 40 limited-time deals are available only to Google Affiliate Network publishers from September 21st to September 24th.

Follow these steps to get started:

Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
Once approved, review the available promotions and click "Apply Link" for each one that you wish to promote.

When can I post these promotions on my site?
All promotions will be live on 12 am Central Time on September 21st, and they will expire at 11:59 pm Central Time on September 24th. You can find the promotions in your Google Affiliate Network Home tab or by searching for “September Exclusive” in the Links tab.

For additional questions, check out the Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Creating better relationships and improving productivity

Google Affiliate Network — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:30:00 +0000

We’ve been amazed at the adoption of the recommendation engine, a new tool that helps advertisers and publishers find new relationships and links based on relevance and revenue potential. Google Affiliate Network now sees over half of all new relationships being created from our recommendations. Today, we’re excited to share new enhancements that further simplify the process of creating relationships and getting links.

For publishers:

Creating relationships
The Advertisers tab includes three sub-tabs to help you easily sort through new opportunities.

Recommended is now the default view for the Advertisers tab, featuring a customizable list of available advertiser programs that Google algorithms predict may be a good fit for you.
Invitations are from advertisers that want to work with you -- including those with private programs. To join, just click the ‘Join’ button for that invitation.
Browse existing shows the status of advertiser programs you’ve already applied to.

Getting the best links
The Links tab features recommendations for links that we estimate will perform well for you, and we now include new criteria for recommendations, like Staff picks and Exclusive opportunities. You can still view ‘Browse all links’ to search for links as normal. You'll also notice three new sub-tabs – we've consolidated Products and Subscriptions under the Links tab.

Recommended links are ranked primarily based on average earnings.
Staff picks are curated by Google Affiliate Network account teams based on relevant performance or seasonality.
Exclusive opportunities feature links only available through Google Affiliate Network.

For advertisers:

Creating relationships
The Publishers tab includes three sub-tabs to help you easily sort through high-potential publishers that may be a good fit for your program.

Recommended is now the default view for the Publishers tab. New search filters enable you to quickly narrow down the list of publishers that are a good fit.
Pending makes it easy for you to review publishers and quickly approve them in bulk. We sort publishers by relevance to help you approve the best recommendations first.
Browse existing shows the status of publishers that you’ve already taken action on, as well as any non-joined publishers you can recruit.

Please let us know what you think by posting a comment here or in the Google Affiliate Network forum.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
Robin Anil, Software Engineer

Mark your calendar: Affiliate Management Days

Erica Sievert — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:12:00 +0000

We hope to meet fellow affiliate managers and marketing executives at Affiliate Management Days, which is coming up on October 9-10 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Members of the Google Affiliate Network team will be attending the conference, and we'll also be participating in the following panels:

The Role of the Network
Affiliate networks have evolved to play many different roles over the years and are a key partner for both merchants and affiliates. Panelists from different networks, including Tony Nelan, Head of Account Management for Google Affiliate Network, will discuss what role the network should play in areas such as affiliate screening, fraud monitoring, program management and more.

Revisiting Innovations in the Affiliate Marketplace
Ali Pasha, Product Manager at Google Affiliate Network, will discuss how the dynamics of the affiliate industry have changed and what we’ve learned in the last six months.

You can review the conference agenda and register on the Affiliate Management Days website. Register by Friday, September 7th to take advantage of the early bird rate, which will save you up to $700 from the onsite price.

Google Affiliate Network advertisers are eligible for a 20% discount. Simply log into your account and view the Announcements section of your dashboard.

Posted by: Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing the Links API

Josh Pyle — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Since we launched our first set of API’s, we've consistently heard from publishers that they want an automated, flexible way to access and serve affiliate ads to scale their marketing efforts, create more unique advertising experiences, and better monetize their websites. Today, we've launched a beta of the new Links API, enabling publishers to query for links, banners, and even create publisher-specific links in real time.

If you're using our existing API's or are looking for more advanced ways to distribute affiliate links, try our Links API to programmatically access and show ads from Google Affiliate Network advertisers in new and creative ways. To get started, take a look at the documentation.

To start testing now, try out the Links API in Google APIs Explorer. Try running some sample requests like listing available free shipping promotions from approved advertisers (requires authentication).

Want to learn more about using Google Affiliate Network APIs to their full potential? Check out our presentation at Google I/O:

As always, we’d love to hear from you. If you have comments or suggestions on our new Links API, please visit our forum and share your feedback.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
Shaun Cox, Software Engineer

Accelerate: A deeper look at attribution

Erica Sievert — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Today, we're kicking off an educational series about accelerating your affiliate marketing business. We’ll be sharing insights that emerged from the Google Affiliate Network Client Summit, an annual event in July that brings together affiliate advertisers, publishers, partners and Google. The theme for the event this year was Accelerate, highlighting Google’s commitment to growing the affiliate channel for all.

In today’s post, you’ll hear from Neil Hoyne, Google's Global Program Manager for Attribution. Neil leads efforts to bring companies stronger insights into the measurement and valuation of their customers' journeys, working to improve conversion rates through better utilization of Google Analytics as well as advanced attribution modeling.

At the Google Affiliate Network Client Summit, Neil led an engaging session on attribution, encouraging companies to identify more actionable performance metrics and build stronger industry relationships as the advertising market continues its rapid evolution away from last-click valuation. Watch the video below to learn more.

We invite you to continue this conversation with Neil by sharing your comments on this post or via Twitter (@nhoyne).

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Launched: Switch between your preferred currency and timezone

Erica Sievert — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:18:00 +0000

With our international launch earlier this year, we enabled you to set your preferred currency and timezone. We’re pleased to announce that if you changed your settings, you can now switch between your preferred settings and the default currency (USD) and timezone (Central Time) when viewing reports. This enhancement allows you to view your reports in the format that's most relevant to you, and is available for all reports except for payment reports.

Switch between your preferred and default currency:

Switch between your preferred and default timezone:

If you're a Google Affiliate Network publisher, please note that you can only view the reporting currency you’ve chosen in your AdSense account. It’s not possible to change this once you’ve set it.

Posted by: Kurt Spoerer, Google Affiliate Network Product Manager

Meet the Google Affiliate Network team at Affiliate Summit East 2012

Josh Pyle — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:45:00 +0000

Google Affiliate Network is excited to join our fellow affiliate marketers at Affiliate Summit East from August 12-14, 2012 at Hilton New York.

At the conference, you'll have a chance to hear from our team. Dan Chiss, Head of Network Solutions, will be participating in a panel discussion "Ask the Affiliate Networks." Members of our account management team and product management will also be on hand to meet with our valued advertisers, publishers and partners. Be sure to visit our booth.

Stop by the Google Affiliate Network booth:
Affiliate Summit East
Google Affiliate Network
Booth #232 and 234
map »

Attend the panel discussion:
Session: Ask the Affiliate Networks
Location: Gramercy Suite
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
Date: Monday August 13, 2012

See you soon!

Posted by:
Josh Pyle, Network Strategist

Recommending the most relevant advertisers, publishers, and links

Josh Pyle — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:53:00 +0000

Over the past year, we've heard from publishers and advertisers that they want a network that can help them create meaningful relationships. We've listened, and today, we've released a completely new recommendation engine that redefines how you can find and take advantage of affiliate marketing opportunities.

Publishers can find advertiser recommendations under the Advertisers > Recommended advertisers sub-tab. This is where they can find a list of available programs ranked based on relevancy and predicted performance. Each recommendation also shows why the recommendation was made, along with an estimate of earnings potential for that advertiser. We display advertiser recommendations based on the criteria below:

Similar category: Advertisers are ranked by relevancy to your publisher category.
Revenue potential: Advertisers are ranked primarily based on estimated payout fees.

In addition to the average advertiser EPC, each recommendation has an estimated advertiser EPC. Estimated EPC is a brand new metric designed to help publishers understand how much they could potentially earn with that advertiser.

Advertisers can now see publisher recommendations, too. Using the recommendation engine, the Publishers > Recommended publishers sub-tab shows a list of publishers that Google algorithms recommend as a good fit based on similar categories and revenue potential.

We've also brought the power of recommendations to the Links tab to help publishers find and promote the most relevant ads with the highest performance potential. Under the Links > Recommended links sub-tab, we display recommended text and banner links that Google algorithms predict may perform best for each individual publisher.

For more details, we suggest reviewing these Help Center articles:

Sign in to your account and try out recommendations. After you’ve taken a few minutes to review, we’d love to hear from you in our forum.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
Robin Anil, Software Engineer

New enhancements to Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

Erica Sievert — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:52:00 +0000

Back in April, we introduced Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, a gadget that enables Blogger users to easily monetize their blogs through Google Affiliate Network and helps advertisers scale relationships with content blogs. We’ve received positive feedback about this gadget from participating advertisers and Blogger users, and wanted to let you know about a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made:

Additional advertisers: This program is now available to more advertisers. In order to participate, advertisers must provide a Merchant Center feed and consent through an email agreement.
Additional categories of blogs: All Blogger users located in the US with an AdSense account can now sign up for Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger. Participating advertisers can see performance at the category and blog level via the ‘Reports’ tab in the Google Affiliate Network interface.

Here are two examples of a Blogger user finding a relevant affiliate ad:

If you’re an advertiser interested in participating in Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, please reach out to your Google Affiliate Network account team or submit an inquiry if you’re not already working with us. If you’re a publisher, learn more about posting affiliate ads to your blog.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Announcing new UK advertisers

Erica Sievert — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:48:00 +0000

We’re excited to let you know that 30+ UK advertisers have recently launched affiliate programmes with Google Affiliate Network. For publishers with UK audiences, these programmes represent a new opportunity to earn incremental revenue for your website.

Just a few of our newly-launched advertisers include:

Travel: Olotels
Entertainment: Netflix
Gifts: Moonpig
Apparel & Accessories: Radley
Finance: Baines & Ernst

Follow these steps to apply to UK programmes:

Log in to your account (or apply to join our network)
Go to the Advertisers tab
On the left-hand navigation, click 'Relationship status' and choose 'Available'
Click ‘Countries’ and choose United Kingdom
Apply to programmes

If you’re an advertiser interested in starting an affiliate programme with Google Affiliate Network, please contact us.

Posted by: Tony Nelan, Head of Google Affiliate Network for Europe

Welcome summer with exclusive promotions

Erica Sievert — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Google Affiliate Network exclusive promotions are back! Over 50 limited-time deals are available only to Google Affiliate Network publishers from June 22nd to June 25th.

Follow these steps to get started:

Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
Once approved, review the available promotions and click the "Apply Now" link for each one that you wish to promote. These promotions will also be available in your Google Affiliate Network account starting on June 18th. You can find them in the Home tab or by searching for “June Exclusive” in the Links tab.

When can I post these promotions on my site?
All promotions will be live by 12 am Central Time on June 22nd, and all will expire at 11:59 pm Central Time on June 25th. Note that while you may access the promotions by June 18th, you may only post these exclusive promotions from June 22nd to June 25th.

For additional questions, check out the Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Connecting shoppers and great stores online

Erica Sievert — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:29:00 +0000

(Cross posted to the Official Google Blog)

Online shopping is great for many reasons, but most of all it’s a convenient and fast way to turn your intent to buy that new pair of running shoes, for example, into an actual purchase. But shoppers tell us they’re often nervous about buying from online stores they don’t know. We created the free Google Trusted Stores program to help solve this problem. When shoppers see the Google Trusted Store badge, they know in a snap they’re shopping with a reputable retailer and they can feel confident making an informed purchase.

We’ve been testing the program since last fall with about 50 online merchants and more than 10 million orders. It’s working even better than we hoped, generating positive feedback from shoppers and increasing sales for merchants. Starting today, Google Trusted Stores is open to all U.S. merchants who want to apply.

Helping shoppers choose stores they can trust

When shopping online, you may come across the Google Trusted Store badge. Hover over it and you’ll see a “report card” which shows “grades” for that merchant’s shipping and service, including more precise metrics about what the grades mean.

The Google Trusted Store badge and report card

This badge is only awarded to online stores that deliver a great overall experience, so even if you haven’t shopped with this merchant before, you can easily tell if they are trustworthy, ship quickly and reliably, and offer exceptional customer service. If there’s a problem with your purchase, we’re here to help. When you buy from a Google Trusted Store, you can opt in to get up to $1,000 lifetime purchase protection per shopper. And our dedicated customer service team is there to work with you and the merchant to assist in resolving the issue.

Helping merchants demonstrate their excellence and earn new business
Google Trusted Stores helps online stores attract new customers, increase sales and differentiate themselves by showing off their excellent service via the badge on their websites. Soon the badge will also appear on Google.com ads and in Google Shopping results.

Google Trusted Store badge on AdWords

Over the last nine months of the pilot, our tests show that participating in this program can help merchants big and small. For example, Wayfair, the largest online-only retailer of home goods and one of the top 50 largest online retailers as ranked by Internet Retailer, increased sales* on its site by 2.3 percent with Google Trusted Stores. And Beau-coup, a specialty online favors and gifts retailer, saw an 8.6 percent increase*. Take a look at our merchant success stories to learn more about how Google Trusted Stores has had a positive impact on website conversion rates and average order sizes for online retailers.

Google Trusted Stores is entirely free, both for shoppers and for online stores. We’re still testing the most helpful ways to display Trusted Stores information to shoppers, so you may see different versions, or none at all, while we conduct experiments. If you’re a merchant and would like to participate in the Google Trusted Stores program, please apply.

Posted by Tom Fallows, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping

*Increased sales percentages are based on a combination of uplift in conversion and average order size.

A fresh design for the Google Affiliate Network Help Center

Josh Pyle — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

After launching nearly four years ago, the Google Affiliate Network Help Center has been regularly updated with articles to help you find answers to common issues, manage your account, and learn affiliate marketing best practices.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve launched improvements to the design of our Help Center to give you easy access to help content that is most relevant to you.

The new design features four main sections:

Get Started in the left navigation has basic information about Google Affiliate Network and how to launch or activate your advertiser or publisher account.
Learn about Google Affiliate Network contains articles organized by category. Quickly find information you need about your account, managing ads, running reports, and many other areas. Plus, we’ve added a comprehensive FAQ that covers the most common questions users ask.
Fix an issue helps you troubleshoot and resolve specific issues.
Additional resources in the right navigation includes more ways to connect with us and get support such as our forum, Twitter feed, and even this blog.

In the next few weeks, look out for new help articles as well as additional changes to further simplify your Help Center experience.

Ready to get started? Visit the Advertiser or Publisher Help Center today. After you’ve taken a few minutes to check out the redesigned Help Center, we’d love to hear from you in our forum.

Posted by:
Josh Pyle, Google Affiliate Network Strategist

ShopWiki.com grows 65% in Google Affiliate Network and expands internationally

Erica Sievert — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on the blog every few weeks. When ShopWiki.com entered the online shopping space in 2005, they started with a simple idea: “make shopping better.” As a shopping search engine, they hoped to index everything that can be bought online and help consumers make the best purchase. With over 200,000 featured stores and domains in the US, UK, France, and Germany, ShopWiki has become a popular destination for online consumers. Their technology now crawls partner sites and organizes a wide selection of their products in one centralized place.
With global interests and ever-changing consumer needs, ShopWiki General Manager James Keating and his team search for efficient ways to scale their site and grow revenue. Since partnering with Google Affiliate Network in 2007, Keating has relied on detailed reporting and analytics to make informed decisions and drive strategy. As he explains, “Google Affiliate Network gives us rich insights into the best-converting products. We combine these insights with our own site data to automatically optimize yield for every page of our site.” As ShopWiki has grown, they have also added new advertisers and focused on strategic partnerships. Keating has kept an eye on new advertisers in Google Affiliate Network and joined their programs upon launch, building links and using the new content to better serve his site visitors. Through Google Affiliate Network’s user interface, Keating has found new relationships and tools to streamline these processes. He explains, “whenever a new advertiser joins, we are able to create and implement links right away and begin optimization from day one.” Guided by data insight and focused on new partnerships, ShopWiki has continued to grow as a publisher in Google Affiliate Network and a shopping destination on the web. In 2011, they grew their network revenue by 65% YoY, helping to spur international expansion outside of their home US market. To learn more about how James Keating and ShopWiki have established their affiliate business, check out their full case study. Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

Introducing Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

Erica Sievert — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Blogger is a free tool that enables anyone to publish a blog and have a voice on the web. When people share words, thoughts and photos on their blogs, they’re sharing their passions with the world. Here at Google Affiliate Network, we see that many of our publishers use Blogger, and often times they’re passionate about brands or products that they believe in. We’re excited to announce that starting today, a new gadget called Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger will be available to select U.S. Blogger users. This gadget makes it easy for Blogger users to insert an affiliate ad into a blog post and earn a commission when someone clicks the link and makes a purchase on the advertiser’s site. Watch the video below for a quick preview:

Here’s how to get started:
If you’re a Blogger user, go to the Earnings tab on Blogger and sign up for AdSense if you don’t already have an account.

Once you have an AdSense account, you may see the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger gadget when you write a new blog post. Note that this gadget will only be available to select U.S. Blogger users whose blogs match available ad categories, so you may not immediately see the gadget even if you have an AdSense account. We’ll be sure to let you know when we expand this program to more Blogger users.

When you write a new post, you can select a relevant affiliate ad from the “Advertise Products” gadget to the right of the post editor. The ad can be a text link, a product image, or a banner.

Publish your post, and voilà! You may earn a commission when someone clicks your affiliate ad and makes a purchase.

We’re incredibly excited to make it easier for Blogger users to extend your influential relationship with your audiences by promoting the products you love. By providing an additional way to earn revenue, we want to help you keep doing what you love -- blogging.

Get started today by visiting the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger website.

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Note: The Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger gadget is currently only available through Blogger. We’re working to make this gadget available to Google Affiliate Network publishers through the Google Affiliate Network interface, and will be sure to let you know when this option is available. If you're an advertiser interested in participating, please contact your Google Affiliate Network representative or submit an inquiry if you’re not already working with Google Affiliate Network.

Google Affiliate Network expanding in the UK

Erica Sievert — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:01:00 +0000

After testing Google Affiliate Network in beta throughout the UK, we’re excited to announce that we’re expanding to more UK advertisers and agencies. This means more relevant deals and promotions will be available to publishers with UK audiences. We’ve worked hard to enhance our international product offering and now have a team based in the Google London office actively supporting UK users.

Key benefits for UK users:

Market-leading insights and reporting available in local timezone, language and currency
Publisher payments available in over 40 currencies in 80 countries
Product feed integration via Google Merchant Centre
Ability to create accounts with different payouts, advertiser-specific terms and local market presence

Custom recruiting for select advertisers

For UK publishers:
UK publishers can now apply for UK affiliate programmes including Blue Nile, Onlineticketexpress.com, Orvis UK, Shoes.com, Skechers and more. Follow the steps below to to get started:

1.) Log in to your account (or apply to join our network)
2.) Go to the Advertisers tab
3.) On the left-hand navigation, click ‘Countries’ and choose United Kingdom
4.) Apply to programmes

For UK advertisers:
If you’re an advertiser interested in starting an affiliate programme with Google Affiliate Network, please contact us and a member of our team can provide more information.

We look forward to helping advertisers, publishers and agencies achieve their goals in the UK, and doing our part to grow the UK affiliate market! For more information, please visit our website.

Posted by: Tony Nelan, Head of Google Affiliate Network for Europe

Get ready for spring with Google Affiliate Network exclusive promotions

Jamie — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Spring into action by giving your audience access to exclusive promotions, available only to Google Affiliate Network publishers. This opportunity enables you to promote a variety of limited-time deals and earn a performance fee from orders that originate from your links.

If you aren’t already a Google Affiliate Network publisher, join today. Over 40 exclusive promotions will be available for one weekend only, from Friday, March 23 through Monday, March 26.

How do I access these promotions?
To access any of these exclusive promotions, you need to be an approved publisher in Google Affiliate Network.

Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
Once approved, review the promotions available and click the "Apply Now" link for each one that you wish to promote.
Tracking links will be available in your Google Affiliate Network account by viewing the Home tab on March 19th. You can also search for “March Exclusive” links in the Links tab on March 23rd.

Need help applying or want more information? Review the Publisher Beginner’s guide.

When can I post these promotions on my site?
All promotions will be available starting midnight Central Time on March 23rd, and all will expire at midnight Central Time on March 26th. Please remember that you may not post any of these exclusive promotions until March 23rd.

For additional questions, check out the Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Jamie Ross, Affiliate Network Strategist

The importance of community policing

Erica Sievert — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:45:00 +0000

Google Affiliate Network works hard to ensure a high quality network for advertisers, publishers, and users. In addition to our integration with AdSense and the safety net you get with Google’s cross-product security and fraud prevention efforts, advertisers and publishers must adhere to our terms of service and program policies.

We also get a lot of great input from the affiliate community via our help forum and other feedback channels. We believe that community policing is an important part of a healthy, high-quality network and review every entry that comes in through our ‘Report a Violation’ form. We encourage you to use this form to report abusive or suspicious publishers who may be in violation of our program policies or terms of service around site content, traffic sources, or our software guidelines.

Posted by Matt Dougherty, Network Quality

Offers.com utilizes technology and strong partnerships to increase sales by 36%

Erica Sievert — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:53:00 +0000

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on the blog every few weeks.

Offers.com is an Austin-based publisher that aggregates and promotes deals from all over the web. In 2011, as they considered their annual goals, Offers.com Vice President Howard Schaffer worked with Google Affiliate Network to grow top line revenue and better align with advertisers’ brand goals.

Using Google Affiliate Network link subscriptions, product search, and product feed subscriptions, Howard and the Offers.com team culled the right information to provide their audience with the most compelling deals. Their proven results earned the Offers.com team the trust and confidence of a growing group of advertisers, assisting a number of them with their search strategy.

By coupling Google Affiliate Network technology with building strong partnerships, advertiser sales through Offers.com increased 36% YoY in 2011.

Learn more by reading the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

Faster, better order management

Josh Pyle — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:12:00 +0000

Since migrating to the Google stack last September, we’ve been working to improve the Google Affiliate Network interface by both adding new features and enhancing some existing ones.

As a part of that effort, we’ve just pushed out a brand new release of the Orders tab for both advertisers and publishers.

First, we've made the Orders tab fast. Very fast. Whether you’re looking up 10 orders or 10,000 orders, you'll see query results load in about the same amount of time.

Advertiser-facing changes:

We want to make it easier for you to handle bulk operations. So, we enabled inline order editing right from the Orders tab. No need to click through to another page -- you can simply edit the order inline. Once an order is updated, publisher and network fees are updated, too.

Also, it’s now easier to cancel orders in bulk. When you search for multiple orders, just select the orders you want to cancel and cancel them all at once.

Publisher-facing changes:

The key publisher feature we’ve added is the ability to directly edit the Member ID field for an order inline. If you're a publisher whose workflow involves verifying or editing the Member ID field, this process will now be much easier.

Finally, based on your feedback, we now display locked orders (e.g. those that have been paid out) in the tab, rather than just open orders. Keep in mind though that those locked orders can't be edited.

As always, we look forward to your feedback. Please use our forum for feedback and comments. Thanks!

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Abt.com transitions to Google Affiliate Network and grows revenue 119%

Erica Sievert — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:50:00 +0000

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’ll be sharing these stories on the blog over the coming weeks.

Today, we turn the spotlight to Abt.com, an online electronics retailer based just north of Chicago in Glenview, IL. Since launching in 1998, Abt.com has climbed to #151 on Internet Retailer’s list of America's top retail websites. The Abt.com team came to Google Affiliate Network in 2008 with three objectives: to grow online sales, reach new customers, and expand their existing reach across top affiliate publishers.

Steve Tazic, Abt.com’s Director of eCommerce Marketing, transitioned the company’s affiliate program to Google Affiliate Network based on the platform’s ease of use, automation, robust quality controls and advanced reporting. With less time spent managing processes, Steve collaborated with his Google Affiliate Network account team to optimize key relationships and implement best practices. Just a few highlights include:

Data-driven optimization: The Abt.com team used advanced reports to “reach out to publishers in different situations when numbers are good or bad to try and capitalize on opportunities. For example, we can easily pinpoint publishers who have dropped off in sales and know exactly who to contact to get them back on track.”
Take advantage of platform efficiency: “The Google Affiliate Network platform automates processes for creating ads, pinpointing potential new affiliates and recognizing current affiliates that need attention, whether it be good or bad. One big time saver is that we were able to automate the reconciliation process which we used to do manually.”

“Since coming from our previous network, we have seen average monthly revenue increase 119%. We have better relationships with each publisher and feel it is easier to get our offers out to our publishers. The affiliate channel now represents 15% of our online business.” - Steve Tazic, Abt.com’s Director of eCommerce Marketing

Learn more by reading the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

New and improved sidebar help widget

Josh Pyle — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Last week, we made some updates to give users quick access to comprehensive and interactive help within the Google Affiliate Network interface.

In the lower left of each page in your account, you’ll see a new and improved help widget that displays relevant help information based on the page you’re on.

Benefits include:

Advertisers can quickly access the Getting Started Guide and learn about creating links, supplying merchandising information and advertiser-specific terms, and more

Publishers can get quick access to the Publisher Beginner's Guide, learn about setting up product feed subscriptions, and watch a step-by-step video on setting up link subscriptions

Need an answer fast? Use the search box to get information from Help Center articles, forum posts, and even this blog -- right within the widget. You can click the search results to find more detailed information in a new browser window without interrupting the work you were doing in the interface.

Take a minute to check out the new sidebar help widget. You may discover features you’re not yet taking advantage of, and learn some affiliate marketing best practices, too.

If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you in our forum.

Posted by:
Josh Pyle, Affiliate Network Strategist
Jessie Chavez, Software Engineer
Sabrina Gana, Publisher Support Specialist

Revamped commission reporting for publishers

Erica Sievert — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Last week, we made a few updates to help publishers stay on top of commission rates and commission rate changes.

New commission report for publishers
The new commission report allows publishers to view all of their commission rates (except for tiers & category-level commission rates) in one location. This report allows publishers to sort, filter, and export the commission rates as a comma or tab delimited file. Learn more about commission reports.

Improved commission notifications for publishers
Commission notifications now display the old and the new values for commissions that have changed. This helps publishers easily track changes that have occurred to a commission rate.

------------------------------------------------------------
Test Advertiser 1 (K3)
------------------------------------------------------------
New Commission schedule:
Start Date: 2012-01-01
Event Type: Transaction
Rate: 58.00% of sales
------------------------------------------------------------
Previous Commission schedule:
Start Date: 2011-09-27
End Date: 2012-01-01
Event Type: Transaction
Rate: 10.00% of sales

If you have any questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you at our forum.

Posted by Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Mark your calendar: Affiliate Management Days

Erica Sievert — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:43:00 +0000

We hope to see many of you at Affiliate Management Days on March 8-9 in San Francisco. Affiliate Management Days is a professional forum for affiliate managers and marketing executives responsible for their company’s affiliate marketing strategy, program management and related operations.

Two members of the Google Affiliate Network team will be speaking at the event:

Kristin Hall, Head of Publisher Development
Publisher Segmentation & Key Optimization Levers
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
Trends & Innovations in the Affiliate Marketplace

You can review the conference agenda and register on the Affiliate Management Days website. Register by Friday, January 20th to take advantage of the early bird rate, which will save you $500 from the onsite price.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing the Google Affiliate Network API

Erica Sievert — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:46:00 +0000

Today, we’re publicly launching the first version of the Google Affiliate Network API, which allows advanced publishers and advertisers to automate various tasks related to Google Affiliate Network.

The features in this release include:

Advertiser lookup: Publishers can now use the Google Affiliate Network API to more easily access data that advertisers have chosen to share with them (such as payout rank and advertiser category). Previously, publishers had to manually access this shared data through the Google Affiliate Network interface. Advertisers can also access their own information through the API.
Event and order details: Developers can easily integrate data from events that occur in Google Affiliate Network into their own website's workflow and internal systems. This API, in particular, allows access to all significant event-level data for transactions and actions.
Publisher lookup: Advertisers can use the API to look up data that publishers have chosen to share with them (such as payout rank and publisher classification). Previously, advertisers had to manually access this shared data through the Google Affiliate Network interface. Publishers can also access their own information through the API.

For more information, please refer to Google Affiliate Network’s API documentation page.

Posted by Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Google Affiliate Network Exclusive Opportunities Are Back

Jamie — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Do you have a blog, website and an AdSense account? If you aren’t already a Google Affiliate Network publisher, now is a great time to join and monetize your website by giving your audience access to exclusive opportunities. Over 25 great deals will be available exclusively to Google Affiliate Network publishers for one weekend only, Friday, 12/9 through Monday, 12/12.

As a reminder, this limited time opportunity enables you to add a variety of great consumer opportunities to your site and earn a performance fee from orders that originate from your links.

How do I promote these opportunities on my site?
To promote any of these exclusive opportunities, you need to be an approved publisher in Google Affiliate Network.

Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
Once approved, review the opportunities available and click the "Apply Now" link for each one that you wish to promote.
Tracking links will be available in your Google Affiliate Network account by viewing the Home tab on December 5th. You can also search for “December Exclusive Opportunities” links in the Links section on December 9th.

Need help applying or want more information? Review the Publisher Beginner’s guide today.

When can I post these opportunities on my site?
All opportunities will be available on December 9, and all will expire at midnight on December 12. Please remember that you may not post any of these exclusives until December 9th.

Further questions? Check out our Help Center for answers to frequently asked questions or feel free to contact us with any questions.

Posted by Jamie Ross, Affiliate Network Strategist

Interpreting Your Data: How To Understand Calculated Metrics

Jamie — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Welcome to the second post in our "Interpreting Your Data" series for affiliate advertisers, brought to you by Google Affiliate Network analysts. View all posts in the series here.

Calculated metrics provide great insight into how specific variables are performing. A few of these commonly used metrics are conversion rate, click through rate, and average order value.
In this post, we will use examples to discuss how you can use calculated metrics to interpret your affiliate program data.

Reviewing performance data using calculated metrics:
You’re in the Google Affiliate Network interface, reviewing performance reports and notice your conversion rate has increased. You may think -- “That’s great news!” Or, is it?

Before celebrating, you’ll need to ask a few more questions and take a deeper look to determine whether an increase in conversion rate is really a positive indicator for your overall program.

This is because conversion rate is a calculated metric that is generated by combining two other metrics -- in this case, conversions divided by clicks. Whenever you use a calculated metric, you should understand what’s happening to both of the underlying metrics to to determine an overall trend.

Example 1:

In period 1, you have 33 conversions and 100 clicks, so your conversion rate is 33%.
In period 2, you have 25 conversions and 50 clicks, so your conversion rate is 50%.

As you can see, the conversion rate goes up in period 2. Is that good? There are fewer conversions in period 2 and fewer clicks. You should investigate why clicks went down before you can determine if this is a positive or negative indicator.

Understanding metric composition:
With an affiliate program, you should also consider the composition of each metric. That is, the composition of all of the publishers that are driving clicks and conversions. Each individual publisher composes one part of each metric.If you see conversion rates go down, you may think that this is negative indicator. To determine the significance, you should check if the conversion rate is down for every publisher and if you added any new publishers.

Example 2:

Publisher X had 33 conversions from 100 clicks totaling a 33% conversion rate.
Then you add publisher Y, who generates 200 clicks, 20 conversions totaling 10% conversion rate.
These two publisher combined generate 53 conversions on 300 clicks, for a conversion rate of 26.5%.
The combined conversion rate is down, but that’s only because you added a publisher that drives more clicks at a lower than average conversion rate.
You still have 33% conversion from publisher Y that drove 100 clicks.

In this example, it’s important to look more closely at the new publisher. It’s possible they have a lower conversion rate due to their business model. Adding this publisher to the program changes your overall number.

In summary, when you’re looking at the movement of a calculated metric (such as conversion rate and average order value) you shouldn’t stop there. To understand the shift, you should do a bit more investigating to find out why that metric moved.

For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this analysis checklist help center article.

Posted by Dan Filowitz, Manager of Affiliate Operations

Interpreting Your Data: Where do I start?

Jamie — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:15:00 +0000

Welcome to the first post in our new "Interpreting Your Data" series for affiliate advertisers, brought to you by Google Affiliate Network analysts. View all posts in the series here.
Affiliate program success can be evaluated in different ways, so you’ll need to clearly define performance requirements and metrics early. Questions you should seek to answer include:

- What is happening?
- Why it is happening?
- What actions can I take?

In this post, we’ll cover time periods and getting started with performance analysis.

Time Periods
The first thing you'll want to decide is what time periods are important to you. Do you want a broad, monthly view or do you need to get more granular with a weekly view? Next, decide how you want to compare your time periods. Year over year will help take seasonality into account. If you are a new affiliate advertiser, week over week and/or month over month will help show how your program is growing.

Performance analysis
After the time period comparisons are determined, start by looking at your main metrics and see if they’re up or down. It's important to look at more than just transactions. An increase in transactions is valuable but you'll also want to see if your clicks increased to really understand the reason behind your increase. Did your opportunities just convert better or did you have a larger base of clicks?

Now, it's time to dig deeper into your program and examine changes in publisher performance. Take a look at your publishers using the same time comparisons. This will help you identify and sort by publisher activity to find the biggest increases or decreases. If only a few of your publishers saw large gains, review any actions you took with them. Did you purchase an ad placement? Did you increase their commission rate or run an exclusive affiliate offer with them? If you saw increases across many or most of your publishers, this could be a result of a sale, or might be tied to publishers implementing creatives or offers that better appealed to your customers. Once you're able to make conclusions about the cause and impacts of program changes, you can take the appropriate steps to optimize publisher performance and drive more conversions.

It's important to understand when gains or losses are due to seasonality and when they’re due to actions taken by you and/or your publishers. For instance, if December is your top month, January sales are going to be down when comparing month over month. This is why it's helpful to use year over year comparisons and understand the seasonality of your business.

For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this help center article.
Posted by Elliott Chapman, Account Strategist

A look ahead at Google Affiliate Network

Erica Sievert — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:53:00 +0000

Here at Google Affiliate Network, we’re working hard to make our product faster, more innovative, and available to more users. You may have already noticed many changes in the past few months, and we encourage you to check out our Interface Updates page to stay up-to-date on the latest.

In light of these changes (and many more to come), we’d like to take a moment to share our vision for our product.

Scale, scale, scale
We’re striving to make our product available to more publishers, advertisers and consumers around the world. So we’ve completely rewritten our hardware and software ecosystem to achieve vast technical scale. This allows us to make Google Affiliate Network available globally, launch innovative new features, and rapidly implement changes with little to no disruption to our users.

Affiliate Marketing for all
We believe strongly in the value of the affiliate channel, and we want to do our part to help it grow. We’re already paying publishers in over 40 currencies. We want to do better. We want all publishers and advertisers to use an interface that is customized to their timezone and language, and to be able to target ads to languages, regions, and audiences that they care about. We also hope to make it easier to sign up, find and run ads, and build relationships, so that publishers and advertisers who are new to the channel can jump right in.

Integrate with other Google products that you use
For those of you who use multiple Google products, we want you to be able to incorporate Google Affiliate Network into a seamless workflow. Today, you can already access Google Affiliate Network using the Google account of your choice. Publishers are paid via Google AdSense’s fast and reliable global payments system. Advertisers manage product feeds via their Google Merchant Center account, and they can access Google Ad Planner within their Google Affiliate Network account to evaluate whether a potential publisher affiliate is a good fit. We want to continue integrating with other Google products that are crucial to your workflow.

Find opportunities that make sense to you
Today, publishers and advertisers are able to find new relationships via the Opportunity Center. We’re also working on ways for you to see the creatives, opportunities, and products that will perform best on a given site -- and make that update quickly and easily. It should be easier for you to communicate with partners directly within the interface -- no emails or phone calls necessary (unless you want them).

Make decisions based on actionable insights
We want you to have access to insights that help you understand every aspect of your affiliate program. We’re focused on creating tools in the interface to help you develop a profitable commission strategy, better understand how customers are reacting to your opportunities, analyze results of paid placements, and clearly see areas for improvement.

Protect your investment through quality controls
Google Affiliate Network already has the highest standards in the affiliate industry to keep our publisher network clean and free from violations. We will continue to harness Google’s strong anti-abuse tools to protect the affiliate ecosystem.

This is the future as we see it, and the changes you see today are the first steps towards these goals. For frequent updates on the latest changes, please refer to our Interface Updates page.

Posted by:
Kurt Spoerer, Senior Product Manager
Ben Collins-Sussman, Engineering Manager
Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

System maintenance from Sept 19-22

Erica Sievert — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:46:00 +0000

We are nearing the final stages of retiring our legacy systems and moving all Google Affiliate Network functions to Google systems. You have likely already noticed some of the changes associated with this process such as improvements to your account homepage, new reports, and faster-loading pages.

In order to complete the final stages of migration, we will need to take the user interface down for maintenance from 8:00pm - 11:00pm CDT each evening from September 19th through September 22nd. Please note that tracking will not be affected during these maintenance periods.

The releases taking place next week are important steps in completing our migration process and have been tested extensively by our engineering team. However, if you notice any issues, or have any questions, please contact your account manager or send us an email at affiliate-migration@google.com.

Posted by Mark Coppin, Technical Solutions

Google Affiliate Network Fall Exclusive Opportunities Now Available

Jamie — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:51:00 +0000

With the arrival of fall, the holiday shopping season begins. Give your users an early start by posting Google Affiliate Network Exclusive Opportunities. Over 40 opportunities will be available exclusively to Google Affiliate Network publishers. In addition, special opportunities will be live for one weekend only, from Friday, September 23 through Monday, September 26.

As a reminder, this limited time opportunity enables you to add a variety of great consumer opportunities to your site and earn a performance fee from orders that originated from your links.

How do I promote these opportunities on my site?

To promote any of these exclusive opportunities, you need to be an approved publisher in the Google Affiliate Network.
Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
Once approved, review the opportunities available and click the "Apply Now" link for everyone that you wish to promote.

Tracking links will be available in your Google Affiliate Network account by viewing the Home tab. You can also search for “September Exclusive Opportunities” links in the Links section on September 23.

Need help applying or want more information? Review the Getting Started guide today.

When can I post these opportunities on my site?
All opportunities will be available on September 23, and all will expire at midnight September 26. Please remember that you may not post any of these exclusives until September 23.

Further questions? Check out our Help Center for answers to frequently asked questions or feel free to contact us with any questions.

Posted by Jamie Ross, Affiliate Network Strategist