Month: August 2009

The growth that Bing has shown over the last few weeks appears to be continuing. A new report claims that from early-June through to the first week of August Bing raised their share of clicks by 44%. While this is interesting for anyone using PPC and wanting to have more options for high-volume traffic, it’s especially so for affiliates in the travel and finance sectors, as these seem to be seeing even higher rates of growth.

Microsoft is trying to establish Bing as a “decision engine”, meaning that it is positioning it as the place to go when one wants to buy something. If the increases in Bing’s share of travel and finance are real and sustained, then perhaps this strategy is working, notwithstanding the doubts that many have expressed.

What is clear is that a lot of new users are being attracted to Bing right now which means there are opportunities for PPC advertisers to find value. If you’re not incorporating Bing into your PPC campaigns, you should be.

As new affiliates enter the industry in search of a new lifestyle or more income, they present a real recruitment opportunity for merchants and networks able to lower the barriers to entry. At the same time, as competition among affiliates heats up, even super-affiliates are attracted to offers that allow them to set up new sites quickly and easily. Trend Revenue has ticked all the boxes with the launch of what they describe as a state of the art affiliate marketing system that offers great looking site templates, product feeds, analytics and high payouts. They’ve put a lot of thought into this so check it out here.

As the Feds begin to seriously crack down on badly run continuity offers and consider new guidelines on sponsored conversations, the online marketing industry is having to come to terms with the fact that regulation is only going to increase. Email and the CAN-SPAM act led the way in this regard.

This has become a problem for many ad networks as they have grown in size. Trying to manage compliance across thousands of publishers – many of whom enjoy pushing the envelope wherever they can – has proven to need expert, system-wide solutions if a network is to avoid falling foul of the rules. As a result, companies such as UnsubCentral that can offer an assurance to networks that they are in compliance are seeing rapid adoption of their technologies.

Clickbooth has increased their advertiser roster by 400% since signing up with UnsubCentral, by emphasizing to their advertisers that they take compliance seriously. It’s a great example of a network taking a potentially difficult problem and creating out of it a new advertiser benefit.

For questions about advertising on mthink’s website network, please contact Chris Trayhorn at ct@mthink.com