Brandon Adcock dot comMy Thoughts, Mostly on Direct Response Marketing

Chase just announced this morning that they will be “pausing indefinitely” their credit card affiliate program.  This is pretty big news considering it is coming on the heels of American Express announcing the cancellation of its business card affiliate program.

This is pretty interesting because it is leaving affiliates with less cards to promote, not to mention wondering what company will pull their products next.  Capital One? Citi?  If another major issuer leaves the market, credit card affiliates could take a huge hit, even more so than they have been seeing over the last 3 months.

I haven’t posted much recently because I have been trying to keep my nose to grind.  Not to mention, there is so much acai drama going on, it could keep anyone busy.

Last week, out of the blue, I was assigned a Facebook account rep (what up dude, if you’re reading, sorry about the cloaking post - swear I don’t do it).  At first I was really skeptical of what he could offer me, aside from being able to call him when I need big limit increases, which he did.  After talking with him on the phone today I learned SO MUCH about Facebook and he was an awesome guy.  It was actually pretty amazing everything he told me.  I am not going to share it all, I got to keep some to myself but here are some of the big highlights I learned from him:

• Contrary to popular belief, Facebook does not use interns to approve ads.  They have full time employees (yes I am sure it must suck) who approve ads and also double as customer service.
• When you see intern.facebook.com show up in logs during reviews, it stands for internal not as in an intern
• Facebook does pace your campaigns during the day and it paces on campaign limit.  So he suggested that I raise my campaign limits real high to like 20k/day so that it would show more ad impressions, instead of pacing it to a lower limit.
• If you want a big boy daily spend limit, they like for you to have a debit card associated to the account.  I was informed there are quite often large charges that get bounced, so if you attach a debit card as a back up, it can help to get large limit bumps.  I added one and they were quick to bump me pretty high.
• Using keywords can really help, even for broad demo’s.  He really stressed that I should try using keywords more than I do, said a lot of people don’t use them and they can make a big difference.
• Another suggestion was to really break out ads by city/state and call out that city/state in ads.  I’m probably not going to do it because I am lazy, but he said a lot of people see CTR boosts when doing this.

If anyone needs/wants a rep and spends decent coin on facebook, he said I could pass his info to a few people.  Just leave a comment here with your real email and I will get in touch with you.

I just recently picked up a dedicated from The Planet, they were having a “blowout sale”.  I got what I think was the best deal I could find.  The server is a dual Xeon 2.8, 2gigs ram, dual 73gb scsi’s, 100 uplink for $139/month.  From what I hear, this is a $200+/month server normally.  So far I have been very happy at The Planet, I just need to learn more about administrating a server.  I know very little about this stuff.  My friends at 3tailer recently got a server at The Planet too and they like it a lot.  Here is there review of The Planet (their server and service).

I think the sale is over, but you should go check, might find a good deal or two.

Surprisingly, this is going to be my first conference related to internet marketing, and i’m paying for it.  I can’t believe I never got to go to one when I was in-house, but that shows you how tight big companies are with their money.

I am going to be headed to Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, January 11-13th.  I am thinking I will go down a day early and leave the day after, but I am not sure yet.  I do actually have a full pass for this event, so I will be blogging about most of the sessions, particular Nickycakes’ session which I hear is on how to absorb mypace losses with a shamwow.

Anyone else going?  If you are let me know, we should meet up.  I am sure I will be tweeting info while I am there.  You can follow me on twitter if you want.  I am really looking forward to some of the network parties, I hear it is the place to be.  Copeac, don’t let me down!

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from the Director of Myspace’s new self-serve ad platform, asking if I would be interested in providing feedback on their beta platform. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance considering I’m spending thousands of dollars there, and there are definite changes that can be made to improve it.

We chatted for awhile today and he was a very nice guy. It seems Myspace is genuinely looking for feedback to make their product better, especially in regards to how it compares to Facebook. We spoke for about 45 minutes and these are the major points I gave to him:

• Add an ad scheduling function - would make a key differentiator from Facebook
• Increase session login time - I’m sick of it making me re-login (he said it was set at 15min)
• Examine how they count clicks - they need to not count repeated clicks by a user within seconds of the previous - Myspace currently reports 10-20% more clicks than my analytics report
• CPC’s need to be tied to CTR and not static.  I gave him examples of how Facebook and Google reward high CTRs with lower CPCs.
• Reporting needs to be closer to real time.  There is a too much of a delay in reporting
• Add toggle feature on reporting to show in EST & CST instead of just pacific
• Add ability to delete ads (he said they were already on it)
• Allow ads to be filtered, sorted, and put into groups
• Ability to receive impressions faster - sometimes the initial impression volume Myspace throws at an ad is very small
• Remove 10k ad max spend, more annoying than anything
• Add an option for no end date on an ad
• After unpausing an ad, impressions need to come sooner.  Facebook is within minutes.
• Allow for adding multiple credit cards so they don’t ban your account when it is denied once
• Open up ad platform to advertise in Canada, UK, and Australia (he said they were looking at it)

I threw a lot at him but that was the bulk of it.  He seemed extremely interested in the ad scheduling feature and I even layed out for him how it could look and work.  I really wouldn’t be surprised to see them add this.  It seems that the ability to delete ads is extremely eminent and should be available soon.  He also discussed with me that they will probably be offering account managers (i.e. available by phone) to the larger spenders.  All in all, I am extremely glad I had the call with him.  They have a good platform so far, but there are a lot of things they could add to make it better.

I think they were asking feedback from their big spenders, so if you get the chance I would do so.  One word of caution though, they do pull up your account, look through it, and talk about it with you.  So if you’re truly running ads you don’t want them to see, then don’t participate in the feedback.

If your site or offer goes down while your paying for traffic, it is never a good thing. Just this weekend crushllc.com, which runs popular Acai offers, went down Friday night. In a situation like this, you need to be able to direct your traffic to another offer. Here is what I am doing to monitor my servers and offers.

I use Montastic for my server monitoring service as it is free and good. When you sign up, make sure to input the domains of your affiliate sites/pages, the domain of your propser account (if you use it, which you should), and then the domain of the offers you’re running.

For notifications, I listed 2 of email addresses (in case 1 was down), and I have it setup to send me a txt message if any of these servers go down. I use AT&T as my wireless provider and they issue each cellphone an email to sms address, for example your#@txt.att.net. What this will do is email that email address, which in turn sent to me as a text message. I am almost certain that every major carrier has this option, just look it up on their website.

When you’re spending thousands daily for advertisements, having a site monitoring service is vital, as Neil can attest.

2 days ago, I logged into my Google MCC and noticed that an old Adwords account of mine, which I had not used in months, suddenly had clicks/charges showing. I thought it was funny so I went into the account to see what had accrued charges, figuring that somehow an old campaign came unpaused. What I found was not the case. Someone had hacked my password (I checked, I had no malware/keyloggers on my computer, nor had I been phished) and created a campaign, disguised to look like my others, for cheap airline tickets. I couldn’t believe it.

To make matters worse, it was a really good campaign. The ad groups were tightly themed around certain airline ticket modifiers, and they had multiple ads using DKI. I was actually rather impressed by the layout/structure of the campaign. Luckily I caught the campaign within a few hours of it going live because the hackers had set a daily budget of 4k.

After researching Adswords accounts being hacked, it apparently seems like a common problem. Not to mention that these campaigns always seem to be airline tickets or ringtones (go figure). I submitted a ticket to Google, they were very response and will void the charges to my account.

Moral of the story is, check your adwords accounts often (even old ones), watch out for malware and adwords phishing sites, and change your password semi-regularly. The damage wasn’t bad, but it could have been much worse.

The other day I published my Facebook cloaking script. Well, I actually use two, since I use each for a different reason. Here is the second one I use, they both cloak the same people, but you can use them in different ways, or on different files. For example, if I was using a jump file, then I would use the script I posted before, but this one below you can just paste into the head of the landing page or if it is Wordpress into the header file or index.php file.

<?
$referrer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if (preg_match(”/intern.facebook.com/”,$referrer)) {
header(’Location: http://www.urlforfacebooktosee.com/’);
} elseif (preg_match(”/dev.facebook.com/”,$referrer)) {
header(’Location: http://www.urlforfacebooktosee.com/’);
};
?>

As per my previous post, I said I would post the Facebook cloaking script I use to send the editors(interns) to a different page than I send users. You don’t just use this for risque dating offers, it also works really well for Zip/Email submits. Facebook doesn’t allow you to advertise for those offers, as it requires users to input personal information, so you have to cloak to run them. Same goes for dieting offers, as Facebook has really cracked down on those as well.

I originally got this script from Nickycakes, then I modified it to include the second referral source once editors started to come from intern.facebook.com. This script won’t work every time, as often times editors will input the URL directly to test it, they have caught onto our cloaking, but try submitting it a few times and it will go through. Also, be choosy about what you cloak to, they know you aren’t really advertising for cnn.com or google.com.

<?php
$cloaked_url = "http://www.entercloakedurlhere.com"; // devs go here
$normal_url = "http://www.enteruserurlhere.com"; // everyone else goes here

if(strpos($tracking_ref,”intern.facebook”) || strpos($tracking_ref,”dev.facebook”)){
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: ” . $cloaked_url );
} else {
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: ” . $normal_url );
}
?>

Like I said, this script works for me, I might have to change it some as they become more savvy, but it is good for now (and simple).

If you haven’t heard already, which you should have Myspace launched an in-house advertising network.  The first several days on the network were like a free for all.  I had ads approved that I know were NSFW, but net damn high CTR’s for dating offers.  They have started to crack down in the last several days on the content in the ad, and at least for me, really hard on landing pages.  As many have learned on Facebook, cloaking your landing page from an editor (aka Intern), and sending them to a reputable or less risque site has become standard practice.

Myspace editors do not leave a referring source, like Facebook editors, when they view your landing page, but they do all seem to use the same IP address.  So instead of cloaking based on referral source like I do on Facebook (which I will post my script later), I cloak based on IP address.  This is the code and IP address I have been using to cloak my pages from Myspace editors.  Just paste this at the top of your landing page. It is very simple, but gets the job done, enjoy.

<?php
$visitor = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if (preg_match(”/216.205.224.64/”,$visitor)) {
header(’Location: http://www.url-you-want-editor-to-see.com’);
};
?>

As universal search becomes increasingly integrated with the different offerings of each search engine, top ranking real estate spots will only become more difficult to achieve. It was just a few years ago, that websites only competed with other websites for top rankings, that’s not the case anymore. Now that pictures, videos, news, and soon to be products (not to mention 1 spot guaranteed to Wikipedia) are included, companies and sites must make use of every type of medium they can to achieve rankings.

Eventually Google Product Search (formerly known as Froogle) will be a fully integrated part of the search results. Currently product search is accessible in ways pointed out by the screenshot below.

Read the rest of this entry »

I took this picture on my iphone while driving from Charleston, SC to Charlotte, NC. This might be the ugliest, most impractical car I have ever seen.

For the most part, I don’t watch network TV, I am usually on HBO for what little TV I watch. Now that Entourage is in between seasons, I am getting kind of bored with TV. My other favorite shows are South Park, The Wire, The Boondocks, Wall Street Warriors, and Nip/Tuck to name a few. Unfortunately just about everyone of these is out of season right, well Nip/Tuck starts back on Oct. 30th I think. But I have no idea when The Wire is coming back on and from some of the things I have read, this next season might be the last. The Boondocks is an awesome show, but it has been about a year I think since their last season. I am getting bored re-watching my downloaded season 1 (oops, did say downloaded, I meant bought). Not to mention, I just found out the other day when reading the wikipedia page on Wall Street Warriors (a show on the HD channel MOJO) that it was basically a 6 part mini-series. I sure hope they film more of those because I really like it.

Seriously though, I just bought a new Samsung 40″ 1080P LCD and I have no good shows to watch, or any true 1080 content for that matter. I think I need to make the leap from streaming downloaded movies ( I have an addiction) to my xbox media center, to buying (dare I say) true HD content.

The title of this article says it all. Most everyone knows the order of market share for search engines, even people who are not in the industry. We all know that in terms of search volume Google is 1, Yahoo is 2, and Microsoft is 3. According to my Microsoft rep, their market share is about 13.6%. I believe she said they use comScore data and that comScore rates them slightly lower than others.

This is what I was shown as accurate historical market share for Microsoft. I will say that from what I have heard from Microsoft, they are in online advertising for the long haul. They have many new things coming out and I am really intrigued by several of them. They should continue to see a rise in market share from current changes, but they have yet to integrate the cornerstone of their company, software. I mean Jesus (not literally), the possibilities are endless if they can integrate it properly.

If Live search can be correctly and cleanly integrated into Office, hell just Word alone, it would be a huge boost for them. Can you image the ability to select a portion of text in your word document, right click, and hit search. It would then interface directly into Live’s search results and provide results for the text you selected. That is just one option for implementation, even just a search box in the toolbar area would be a huge improvement for them. I wonder why something like this wasn’t included in the release of office 2007?

Now obviously, I have not taken into account legal ramifications of bundling search in with Microsoft’s products. I am not a legal expert, or really even that knowledgeable about monopoly laws, but I am sure Microsoft could find a way around them. It seems to me that the next large battlefield for search juggernauts will be search integration.

I apologize to anyone who has had trouble loading or browsing the site. I have been having some hosting issues related to PHP that have been wreaking havoc on my site. I think they should all be worked out by now, but sorry for any inconvenience.

Having a good host makes troubleshooting and fixing problems much easier.  Especially a host with good customer service.  I have been through a lot of different hosting account, most all of them shared, and experienced some of the best and worst hosting.  I like my current host a lot, NationVoice, and have also liked using West Host in the past.  Unfortunately in this instance, I caused the problem and it took me a long while to fix it.  I am not very good at PHP, but I make do.

If you are in the market for PHP Web Hosting, Make sure you check out Mckremie.  I have heard some good things about them from other people.  You can find more about Mckremie here.