Old news really but we just wanted to share how delighted we were when we found out that we had been shortlisted for an a4u Community Choice Award in the Best Affiliate Network category. Not only was it a fantastic piece of news to share with a team who, we believe, are one of the most committed across the industry, but it was also great to be in such good company. A brilliant shortlist this year so congratulations to everyone who features and a big nod to the a4u guys for working so hard to continuously improve the awards and their significance to the industry.

We’ve just signed up to sponsor the Best Affiliate Marketing Blog category at the awards themselves and are keeping our fingers crossed for a number of CJ clients who are waiting to hear whether they have been shortlisted by the judging panel.

A massive thanks to everyone who nominated us and good luck to all those who have been shortlisted. We’ll be seeing you on the night!

It’s Friday and what better way to celebrate than with an interview with Andy Hibbert from Artemis8 - www.artemis8.co.uk .First we will start with a photo of Andy and the proceed to a little bit about what he does. After that he is fielding questions from the CJ team about the search market.

What is your role at Artemis8 and how long have you been there?

I’m the Head of Partnerships, and have been for about a year and a half now. I spend my time looking for new PPC commercial opportunities and developing relationships with clients, networks and agencies. It’s a really enjoyable role – I’m out and about a lot, meeting new and interesting people who are looking to get more from their search marketing. My wife thinks I spend too much time in nice restaurants and ‘networking’ in pubs. She may have a point.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are February’s tips of the month:

“Don’t set up a UK voucher code site! I know at least 15 publishers who are creating new voucher code sites as we speak and came across three more at the affiliate gathering in Canary Wharf, London last week.

I always say to publishers ‘think niche’. And if you must set-up a voucher code site, perhaps consider targeting some continental European markets rather than the saturated UK; countries like Germany have a dearth of voucher code sites.”

Florian Gramshammer

Senior Sales Manager

“In any PPC campaign, where possible, always split test your ads: create two ads in each ad group and let them run for a while. When it is apparent that one is outperforming the other, replace the less good one with a new one and start again. Over time you will gradually improve the performance of your campaign and save money!

If you want help with deciding when two ads have been running long enough to say confidently that one is performing better than the other, try using Brian Teasley’s free tool at SplitTester.com.”

James Lamb

Business Intelligence Engineer

“There are times when you’re trying to find out if there’s an affiliate or network link behind a text link or banner, but it’s masked or the URL changes too quickly for you to see the redirect URLs!

A tool called ‘Charles’ allows you to see all the URLs once you click on a text link or banner. You can download it here (I’ve been using it as a free trial for quite a while and it has not expired).”

Jason Baker

Head of Agency Account Management and Publisher Development