So follow the link above to be in with a chance of getting your hands on these highly sought after prizes, thanks to the generous people at PriceRunner.

Click here to be re-directed to the PriceRunner Facebook Page.

They are looking for a Marketing Manager with experience in multiple channels to look after all online marketing communications, manage acquisition and retention and develop marketing strategies.

If you know anyone or are interested in hearing more then please email hr.uk@valueclick.com

For starters (and the sake of clarity), it is against our network rules for publishers to drop click cookies without a user initiated action; in short, force clicks.  In many cases, forced clicks can cause a poor user experience.  In my opinion, it almost always leads to the overwriting of other affiliate’s cookies.  With that in mind, how is PI/PV different?

PI/PV, if done right, does not force a click cookie.  But a cookie is dropped on the impression.  The impression cookie can help reward action that might not be otherwise credited.  This could be of particular concern to content sites or other models at the top of the click stream funnel.

That might sound ok at face value, but what happens when the impression cookie runs into the click cookie from another publisher?  For CJ, its simple, the click cookie would win.  The impression cookie is there to make sure the merchant is taking advantage of all the gaps that normal click based transaction correlation might miss, not create duplication of payouts or overwritten click cookies.

Why would merchants want to do this?  As many PI/PV publishers buy on large portal sites and other tier one websites, the merchant gets access to spare inventory without having to pay tenancy or CPM rates; they only have to pay if a sale happens (and that sale happens in the absence of competing click cookies).  Also, in many cases the PI/PV publishers will accept a lower payout to run a campaign in this manner, although that depends on the agreed commercials for each party.

The debate around the value of PI/PV will not go away overnight and could become more controversial if approached inappropriately.   If done right, it provides advertisers with additional inventory at a new payment metric.  It also provides publishers with opportunity to monetise unsold inventory.

Finally, as a network we’ve developed the technology to do this fairly and with scale.  If you are interested in how it could work, please drop us a line.

Daniel Powel.
dpowel@cj.com

The role is newly-created and so presents lots of opportunityto take ownership, get creative and take responsibility for driving SEM to a new level. It’s a senior role so we are looking for someone with significant SEM experience, with an eye for detail. Initially it will be fairly hands-on but in time you will be building a team to support you.

You (or if it isn’t you then maybe someone you know) would be based in the ValueClick offices in Putney.

There is a lot more detail about the role on this linkedin page.  If you are interested or know someone who would be suitable then please pass this on. For more information email hr.uk@valueclick.com

From the start Munich promised to be an excellent venue for the event and was very convenient for CJ as this is the home of our German operations. With the turnout expected to exceed last year’s event in Amsterdam, it was with high expectations that the CJ team headed for the airport.

From the CJ UK team Florian, Sam, Ross, Tom and myself were set to attend however Eyjafjallajokull got going again, wreaking minor havoc on some travels and one traveller, Sam Richards our Sales Director, couldn’t make it.

The rest of us got there in one piece though – Ross and Tom were there to lend a hand with the Argos stand and Florian and I were going to be doing the normal networking and meeting preparation.

Munich, of course, didn’t disappoint but even better the venue was excellent. The Hilton Park was centrally-located, had all the amenities and provided excellent conferencing and breakout facilities (by breakout I mean the bar). The food and drink provided were excellent and kept the delegates fuelled for the long days of networking and presentations. Sadly the weather was not very good; so long business walks in the English Gardens were not on the agenda for most.

Volcanoes and weather aside there was a cracking agenda of 35 seminars to attend and 700 delegates to meet.

Of the sessions I attended, the session on the pending EU cookie legislation was particularly interesting. Simon Zorbas, VP of IAB Europe, was obviously very knowledgeable on the subject and made it very clear what is needed by everyone in the room to make sure it isn’t ratified by the national govenments. Some markets are in a much better position in terms of interpretation, but the net result will still be detrimental for all of us.

Another popular seminar was ‘Analysing and Increasing Organic Search’ by David Naylor. I attended David’s talk in London and once again this one was jam packed, followed by a robust question and answer session. With the way the natural search landscape changes, I have a feeling that David could do this for twice a year for years to come.

The exhibition hall was alternatively very busy or like a ghost town during sessions. For that reason the guys from CJ and Argos tag-teamed the stand to allow for session attendance.

Although our CJ stand was great as usual I have to say that neo@ogilvy had the winner with their Guitar Hero competition which was certainly a popular choice with many sore heads on day two of the Expo. Personally I found the free guitar picks worthy of note!

Instead of the Breakout Party (which from all reports sounded like a massive raucous party!) the CJ UK team and some of our clients went for a wander round Munich where we found plenty of good times. Ross Carder in particular made a new friend:

After we all had our fill of pork knuckle and beer it was time to sadly head on home. Hopefully the A4U guys will manage to top this next year as Munich was a great host city, the venue was fantastic and the sessions were excellent. Until next year……

I just wanted to say a HUGE congratulations to Doug Scott and his family for their new arrival Nina, who was born Friday morning at 6.20, weighing 6lb 15 oz.

From all of the CJ team – CONGRATULATIONS!

Jason Baker

• A successful advertiser-side ad serving business – Mediaplex
• The award-winning price comparison consumer website (PriceRunner)
• A large and successful performance media solutions business (ValueClick Media)
• A thriving Search marketing business (Search123)

The role will involve building strong relationships with local media organisations, working with Senior Executives across the UK business to showcase their successes, working with the Marketing team and liasing with our other global offices to ensure a common message in all outgoing communications and support the activities of all external-facing staff. In addition we are looking for someone to develop innovative social media strategies to support the plans of individual brands.

The right person will have signficant experience in a PR and Communications related environment – ideally in both consumer and B2B settings. We will also be looking for people who may already have press contacts in the UK, who have experience of managing external agencies and who have either line management or project management experience. It also goes without saying that we are looking for someone with excellent communication skills (both written and verbal), and good relationship-building and networking skills.

We’re all under one roof in Putney so the job offers a really broad perspective across the digital marketing sector as we all share knowledge across each of the businesses. The culture is a good mix of laid-back dynamism and we’re all-in-all a jolly nice bunch to work with!

If you know of  anyone it would be great if you could spread the word – you/they can apply by emailing a CV to hr.uk@valueclick.com.

“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

The presentation should be really interesting. It is in the Online Marketing Theatre if you want to attend.

As well as this our sister company Mediaplex will be exhibiting at the event on stand G41 so make sure you pop by to say hello!

“If you are a publisher working from home then start the New Year on a positive note by developing good habits. You will probably be pleased to not have to accede to the disciplines of an employer’s office, but should nevertheless get dressed for work, spend fixed hours on the computer doing your affiliate marketing, eat well, and generally run your home office in an uber-professional manner. Otherwise you may find yourself losing motivation and becoming unproductive over the medium to long term.

There are ten excellent tips on working from home here on Microsoft’s small business site.”

Tom Leadbetter

“A few weeks ago we were encouraging you to try out the desktop editors for Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter. You can copy and paste directly from the editors into Excel. This gives you even more flexibility to do clever editing than in the editors themselves.

Once you are done, you can copy and paste your results back into the editors using one of the Make Multiple Changes options (for Keywords, Ads, Ad Groups etc.).”

Brezo Sanchez Ocaña

“To get more people to opt-in to your mailing list (a) offer something free or enter registrants into a prize draw and (b) use an innovative way to get your email sign-up box infront of your site visitors.

Your giveaway does not have to cost you the earth. Inkfactory enter you into a prize draw to win an Ipod Nano and a new advertiser we have on CJ, RiaEnjolie, allow you to win one of their website set-up packages.

Try a fresh way to get your opt-in form noticed, such as a lightbox pop-up or a scroll-in bar.”

Cath Caporn

“If you promote websites using PPC through Google and also Bing or Yahoo, you can save yourself a lot of time by creating a campaign in Google Adwords and then exporting it for use in Microsoft Adcenter or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Export the campaign as a CSV file using the Adwords Desktop Editor, and then import it straight into Adcenter or Yahoo using the Import feature of their web interfaces. If you’ve tried it in the past and given up in frustration, give it another go as both Yahoo and Microsoft have improved their import facilities recently and it works much more smoothly now.”

Dipa Shah

Account Director