November 2011

a4uAwards Now Performance Marketing Awards… New Categories & More

In the course of five years (between 2006 and 2011) we knew them as a4uAwards, but this year the United Kingdom’s prestigious awards for “excellence and innovation” in affiliate marketing are re-branding into a name that I, personally, believe to be a much better-fitting one. They have also just announced […]

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Cyber Monday 2011: 33% Spend Increase & Other Noteworthy Statistics

IBM Coremetrics has just added Cyber Monday 2011 data to their benchmark report I blogged about yesterday. Here are the things that have caught my eye: Cyber Monday 2011 — 5 Noteworthy Facts Overall spending increase — Online sales were up 33% over 2010, 29.3% up over Black Friday 2011,

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Mobile Black Friday 2011: Traffic Exceeds 14%, Sales Hit 10%

Earlier today IBM Coremetrics published their Black Friday 2011 benchmark report (thanks to Bryan Eisenberg for tweeting about it), and while there has been an impressive 24.3% increase in overall online sales over last year’s figures, it is the mobile channel that has shown the most impressive to me growth.

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5 Infographics on Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Holiday Season 2011

According to the calculations of the National Retail Federation last year over 200 million consumers spent some $45 Billion on Black Friday. This year, eMarketer predicts that $47 Billion to be spent online during the holiday season in the U.S. alone. And historically, it so happens that holiday-related sales growth

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Beijing in 11 Adjectives, or My Impressions of China's Capital City

If you’re following me on Twitter, you know — especially from this Tweet — that I have just returned from China; and today I’d like to share with you my first impressions of Beijing, the country’s capital. For the purposes eloquence (I know your time is valuable), I’ve decided to

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Shop Discover – Classic Example of Cashback Affiliate

Remember my 2009 post about Bank of America becoming a loyalty affiliate? Another classic example of a major brand acting as a cashback affiliate, which has just caught my eye, is ShopDiscover: And just like it was with the Bank of America — where you had “to be a user

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When Managers (or Merchants) Impede Affiliate Performance

Yesterday evening, a hard-working affiliate, Joe Sousa, tweeted: My immediate reaction was: What better plea for sensible affiliate management could there be?! Joe replied, and a few minutes later another well-known affiliate chimed in: The problem, however paradoxical, in a nutshell, is as follows: (a) affiliates want to market merchants

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