| Part III: LinkShare Dynamic Rich Media - Applications for Text and Search Boxes
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Part IV
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The true benefit of LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media is the ability it gives you to fully update link content and functionality at any time on an affiliate's site. While you can always update a simple banner and even the landing page for it through LinkShare, this capability does not necessarily extend to more advanced links, such as a searchbox or other HTML links. Furthermore, text links have never been "dynamically updateable". With LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media links, you can accomplish both.
Read more below how Dynamic Rich Media can help you better syndicate fresh content dynamically to affiliates, whether you wish to syndicate just plain text links or searchbox and advanced HTML links.
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Dynamically Updating Text!
Now through LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media feature, you can dynamically update text on affliates' sites. That's right - text! While Dynamic Rich Media links create visions of animation, interactivity, and all sorts of bells and whistles, one of the overlooked benefits is the ability to syndicate text content which can be updated dynamically.
While text links have consistently converted more clicks to sales than banner links, the major weakness has been the static nature of text. For it to change, affiliates must update their code, which doesn't always happen in a timely fashion. LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media removes this weakness and allows text links to be so much more effective.
For example, if CDLinkShare wished to promote a "Pre-order" special and a "Today's bestseller" special through a text link and have this content change every day, LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media makes this possible. (See Fig 1.)
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Fig. 1
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In this example, today the text for the first Dynamic Rich Media link would display a Michael Jackson promotion, while the second Dynamic Rich Media link would display a Pink Floyd promotion. Tomorrow, the first link might promote a Chris Isaak promotion; the second might feature a Creed promotion. As a merchant, you decide what content to syndicate, how often to change it, and when to change it -- and it happens automatically on affiliates' sites through LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media.
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Dynamically Updating a Searchbox!*
What benefits would one gain from dynamically updating a searchbox? Let's use a searchbox with dropdown selections as an example. (See Fig 2.) Assume the dropdowns let the user select from various product categories, like books, music, and movies from which to search. When affiliates take the code for this searchbox, they take the actual code, code which only contains those three selections for the dropdown - books, music, and movies.
As time goes by, your site may add additional product categories, like magazines, calendars, and posters. To have those categories available in the searchboxes already existing on all affiliates' sites, (See Fig 3.), two things must happen first:
1) You must create a new searchbox and have this enabled for affiliates.
2) Affiliates must login to their account, take the code, and replace the entire code of the old searchbox.
While you can do step #1 easily, motivating affiliates to update code can be a challenge.
If you used LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media for this hypothetical dropdown-enabled searchbox, you could have simply updated the code with LinkShare to add these new dropdowns, and any affiliate who has already placed this code on their site will immediately have those new dropdowns in the searchbox with full functionality - without doing anything!
You could even update your logo, change the color scheme, etc., and it would all update dynamically on your affiliates' sites with full functionality. Or conversely, you could remove options from the dropdowns. It's all at your discretion.
*Not all search boxes can be distributed with LinkShare Dynamic Rich Media. Please consult a LinkShare Technical Consultant on a case by case basis.
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Fig. 2
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Fig 3.
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