| July 2008 |
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LinkShare July News
Last month's Symposium was a great success! Thanks to all of you who came out to meet us face-to-face in New York City. For those of you who couldn't make it, we hope to see you next year! Be sure to check out the Golden Links video presentation online.
In this edition of the Publisher Newsletter you can read a full event wrap up of LinkShare Symposium 2008, including a picture of the LinkShare Smart My Ride Sweepstakes winner! Read on to learn about the new link type Easy Links, a great set-it-and-forget-it option that will have your site earning commission in no time. For a fresh update to your ad space, why not look into our Inside the Publisher Dashboard section? Check out the promotions section, where we have highlighted two promising new programs: Trackvia and Wendy Culpepper.
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LinkShare Symposium 2008 Event Wrap Up
“The best Symposium ever!” That was the phrase often overheard at LinkShare Symposium 2008 which brought together over 650 managers and executives from the world’s leading and emerging e-commerce companies. A combination of networking and learning, LinkShare
Symposium enables advertisers and publishers to strengthen relationships while obtaining key
industry insights that can help drive results.
Tuesday morning’s events began with opening remarks from Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO and Founder of The Rakuten Group, who travelled from Tokyo, Japan to attend the event.  Mikitani-san introduced LinkShare’s new Co-Presidents – Yaz Iida and Jonathan Levine – and shared with attendees how LinkShare is a critical part of its worldwide strategy for the future. Next Arun Bordoloi, Senior Vice President of Services at LinkShare, spoke about how LinkShare is improving the Advertiser and Publisher experiences with redesigned user interfaces, new services and new technologies that improve the customer shopping experience including LinkShare Flex Links and Easy Links.
Keynote speaker James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, roused the group’s enthusiasm with his remarks on the importance of collective intelligence explaining how diverse team of people will make better decisions than individuals or more homogenous teams. Then came the TrendWatch session, led by Patti Freeman Evans of Jupiter Research, which focused on the findings of a new study on shopping trends in the current tough economic environment. Later in the afternoon E. Kinney Zalesne, co-author of the bestselling Microtrends, illustrated the value of identifying and marketing to smaller groups of consumers with unique interests.
One of the highlights of the LinkShare Symposium is always the DealMarker
session. DealMaker offers a rare opportunity for publishers and advertisers to meet face-to-face,  helping to build better business relationships and discover new ways to drive revenue. At the end of DealMaker we announced the winner of the first ever LinkShare “Smart My Ride” sweepstakes! The lucky winner was Susan McNelis from DBG Loyalty. Congratulations Susan!
LinkShare Symposium 2008 ended with a night of drinks and dancing at the chic Hiro Ballroom in the Maritime Hotel.
2008 Award Winners
Congratulations to the following companies and individuals as this year's award finalists and winners!
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Easy Links
Have you heard about Easy Links?
LinkShare is currently testing a Pilot version of a new creative type called Easy Links.
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Easy Links are contextual product ads that utilize an advertiser's Merchandiser file. All you as a publisher need to do is copy the code onto your website. Once you have done that, we will "crawl" your page and identify keywords associated with that page. LinkShare then queries the advertiser's Merchandiser file on the back end using these keywords. We then use LinkShare's unique knowledge about Merchandiser conversion rates to display products both relevant to your website's content, and with a relatively high chance of conversion based on past performance.
Easy Links are a simple set-it-and-forget-it way to promote products. If you have a nice content site, this link type could be a great solution for offering your visitors exactly what products they are looking for without having to do all of the work to set up individual product links.
During Pilot testing we are only offering one size – a 160x600 skyscraper. You will find an example of the Pilot design below. Also, you will only be able to find Easy Links in the Traditional Publisher Interface during this testing stage.
The full release is coming later this summer, with these enhancements:
- Product and Price in the Ad Unit
- 8 IAB sizes
- HTML color customization for the Publishers
- Link, border, product text
- Match the look / feel of your site
To read more about Easy Links please visit our website: www.linkshare.com/publishers/managing_your_account/contextual_advertising/
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Inside the Publisher Dashboard
The LinkShare Deal Dispatchers
Have you ever checked out the LinkShare Deal Dispatchers? On the left hand side of the Publisher Dashboard homepage you will see two buttons—one that says Consumer Promotions and one that says Publisher Promotions. When you click on either of these buttons, a new window will open up with some exciting offers from our advertisers to help you earn even more commission with LinkShare.
The Consumer Promotions Deal Dispatcher is a listing of deals from advertisers that will benefit your website's visitors, for example free shipping, or $10 off of a purchase. These offers can be very helpful for turning clicks into sales and increasing your conversion rate.
The Publisher Promotions Deal Dispatcher is a listing of deals from advertisers that will benefit you directly through your commissions. These awards can be anything, from sign up bonus offers for new publishers, to increased commission rates or return days for loyal supporters.
Explore the Deal Dispatchers today for some great promotions that will help you earn the big bucks!
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Publisher Promotions
Suggested Advertisers
Trackvia |
Partner with Trackvia, the best online database for small businesses, and earn $5 for each referred free trial sign-up and an additional $70 for each trial that becomes a paying account.
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| Wendy Culpepper |
With a growing brand identity and celebrity fans that include Rachael Ray, Jessica Alba, & Catherine Zeta Jones, Wendy Culpepper Jewelry is an industry leader as one of the first high-end designers to make themselves available to the affiliate marketplace
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