Web Services Blog

I’d like to take this opportunity to answer a few questions which have come up repeatedly since the 2011 release of the Publisher API.

Feel free to add your own questions in the comments, or better yet, join our mailing list, which is the main forum for communication regarding zanox Web Services.

How does the new incentives resource work?

There are two types of incentives: exclusive and non-exclusive.

Non-exclusive incentives are visible to all zanox publishers, whether or not they have applied to the program offering the incentive. If you do a simple “get all” (i.e. http://api.zanox.com/xml/2011-03-01/incentives?connectid=__YOUR_CONNECT_ID__), tracking links will be returned as follows:

• if the incentive is for a program you belong to, you get a tracking link for the ad space(s) you used to apply;


• some zanox programs participate in a public ad media pool; if the incentive is in one of these programs, you get a tracking link for each of your ad spaces; and


• if you are not applied to the program and the program does not participate in the ad media pool, you get the incentive without a tracking link.

If you restrict your query to a specific ad space (i.e. http://api.zanox.com/xml/2011-03-01/incentives?&adspace=__YOUR_AD_SPACE__&connectid=__YOUR_CONNECT_ID__), you will only see incentives for the programs you have applied to, and for those participating in the public ad media pool.

Exclusive incentives are a completely different set of incentives, and are only visible to publishers who have been explicitly granted permission to use an incentive by its program. If you are interested in using exclusive incentives, please contact your Account Manager.

For more information, please see http://wiki.zanox.com/en/REST_V2011-03-01_Incentives.

Where are the program commission models?

Commissions were removed from the ProgramItem in the 2011 Publisher API. Our next release will feature a more comprehensive solution to commissions, including publisher-specific commissions.

For now, you can continue using the 2009 version, which will be available until 2012-03-01 per our migration strategy. You can make this call via a direct URL, e.g. http://api.zanox.com/xml/2009-07-01/programs/program/123?connectid=__YOUR_CONNECT_ID__

What happened to “GetProgramsByAdspsace”?

GetProgramsByAdspace has been replaced by the  concept of “program applications”. The “status” field allows you to query program applications by status, whereas GetProgramsByAdspace only returned your active (“confirmed”) program memberships. Other possible values for “status” are “open”, “rejected”, “deferred”, “waiting”, etc.

For instance, the following screenshot of the zanox API Explorer shows all unsuccessful program applications for ad space “1373732” (advertisers don’t seem to like “pepeciardelli.com” very much!):

For more information, please see http://wiki.zanox.com/en/REST_V2011-03-01_ProgramApplications.

Heute wollen wir Euch eine neue App vorstellen: Handys ohne Vertrag!

Immer mehr Nutzer in Deutschland kaufen Ihr Handy nicht mehr im Bundle mit einem Handy Vertrag. Diese App hilft bei der Suche nach dem passenden Handy.

Alle in der App aufgeführten Handys sind ohne Vertrag und ohne Simlock, so dass sie mit jedem Vertrag egal ob normaler Handyvertrag, Prepaid Karte oder Handyflat nutzbar sind.

Mit der App erhält man ein Werbemittel, das die Preise der Handys/Smartphones bei verschiedenen zanox Merchants vergleicht.

Das Werbemittel gibt es als Wide Skyscraper (160×600) bzw. als Medium Rectangle (300×250) .
Willst Du die Anwendung gleich ausprobieren? Hier gehts zur App.

Vodafone just launched its second Application. After the success of the product widget Vodafone created now a wordpress plugin that publishers can easily install. 
The plugin detects if words on the text match with Vodafone product data and automatically offers user more details on the product. In this way publishers can focus in writing articles while the application places the proper tracking link.

Here you are a screenshot on how it will look like:

The application can be downloaded here

Loved.by just launched its service in the zanox Application Store. It is a simply javascript for blogs and websites that let you focus on your own content.

When you share links to products you love in your blog or website this Javascript automatically identifies those links which point to partner shops and transforms these to tracking links in the moment they are clicked.

You no more need to search and select tracking links while writing a blog post or adding content to your website as you can simply paste the product link and let the Loved.by Javascript transform it to a tracking link.

Loved.by is configured with revenue sharing, with 75% of the revenues are credited to the publisher and 25% to Loved.by.

The Javascript is very easy to install, you can download it here from the zanox Application Store.

Moodmixer did it again! After launching a serier of multi advertiser widget are now creating dedicated product widgets for our advertisers. The latest is launched this week.

This Orion widget is an extreme eyecatcher for your users. You can configure the default search criteria and let user just “flip” the catalouge or let them search for the products that match their interests

Here you are a screenshot:

Do you want to give it a try? Get the widget in the zanox Application Store.

Rotato is a product adserving widget generator. Publisher can create 2 different types of product rotating adservers:

• one with Manual targeting


• one with Automatic targeting

In the first scenario Publishers are allowed to select specific products from their active partnerships while in the second they can specify the search criteria to let the widget find and display always up-to-date products using the zanox API.

The manual targeting requires more maintenance but allows on the other side more control to the publisher and let them posssibly optimise the displayed products by click trough rate.

Finally publishers can always choose between 2 different css with product preview or simple product list or eventually provide their own css to the widget.

Below you find a couple of screenshot to show the look and feel once using the provided css:

 

You can get the application in the zanox Application Store here.

The zanox API Explorer is a new tool which makes it easy to get started with the zanox Web Services APIs, by letting you query zanox data directly using a form-based interface.

The Explorer makes the object structure of the zanox APIs comfortably transparent: it uses zanox’s SOAP interface, which allows it to return both the query response and request in well-formed XML. For those using the PHP Client Library to develop, the Explorer also displays the PHP object returned by the request, so that you can see how objects in the Library are structured.

One thing which makes it a bit tricky to get started with the zanox APIs is that developers must provide a zanox Connect ID with all method calls, and calculate a unique signature with each request for secure data. Once you have purchased it in the zanox Application Store and logged in, the Explorer provides these security parameters for you to make sending requests significantly easier.

Have fun, and don’t forget you’re playing with the live data in your zanox account!

You can download the application for free in the zanox Application Store here.

The use of zanox Web Services continues to climb steadily, as publishers increasingly use the APIs to optimise their business and better target customers.

One of the most-used methods is the product search – we thought it would be useful to give publishers a few tips.

As you can see in the documentation, there are a great many parameters you can use to refine the search. In this tutorial, we will focus on two:

• q – the search query string


• searchtype – specifies the type of search. Possible values are “contextual” and “phrase”.

Note that the default searchtype depends on the query string:

1. If the query string q is 25 characters or less, the default searchtype is “phrase”


2. If q is more than 25 characters, the default searchtype is “contextual”.

Use Case 1: Contextual search
Suppose you are designing a contextual advertisement for a travel blog to respond to user’s comments. For instance, if a user writes a comment on a blog entry about Australia, in which he mentions the upcoming Australian Open, the advertisement should display something related to tennis.

In this case, pass the contents of the blog comment in the q parameter and set the searchtype to “contextual”. The product search finds the most relevant strings in the text and uses them to return the best matching products.

Use Case 2: Search with 1 keyword
Suppose the content of each page on your website is a perfect fit with a specific keyword

In this case, pass the page’s keyword in the q parameter and set the searchtype to “phrase”, as follows:

http://api.zanox.com/xml/2010-07-01/products?q=my_keyword&programs=660&connectid=580599047DF8F5311043&searchtype=phrase

Use Case 3: Search with multiple keywords
If you would like to specify multiple keywords in your search, be aware that you have three options:

• “AND”-separated list -the search will return only results with all of the keywords


• “OR”-separated list – the search will return results with any of the keywords


• space-separated list – this is a fundamentally different animal than the other two: it uses so-called “intelligent querying” to expand the query in order to find the most suitable results, for instance, those where most of the keywords are close together in the same paragraph.  The results are sorted by relevance.

In the following example, all products in the response will contain the keywords “nokia”, “Megapixel”, and “WLAN”. This search returns fewer results than the next example:

http://api.zanox.com/xml/2010-07-01/products?q=nokia AND Megapixel WLAN&programs=660&connectid=580599047DF8F5311043&searchtype=phrase

The “OR”-separated query returns many more results:

http://api.zanox.com/xml/2010-07-01/products?q=nokia OR Megapixel OR WLAN&programs=660&connectid=580599047DF8F5311043&searchtype=phrase

In the final example, the number of results is between those of the other two queries, and the most relevant results are at the beginning of the list:

http://api.zanox.com/xml/2010-07-01/products?q=nokia Megapixel WLAN&programs=660&connectid=580599047DF8F5311043&searchtype=phrase

Members of the zanox Web Services team took part this week in the second annual Google Android conference here in Berlin. The first day was for the developers, in a bar camp format, while day two was opened up for trade and professional visitors.

zanox’s own Krispin Schulz presented andora, the recommendation application he developed for the zanox Application Store. To be honest, we didn’t see too many other “must-have” applications, but there was a healthy buzz in the air. There were not one but two keynote speeches explaining the legal environment to application developers, including their rights when making their work available for distribution in an application store.

Speaking of which, a trend we noticed was technology- and platform-agnostic application stores, which were heavily represented on the sponsor floor. Many plan to distinguish themselves from the biggies like Apple and Google by offering value-added services such as end user support, marketing, and a variety of payment methods. Which additional distribution channels will be available for applications built using zanox Web Services in the future?

Moodmixer is one of our favorite developers – no one else has uploaded so many applications to the Application Store (see here, here, here, and here).

Their latest is the Pageflipping Product Catalog, which consists of product pages the user turns “by hand”, clicking the left- and right-hand corners to move forward and backward in the catalog. The application is software-as-a-service: the publisher first configures the catalog to show products based on a keyword search, an optional product category, and up to 20 different advertiser programs. The resulting integration code is then pasted onto the publisher’s web page, where the web page visitor can also conduct a search.

This application is configured with traffic sharing, with 81% of the product tracking links credited to the publisher and 19% to Moodmixer GmbH. You can download the application for free in the zanox Application Store here.

In addition, Moodmixer also has a WordPress plugin to easily add the code for any of their zanox Web Services applications to a WordPress blog. The plugin is available at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/moodmixer-slider-plugin/.