Sunny greetings from Sunnyvale. Yesterday zanox co-hosted the WebPlay at PlugandPlayTechCenter. We kicked off the day with an European Business Breakfast. Besides the country managers introducing their regions, local markets and social media trends, there was still plenty of time for networking.
Later Thomas led a panel on Crowd Sourcing. Panelists Yaniv Ben-Saadon, CEO of Fixya and Fabien Degaugue, Founder & CEO of PeerPong talked about monetization of crowd sourcing platforms and the audience asked questions via twitter that the panel addressed such as: What motives the crowd?, What can’t be outsourced? and How does the crowd feel about companies making money out of them?
View all tweets here.
In the late afternoon everyone got together for German beer and German-style food for more networking and good music.
Overall this was another great event in Silicon Valley zanox participated in – thanks PlugandPlay-Team!
We have good news for all publishers who use product data from advertisers: We just launched our improved product data download. It gives you access to more than 70 million product data records from advertisers and enables you to link directly to certain products.
What’s new: There is no download limitation (quota) anymore, the data for each programme can be retrieved as often as you like. Furthermore, we expanded the content, for example there is a new unique zanox product ID that remains the same throughout all product data updates. Also, we included ISBN numbers for productswe and introduced a coherent zanox category tree.
File names are now generated dynamically and include the creation date, programme ID, and partner ID - so you can see when the product data was updated and which programme and partner ID it was exported for.
With the zanox partner programme “affiliates find affiliates” our publishers can recruit new publishers for the zanox network. From 17 November 2009 until 29 January 2010 you may also recruit partners and applications for our Application Store.
The zanox Application Store looks for applications that are relevant to the affiliate marketing industry and that provide publishers and advertisers with reliable added value. Developers can upload their own apps, like widgets, tools or software.
To recruit partners and apps for the Application Store, we provided various ad media in our partner programme – like banners, text links, and a video.
As a zanox publisher, you will receive commission for each new partner who registers in the zanox Application Store. Furthermore, attractive commission is paid for each application which is uploaded by the recruited partner and approved by zanox to be published in the Application Store.
Commissions:
5 EUR pay per Lead
50 EUR pay per App of category “Widget”
750 EUR pay per App of category “Tool and Software”
750 EUR pay per App of category “Software as a Service”
This campaign is particularly interesting because partners who upload a promising application by January 2010 have the chance to participate in our $2 Mio Application Store contest and can win investment capital amounting to a total of two million US dollars.
Please note that the current deal for applications will initially run for a limited period up to the end of January 2010. More information including detailed conditions for remuneration are available in the zanox User Interface.
Register here to recruit new partners and apps for the zanox Application Store:
Just in time for the hot phase of the Christmas business, we have introduced faster payout periods for several hundred of our international top publishers. Starting now, they will receive payouts from their activities every 10 days up until 31 January 2010 – just as our publishers with an AdRank 6 or more do already. Partners who fulfill the criteria to benefit from our faster payout process have already received an e-mail from us.
Especially during peak seasons like Christmas, affiliate programmes with a short confirmation time are way more attractive to publishers than others. So also as an advertiser, you can benefit from speeding up your Christmas business: The faster you approve transactions, and the shorter you set your auto confirmation time, the more money your publishers can reinvest into promoting your programmes, and the more attractive your programmes and promotions will become for other publishers too.
Advertisers who reduce their confirmation time significantly may let us know, so that we can point our publishers especially to those programmes.
The confirmation time is also one criterion for our selected Christmas offers: The weekly round-up of the most promising campaigns helps publishers finding out which advertisers offer the most attractive Christmas promotions, which products promise the greatest success or which ad media will lead to the best conversions: http://affiliate.zanox.com/global/affiliate-programmes
Have a successful and profitable end-of-year business!
Today’s big news has probably reached many of you. We, Jens, Heiko and myself – the zanox board and founders – will leave zanox at the beginning of 2010 and will hand over to Phillip Justus, the new CEO of zanox. Last night we prepared an openBoard video message for you, and this episode wasn’t an easy one for us. We talked about why we will leave zanox, our upcoming plans and the future of zanox:
If you want to know more about Philipp and get some more details, also have a look at our press release. And of course, we’ll be around for a while – so there will be lots of time to discuss your questions in the next couple of weeks and months. So just stay tuned!
This month we have made several microfinance bids in Africa, which we would like to keep you updated on – and as usual hope that this will inspire you to follow suit.
We supported three projects in Kenya: Businesswoman Odilla founded her company Steod Beauty Products in 2005 and it has been growing ever since. She specializes in selling garments, shoes, handbags, hair products, cosmetics, perfumes, jewelery and other beauty products. She also runs a general shop where she sells sweets, cakes and rice.
The second Kenyan business we invested in is John Gitobu’s construction company Jozipy Hardware. John is selling construction materials and since he has some big projects coming up, he needs to buy a larger vehicle in order to transport his goods. The third Kenyan entrepreneur is Susan Kanyeki, who started her business called Friendly Farms in 1993. She now possesses her own cooling plant which currently process up to 10,000 litres of milk per day. The business is looking to diversify into the more lucrative cheese and yoghurt markets. Susan has therefore begun constructing her own production factory.
We also made two investments in Tanzania: Sebastian Abdala Msola owns the logistics company Samtco Transport, which provides national and international transportation solutions to major African shipping companies. Since the demand for transporting big containers and logs increases, Sebastian would like to buy a new truck. The second entrepreneur from Tanzania is Imaculata Damas Paul. She owns a clothes and cosmetics shop and employs one more female sales person. She now wants to offer more goods to meet her customers’ demands.
We wish all of them best of luck with their business and are looking forward to more interesting projects we can support.
We are proud to introduce five new ‘VIP welcome’ partner programmes at one go: allGameDuell partner programmes running with zanox (GameDuell DE, ES, DK, SE, NL) have been approved for the ‘VIP welcome’ status. GameDuell is one of Europe’s leading games communities with 10 million registered users.
‘VIP welcome’ programmes fulfill high quality criteria and offer certain benefits for zanox publishers. We asked Sebastian Timm (GameDuell), which particular advantages publishers will get from working with GameDuell as a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser:
Sebastian Timm: “GameDuell publishers profit from our partner programme in a range of ways:
We strive to structure our partner programme in a way that is as attractive as possible to as many publishers as possible. For this reason, we offer our publishers the possibility to advertise us with pop ups, layers or via cashback. In addition, we are GAP enabled and also offer post-view tracking.
We are particularly proud of our advertising materials. As part of our partner programme, we have a large amount of regularly updated advertising materials which also include our so-called mini games. These are interactive advertising materials with content characters which have displayed above average conversion rates. We are able to offer the perfect mini game for almost all sites, whether a gaming site, sport site or dating site, due to the large range of mini games which we have on offer.
Furthermore, offering our publishers personal assistance is very important to us in order to create a win-win situation for all parties. We, of course, consider individual and quick responses a must.
We ensure our VIP publishers that all leads and sales will be confirmed and that all sales completed by the VIP publisher will already be approved after three days.”
Apart from the advantages for publishers, what does GameDuell regard as main benefits for themselves from being a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser?
Sebastian Timm: “The developments in online marketing reflect the increasing importance of performance marketing. As a consequence, more and more companies have turned to affiliate marketing which means that it is not always easy for publishers to find the correct partner programme. Being a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser is a great honour for us and allows us to show that we can meet the highest quality standards and that we are able to offer the publishers an attractive partner programme. The interest generated from the status will hopefully result in more publishers finding their way to us.
In addition, we are, of course, interested in attracting high quality publishers to our programme. The zanox VIP Club fills the required gaps due to the incorporation of VIP welcome advertisers and VIP publishers which I am particularly pleased about.”
Speaking about the zanox VIP Club in general, what does GameDuell think about it?
Sebastian Timm: “Affiliate Marketing is a market which is complex and also shows a high amount of flexibility in terms of professionalism. The zanox VIP Club rewards all market participants who constantly deliver quality and fulfill a variety of standards. This further emphasises the professionalisation of the market displayed by the zanox VIP Club.”
More information about the zanox VIP Club including an overview of all ‘VIP welcome’ programmes and their benefits for publishers are available on our VIP landing page.
Greetings from IAB Forum Milano. I am here with the lovely Italian team and some French and Spanish co-workers. We can already look back on one busy and successful day at Fiera Milano City .
A lot of new and existing clients stopped by our booth to talk about the latest trends in affiliate marketing as well as the zanox Application Store.
Our booth has been a magnet for networking, even long after the official part of the show. Our Spanish intra-company exchange programme participant Javier did a great job serving German beer.
We are looking forward to more interesting and productive meetings today. Visit us at booth # 23 if you are in the neighborhood.
For further information and some more pictures from the event please visit our Italian blog later today.
Right in time for the start of the Christmas business, we kicked-off our exclusive, weekly round-up of the most promising advertiser campaigns today. Starting now, we will present you the most attractive offers and deals at a glance. As a publisher, you will receive three recommendations in comparison every week, via your Account start page, our promotion page (just click on “promotions” for your country), the weekly newsletter and our zanox Blogs. Find out which advertisers offer the most attractive Christmas promotions, which products promise the greatest success or which product will lead to the best conversions. You’ll also get all the information on commissions, confirmation rates and times, as well as specials, such as expanded SEM facilities, search deep links, standalone newsletters and special ad media can be seen at a glance.
The selection of the Advertisers is done by our local zanox teams and will focus on the appeal of the exclusive Christmas promotions and the programme quality. This should give you a perfect opportunity to plan your seasonal activities to perfection and to achieve the best possible conversions. We are looking forward to a great year-end business with all of you!
One hot app per week: We are happy to introduce you to our new „app of the week” blog series. Starting today, we will present you one app from our Application Store on our Web Services Blog each week. We’ll explain what you can do with, how to use it and of course why we think it’s great. This week, we kick-off with the app Interactive Product Slider by Moodmixer. You can read the full article here – hope you enjoy our “app of the week” series!
We’d like to invite you to participate in the online survey “Affiliate 2.0”. The survey is part of the master thesis of our colleague Petr Brusilovskij and wants to inditify the key technologies and innovations that will have a major influence on the affiliate market: The main question is what are today’s and tomorrow’s key success factors of affiliate marketing?
The questionnaire consists of 12 short questions and shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete. If you would like to participate, please make sure to allow cookies and click here to start the survey. We are looking forward to the results! Thanks to all participants and of course good luck to Petr and his thesis!
Now that we have a zanox Wiki for all our countries, we would like to invite all of you to contribute! Our Wiki is now easily accessible via our single sign-on solution zanox Connect. So everyone with a zanox publisher account is now able to write, edit or translate with just one click.
So what’s the zanox Wiki all about? The zanox Wiki is our central knowledge base and serves as an extension of our network: Our Wiki holds precise explanations of all the terminology and processes surrounding our services and products, as well as general affiliate marketing topics. And since it’s all about collective intelligence, it’s not just gonna be us who maintain it, but we would also love to have your expertise to perpetually expand it.
Contributing is easier than you probably thought: You can easily become a contributor and share your knowledge with our community. Simply log-on to our network with your zanox Publisher account via zanox Connect and start writing, editing or translating.
Feel also free to use the Wiki’s discussion board to all Wiki-related questions and feedback. For all other questions or if you need help with anything, let our First Level Support know or use our support platform getsatisfaction.com
To reward you for your efforts we’re also working on a compensation programme for regular contributors and we’ll keep you up-to-date on this. We hope you enjoy working with the Wiki and sharing information!
We just again invested in innovative ideas and entrepreneurship by using microfinance platforms to support business development around the world. This time we made bids in Haiti, Peru and Cambodia and are pleased to be able to help two different business people as well as a group of entrepreneurs.
The Haiti-based group is called “Mi Corason De Grand Bassin” and consists of fifteen male and female entrepreneurs. They have a wide range of businesses ranging from phone cards and repairs, to used clothing to peanut sales. 23-year old Lazar Rolinx, one of three representatives of the group, sells phone cards for all of the major phone companies in the country. He has also created a relationship with another business that repairs phones. By developing his business, he hopes to be better able to support his family.
The second project we are investing in is the business of 28-year old Cesarían in Peru. The mother of four children plants bananas, corn, yucca, and ginger in their own fields. She is also in touch with buyers in Lima, so she can increase her income to be able to pay for her children’s education. With her current loan she wants to buy fertilizers and to clear the fields for the next ginger planting.
Our third bid goes to Chum Thon in Cambodia. The 28 years old father of four young children has been performing as a musician since 2007. With the 5 dollars he earns from that every day, and his wife making additionally 5 dollars per day from selling cakes, they make their living. Chum Thom wants to use his loan to purchase musical instruments.
We wish him and all the other entrepreneurs best of luck and hope that our bids help them to successfully develop their business!
It’s time again for openBoard, our web TV series that was created to keep you up-to-date with zanox insights, new developments and upcoming news.
In this episode, we’re giving you a little dmexco recap. We were especially happy about the great feedback on our Open Campus sessions during the show. Following this, we’re updating you on our Application Store partners and let you know what the “most wanted” app in our Application Store is.
Then we give you some insights into the latest Social Media trends from the Silicon Valley. And last but not least, we have some zanox updates for you, such as our future cooperation with the UK affiliate network Digital Window, our employee exchange programme and much more.
Yesterday the PlugandPlay Expo one of the key events in the Silicon Valley took place at the PlugandPlayTechCenter.
With more than 40 start-up pitches and over 60 venture capital companies the event was a great success. Ad Parlor, Wild Fire and Twiki were nominated the top 3 start-ups of the day. Hosting key notes from HP and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, our CEO Thomas Hessler also gave a speech on the zanox Application Store.
Later zanox hosted a German-style Oktoberfest including German beer, sausages and pretzels. Expecting about 350 people yet over 500 people showed up.
Keep your eyes and ears open for our upcoming events in Silicon Valley.
With more than 450 exhibitors and 350 speakers, the sixth E-Commerce Convention in Paris is one of the leading e-commerce events in Europe and definitely the most important event in France. We are happy to be a Silver Sponsor and of course our French team is looking forward to seeing many new as well as well-known faces around. So just drop by at booth number H01 for a chat, a coffee and of course some insights into our Application Store. Maybe some of you even had the opportunity to attend our sessions: Our French VIP Publisher Twenga shared their knowledge about Affiliate Marketing and our team presented the zanox Application Store and our $2 Million Application Store Contest. If you want to meet our lovely French colleagues or have any more questions on French business opportunities, just come by and meet us today. Looking forward to seeing you in Paris!
After two days of a great dmexco event in Cologne, the zanox team is happy and back in our Berlin headquarters. We had a great time – with interesting conversations, meetings, presentations and a lot of fun! We were glad to receive such positive feedback on our booth, the zanox Application Store and of course on our partners who presented themselves and their new tools on our Open Campus: artaxo and their solution SEOlytics, IntelliAd and their new Bid Management Tool, eprofessionals Brand Snapshot, Webtrekks Q3 Web Analytics, triboo with My Cashbacky, plistas RecommendationAds als well as our advertisers 1&1 und Fox Mobile Distribution.
Here is also a first selection of pictures we would like to share with you – more are to come next week:
Thanks again to everybody who made this event a special one – already looking forward to next year!
Only a few more days till the first Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference – dmexco – starts off in Cologne. The dmexco is Germany’s leading event for online marketing and digital trends and takes place on Wednesday and Thursday, 23 and 24 September, at the Cologne Exhibition Centre. Of course we’ll be there, so if you are going to be around, just stop by at our booth (F020 F028). Our theme this year is “open network” and that’s why we decided to turn our booth into a zanox Open Campus: So it won’t be just us presenting our features and services, but also some of our most important Application Store partners showing you how they successfully monetised their business ideas.
And, last but not least, we have something to celebrate! The leading German Affiliate Marketing Portal 100partnerprogramme.de as well the trade magazine iBusiness have just awarded zanox with the title “Best Affiliate Network in Germany“. So it’s definitely worth stopping by in Cologne for a drink and some music during our booth party on Wednesday, 23 September, at 6:30 pm.
If you want to check out the full ranking, have a look at Karsten Windfelders (German) blog post at 100partnerprogramme.de. Here is also some more information on our dmexco speaker agenda, our booth and how to get there (German only). Hope to see you in Cologne next week!
We are happy to announce that a new version of our sub-ID management is now available for our publishers. For those who are not too familiar with sub-ID management, let’s just explain what it’s all about: sub-ID management allows publishers to add a customised parameter to their zanox tracking code. SEM publishers for example are able to assign separate sub-IDs for different keywords, programmes, landing pages or search engines. Bonus- or cashback publishers can use sub-ID management to allocate separate identification numbers to their participants. These are just two examples how publishers gain better control over their activities.
So what’s new? Our new sub-ID management uses general purpose tracking parameters (GPP), which consist of a series of alpha numeric parameters. When a potential customer clicks a publisher’s ad media link and GPP parameters are filled in, the values are stored in the zanox tracking system. If the customer generates a conversion, the stored GPP values are retrieved from the zanox tracking system and placed in the statistics for the publisher. So GPP is basically a container which publishers can use to place their own tracking information onto conversions. From now on, all publishers are able to use sub-ID management without further activation.
If you want to learn more about our new sub-ID management with GPP, check out our Wiki documentation or download the PDF manual. It includes a detailed description and guides you through the process.
As a European hub for start-up businesses, Berlin has made itself a name for hosting key events on entrepreneurship and venture capital. Yesterday, the Venture Lounge Berlin took place at the international congress center ICC and gave start-up founders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business angels the opportunity to touch-base. Our co-founder and CFO Heiko Rauch had been invited to talk about the early days of zanox and how the three Berlin graduates managed to turn their start-up into a truly global player before selling their successful business in 2007. On the same page, since many have asked us to let you know more about how it all started, we have added the feature “zanox: from start-up to global player – a Berlin success story” to our website. Read the full story here and find out why our founders lost a business plan competition to a sandwich-delivery service
So there is a lot of knowledge our founders are happy to share with the next generation of entrepreneurs. That’s why Heiko is attending the medienwoche@IFA, the media week as a part of the Berlin-based consumer electronics show IFA. Today, he will speak on a panel on “Investors wanted: next generation entrepreneurship”. If you are around and interested, just drop by at the ICC today at 16:30.
Update: Here are some more impressions of medienwoche@ifa and the panel discussion Heiko took part in:
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We have good news for all publishers who use product data from advertisers: We just launched our improved product data download. It gives you access to more than 70 million product data records from advertisers and enables you to link directly to certain products.
The zanox Application Store looks for applications that are relevant to the affiliate marketing industry and that provide publishers and advertisers with reliable added value. Developers can upload their own apps, like widgets, tools or software.
Just in time for the hot phase of the Christmas business, we have introduced faster payout periods for several hundred of our international top publishers. Starting now, they will receive payouts from their activities every 10 days up until 31 January 2010 – just as our publishers with an AdRank 6 or more do already. Partners who fulfill the criteria to benefit from our faster payout process have already received an e-mail from us.
The second Kenyan business we invested in is John Gitobu’s construction company Jozipy Hardware. John is selling construction materials and since he has some big projects coming up, he needs to buy a larger vehicle in order to transport his goods. The third Kenyan entrepreneur is Susan Kanyeki, who started her business called Friendly Farms in 1993. She now possesses her own cooling plant which currently process up to 10,000 litres of milk per day. The business is looking to diversify into the more lucrative cheese and yoghurt markets. Susan has therefore begun constructing her own production factory.
We also made two investments in Tanzania: Sebastian Abdala Msola owns the logistics company Samtco Transport, which provides national and international transportation solutions to major African shipping companies. Since the demand for transporting big containers and logs increases, Sebastian would like to buy a new truck. The second entrepreneur from Tanzania is Imaculata Damas Paul. She owns a clothes and cosmetics shop and employs one more female sales person. She now wants to offer more goods to meet her customers’ demands.
The Haiti-based group is called “Mi Corason De Grand Bassin” and consists of fifteen male and female entrepreneurs. They have a wide range of businesses ranging from phone cards and repairs, to used clothing to peanut sales. 23-year old Lazar Rolinx, one of three representatives of the group, sells phone cards for all of the major phone companies in the country. He has also created a relationship with another business that repairs phones. By developing his business, he hopes to be better able to support his family.
The second project we are investing in is the business of 28-year old Cesarían in Peru. The mother of four children plants bananas, corn, yucca, and ginger in their own fields. She is also in touch with buyers in Lima, so she can increase her income to be able to pay for her children’s education. With her current loan she wants to buy fertilizers and to clear the fields for the next ginger planting.
Our third bid goes to Chum Thon in Cambodia. The 28 years old father of four young children has been performing as a musician since 2007. With the 5 dollars he earns from that every day, and his wife making additionally 5 dollars per day from selling cakes, they make their living. Chum Thom wants to use his loan to purchase musical instruments.
