A world in which customers walk through the door of a business and get a coupon especially crafted for them is much closer, thanks to Foursquare.

The application, which has become the dominant player in the world of mobile, geo-specific check-ins,…

I’ve learned to take IT consulting firms’ predictions with a grain of salt. Sometimes these firms come up with provocative stuff for the purpose of selling their consulting services and research reports. They may not always have a real understanding…

Successful marketing is built around accurate forecasting and benchmarking. In an industry like the affiliate industry which is not known for transparency, getting numbers to help you set accurate benchmarks is difficult. There are however resources that can help including:…

As a blogger and an ex-newspaper reporter I have an axe to grind with many of my peers. Please avoid the temptation to distort reality by quoting statistics and data out of context, no matter how linkbait worthy the intended…

One of the mantras guiding online marketing is to measure everything that matters and then optimize. The typical MO is to run as many CPC programs that you can afford or manage to create a baseline; do A/B or multivariate…

Recently I discussed “CPSA” (Cost Per Social Action), a potential pricing model that recognizes the growing importance of measuring a “social action”. This model is a variation of CPA (Cost Per Action). Both CPSA and CPA are far superior to basic…

Trust toward business has reached a new lows:  10% of Americans now say they trust big business (Financial Trust Index). 77% say they refuse to buy from a company they distrust (2009 Edelman Trust Barometer). But the truth is that…

Coupon and other incentive sites are using affiliate tracking technology, but does that mean that those type of publishers fit the traditional affiliate (performance) marketing model?

This is a very technical article about advanced tracking of revenue share and lead type transactions on an advertiser websites to be reported back to any type of affiliate tracking and reporting system.Revenue share tracking is much more complicated than…

Google just announced a new multivariate testing tool called Google WebSiteOptimizer here at emetrics summit in Washington DC.

The software works within Adwords and enables you to test different headlines, graphics, and other page elements to see which ones and which combinations produce…