Monthly Archives: November 2008

Microsoft Corp. has announced that since its launch in May, Microsoft Live Search cashback has seen positive traction in all three of the key metrics on which the company said it would report: number of offers in the system, advertiser return on investment (ROI), and percentage of commercial search queries as measured by comScore Inc. The company also announced that 20 of the top 50 online retailers in the U.S. and 140 of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 are now participating in the program, including new advertisers AT&T, Drugstore.com Inc., FTD, Gap Inc. properties (including Banana Republic and Old Navy), Kmart, RedEnvelope and Saks Fifth Avenue.

“We are pleased to report a 30 percent increase in the number of product offers available in Microsoft Live Search cashback, indicative of the strong advertiser interest in the program and early results on its ROI,” said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft Live Search. “We have seen an average of 4.5 million unique users per month visiting cashback who have conducted more than 68 million commercial queries. We believe this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers, especially in these tough economic times.”

On advertiser ROI for the program, according to Stephanie Tilenius, general manager of eBay North America, “Combined with eBay’s already great prices — frequently 30 percent below retail on the items people want — the Microsoft Live Search cashback program is bringing home holiday deals for eBay shoppers that can be an incredible 60 percent below retail. Beyond the great deals for buyers, Microsoft Live Search cashback (http://www.live.com) has improved our ROI on paid search by 50 percent, and based upon our shared success, eBay is increasing its search marketing spend with Microsoft Live Search by threefold.”*

Other advertisers are also reporting strong results. Sales at ShoeMall have increased over sixfold since it began participating in Microsoft Live Search cashback, prompting ShoeMall to devote even more marketing dollars to the cashback program for holiday and beyond.

In addition, according to a custom comScore study, in the second quarter of 2008, Microsoft Live Search referred almost 12 percent of total U.S. commercial online transactions and about 13 percent of total U.S. online spending among key retail categories. Microsoft Live Search placed among the top two U.S. engines in five of the 10 key commercial categories for conversion rate, including Computer Hardware, Movies & Videos, Home & Garden, Music, and Travel. Microsoft Live Search also shows a competitive advantage in attracting high-quality and high-spending buyers. Microsoft Live Search ranked as the top engine among the competitive set by a large margin in dollars spent per buyer, across the combined 10 key commercial categories.

Shopping Cart Providers Expand Program’s Reach

Microsoft also announced today that Microsoft Live Search cashback has entered into agreements with shopping cart providers Miva Merchant, Early Impact Inc. (ProductCart) and 3DCart. Under the agreements, retailers using these shopping carts on their sites are now eligible to become a part of the Microsoft Live Search cashback program. Each of the providers has implemented a set of tools to easily enable its retailer partners, mostly small to midsize merchants, to join Microsoft Live Search cashback. The addition of these merchants through the shopping cart providers is projected to greatly expand the set of product offers available to consumers through Microsoft Live Search cashback.

About Microsoft Live Search cashback

With Microsoft Live Search cashback, Microsoft helps merchants maximize their advertising investments and drive more sales by providing consumers with an added incentive to buy — a cash reward. Online advertising spend that participating merchants would otherwise pay to Microsoft is instead passed on to customers who complete sales under the Microsoft Live Search cashback program as cash rewards. A complete list of Microsoft Live Search cashback partners can be found at http://www.live.com/cashback.

LinkShare, a global online advertising services provider, today announced the addition of 74 new advertisers to its network for the third-quarter of 2008. The new customer count outpaces LinkShare’s second-quarter growth, reflecting both the company’s success in providing full-service online marketing solutions as well as the increasing demand for performance marketing as a result of the current economic landscape.

“Now more than ever companies are looking for measurable return on investment from their marketing dollars,” said Yasuhisa “Yaz” Iida, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “We are pleased to see these new customers joining LinkShare’s network for performance-based marketing solutions. For all of our customers — both existing and new — LinkShare consistently strives to provide excellent services while developing new and relevant technologies that support the specific and evolving needs of today’s online marketers.”

Known for attracting large, sophisticated ecommerce companies, third-quarter additions to LinkShare’s network include 42 small-and-medium-sized companies. Ecommerce programs, such as cost-per-action (CPA) marketing, that are measured based on performance, have become a vital part of many business strategies as a way to significantly improve both revenue and ROI.

“LinkShare is proud to welcome so many small-and-medium-size businesses to our network,” said Jonathan Levine, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “In today’s tough economy, these advertisers can benefit from our global network of publishers to market and sell their products while tracking each affiliate marketing dollar spent. LinkShare continues to offer a dynamic interactive network where advertisers and publishers of all sizes can work together to form mutually beneficial relationships.”

Third-quarter additions to the LinkShare network include companies within the Internet’s fastest-growing and most dynamic markets, including retail, media and fashion. One small-to-medium-sized business that has joined the LinkShare Network is Hay House, Inc.

Hay House

“Hay House was started by one woman with an idea, and has now become one of the fastest growing self-help and transformational publishers in the world,” said Tiffini Alberto, Internet affiliate manager, Hay House, Inc. “Through our partnership with LinkShare, our affiliate marketing program is on track to generate nearly $1,000,000 in revenue this year. Our network has grown to include more than 4,700 affiliates that carry the Hay House brand. We are able to manage and track our affiliates’ successes using LinkShare’s extensive portfolio of services, which allows us to focus on building and maintaining customer relationships and growing our brand. ”

Despite recent macro-economic trends, online retail sales are expected to reach $44 billion this holiday season. For companies seeking to reach the widest audience of prospective buyers, affiliate marketing programs have proven to be extremely cost-effective.

About LinkShare

LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a wide range of online marketing services including Search Marketing (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing. Advertisers can increase their online sales by leveraging LinkShare’s massive performance marketing network along with expert consultative services and patented technology. Superior service combined with technology innovation allows advertisers and publishers to acquire and retain new customers, increase revenue and drive results.

LinkShare clients include Fortune 500 and other prominent and emerging companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express, and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, London and Tokyo. LinkShare is a division of Rakuten, Inc.

About Rakuten, Inc.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Rakuten is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive Internet service companies, providing leading services in e-commerce, portal & media, travel, financial services, and professional sports. Rakuten focuses on new business development and increasing its scope in order to improve and diversify service offerings. Rakuten, Inc. is a publicly traded company in Japan (JASDAQ: 4755).

Web site: http://www.linkshare.com//

Website Optimization, LLC (WSO), a leading website optimization and speed optimization provider, is happy to announce a major upgrade to our popular Web Page Analyzer tool. The new Analyzer features faster performance, HTML and CSSTidy integration, and updated HCI guidelines.

“Due to the increased load on the Web Page Analyzer and our website we have upgraded our main server to a more powerful model,” stated Andy King, President of Website Optimization, LLC. “The new server has dual high-speed Xeon processors, faster solid-state hard drives, and twice the available bandwidth. The Analyzer tool has been moved to its own dedicated server to handle the load independently of the main WSO server. These changes, plus the addition of CAPTCHA and usage throttling, allow us to continue to offer the analyzer free of charge, and scale for more users. We’ve thrown in some other tweaks, including making the CAPTCHA “this-is-a-human” test faster. We hope you find the new server more responsive, we’re already noticing the difference in response times.”

The Web Page Analyzer Tool will scan, analyze, and calculate page size, composition, and download time of any web page. With the push of a button, the WSO Web Page Analyzer Tool is sent out to view your web page, and all of the objects within the page. Then the tool analyzes the entire page and its components for size and download speed at different bandwidths. Once the check is complete, a full report is produced for you in HTML format with a summary on how the page performed.. Users also receive page and object information including::

Page size and composition
Formatted XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS files
Recommendations based on the latest HCI research and average web page size

The Web Page Analyzer tool incorporates best practices from the popular book titled “Webiste Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Search Engine Secrets” by Andy King into its recommendations. For the Web Page analyzer Tool, see:

http://www.webpageanalyzer.com