The New Google Adsense and Your Privacy Policy

If you are a Google Adsense publisher, you undoubtedly received this email regarding their interest-based advertising:

We're writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site's privacy policies. You'll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user's previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast"). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site's privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we're unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

And now you are probably scrambling to meet their deadline of April 8, 2009 to come up with some sort of reasonable edits to your privacy policy just so Google can engage in their latest Big Brother routine.

Personally, it irritated me so I gave all of my websites a good long look and yanked Adsense off of the ones where it wasn't performing well. Actually, I guess I should thank them as it cleaned up a lot of junk and had me reviewing some of my older sites I hadn't bothered with in a while.

To make your life easier here's a link to a privacy policy generator to get you started: http://www.serprank.com/privacy-policy-generator/index.php

And to opt out of Google's Dart cookie you can go here: http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

What do you think? Am I alone in being disgusted with this whole thing or do others share my frustration?

Budgets Shrinking for Affiliate Marketing

I guess it's not a surprise.

Affiliate Marketing Still Cost-Effective, but Budgets Shrinking

Permission Based Email Marketing

Create and send eye-catching HTML email campaigns in minutes!

Collect email addresses of your site visitors with a "join my list" signup on your website. Then, easily create and send compelling email newsletters, promotions and announcements to keep them coming back.

KEY FEATURES

Add a visitor signup to your website
Import in-house permission-based names
Includes 50 professional templates
Use templates as is or easily customize to match your brand
Add a "forward to friend" to every email
Manages and hosts your subscriber list

Constant Contact is easy and affordable -- TRY IT FREE and see for yourself.

Click Here
to sign up for your Free trial

Record Numbers Joining CJ

Commission Junction announces record numbers of new clients.

A Record Number of New Clients Join the Commission Junction Affiliate Marketing Network

Is Google's Search Within Search Costing You?

Google has added a search box within the affiliate search results. How does this impact you?

Google Search Within Search Box Hurts Affiliates, Says IDC

Looking for Advertising? See Project Wonderful

Over the past week I have placed some new ad space on a few of my websites using Project Wonderful. I have also tried out their advertising.

They are fairly easy to set up and offer ad sizes ranging from buttons to skyscrapers, in either text or image format.

A publisher can set up any ad size or configuration that they want and offer it for sale. You can even have multiple rows and columns which allows a large amount of flexibility and more options for more advertisers. Once you have installed the code on your website, your ad space becomes available through their infinite auction. What this means is that you can set a minimum bid (or if you are afraid of the dreaded "your ad here" text you can offer free ad space) and advertisers will bid for ad time shown on your website. Advertisers are buying exposure, not clicks. The highest bidder wins, and this could change at any moment. You have complete control over which ads are shown on your site and you can be as restrictive or as open as you like.

An advertiser can choose from a growing selection of different websites and blogs, and may even be able to score a bit of free advertising. Project Wonderful has a robust search function that will help you target those sites that will work best for you. They also have some nice statistics available on the sites you're looking at.

A publisher can also take the income they make and turn around and use it for their own advertising.

I don't have a good feel for how effective it is yet, but the system is certainly fun and a little addicting.

Get Your Email Marketing Program Evaluated for Free

Gold Lasso, Inc. has launched a new service, where new clients will receive a complete evaluation of their existing email marketing program.

The evaluation, valued at $2,500, includes a free 15 page report.

The service is designed for new clients' email marketing program by evaluating the key areas required for successful campaigns. Armed with this information, clients will experience increased results and understand what is needed to build stronger email communications. Gold Lasso is one of the few ESPs to offer an in-depth evaluation service for free.

(source: Marketwire)

More on the eBay move

Here's a selection of links offering a little more info:

eBay cuts out the middle-man, moves affiliates in-house

EBay affiliates to be managed in-house

eBay and Half.com Moving Away from Commission Junction

EBay is moving its affiliate program in-house for eBay and Half.com affiliate programs.

As part of the move to an in-house affiliate network, eBay and Half.com will no longer run their affiliate programs through ValueClick’s Commission Junction platform. eBay’s Tradera AB, ProStores, Inc, Reseller Marketplace, Media Marketplace, eBay Stores and StubHub will not be affected and will continue their relationship with Commission Junction. eBay affiliates working with other platforms, including Affilinet and Tradedoubler, will not be affected.

Affected eBay and Half.com affiliates will be required to move their affiliate links over to the eBay Partner Network by May 1st, 2008.

For more info: BusinessWire

New Affiliate Marketing Program for Metin 2

G4BOX Inc. announced the launch of its new affiliate marketing program for MMORPG, METIN 2. It's available to both players and webmasters.

Web magazines and websites with gaming traffic can join the program by registering for a free METIN 2 account and then downloading the METIN 2 banners and posting them on their website. If a new account is set up by clicking through the banner on their website, they will receive rewards which can be used for in-game item mall point or can be converted to cash awards of 10% on every purchase generated from their links. Affiliates can also continue to generate awards as the new player’s level up.

Metin 2 - Free 3D MMORPG

(source: GamersHell.com)