Welcome to the second iolo affiliate newsletter for. LinkShare Merchandiser Program. Your LinkShare tracking. Linkshare Review' title='Linkshare Review' />Linkshare Affiliate ProgramYour Own Online Business From Home. But LinkShare and other program networks are. Is the Affiliate Products Shop module still being maintained ref. Affiliate Products Shop module still. Search for Merchandiser Data Feed Program or. What types of questions can Customer Support help me with Publisher Help Center. The Rakuten Affiliate Network Customer Support team is happy to respond to all of your inquiries. You can submit a request via phone or email. We strive to respond to all email inquiries within one business day. Our phone support is available during business hours. We encourage you to use the Search option at the top of each page in the Publisher Help Center first for immediate help for your questions or issues before contacting Publisher Support. Our key area of support is for technical issues. Technical issues we can assist you with include items such as Signing up as a publisher. Publisher account login difficulties. How to use features in the Publisher Dashboard. Questions about getting started with Merchandiser product data feed. Questions about using APIs and Web Services. Questions about advertisers programs information in the Publisher Dashboard. Problems with running reports in the Publisher Dashboard. Questions about your commission payments. There are certain, often requested, services and areas of advice that are not offered to you by Customer Support however we understand these areas are important to you. You can find information on these topics in a variety of ways including information here in the Publisher Help Center, on our monthly publisher webinars and Office Hours, and additional outside resources we can direct you to. Website or website design support. Customer Support generally advises publishers that do not yet have a website to seek the services of a web developer or look into various website builder platforms to build a website from a template. Coaching in affiliate marketing best practices. When possible, Customer Support may provide broad advice about how to start building your advertiser relationships. However, we do not provide in depth support to you regarding the following and similar concerns             1  What types of publisher websites are the most successful             2  What advertisers generate the most commissions for publishers             3  How you can generate traffic and improve traffic to your website             4  Where to put links on your website             5  How you can increase your website conversions earningsFor helpful tips and best practices, check out the Grow Best Practices Tips section of the Help Center. Our monthly publisher webinars feature Office Hours Q A time and coaching for new publishers. You can participate in the live event, or submit your question in advance and watch the recording afterward for the answer, plus keep up to date with your professional education in affiliate marketing. Also be sure to follow our Rakuten Marketing blog, read our Publisher Newsletters and attend Symposiums for the latest insights and tips. Ad. Server for Affiliate Marketing NIHPO. Challenges With Affiliate Marketing. As a Link. Sharer Publisher ourselves at NIHPO, we were surprised and frustrated at the level of complexity and manual labor required to use Link. Shares services to. Relevance Advertising. Heres a concrete example every day, many Advertisers in the Link. Share network put out a plain text data feed file that contains records such as this 2. No Shame Pepper Rar. Oxygen Magazine 1. MagazineFitnessWomens Healthhttp click. JUng. 9N8d. Jo offerid2. A2. F2. Fwww. magazines. Foxygen2. F1. 44. MA2. Cdefault2. Cpd. Sites mags us SiteSites master. Magazinesdefaultv. MA1. 44. 14 MA 1 sml. JUng. 9N8d. Jo offerid2. A2. F2. Fwww. magazines. Fcheckout2. Fcart2. Fadd2. F2. 97. 31. Oxygen Magazine 1. Oxygen magazine is your ultimate guide into the invigorating world of womens fitness. Each issue of Oxygen magazine is dedicated to women who wish to better themselves through proper nutrition and exercise. Oxygen Magazine 1. FitnessWomens Health6. USDhttp ad. linksynergy. JUng. 9N8d. Jo bids2. Publishers are expected to process this raw data file, find the most appropriate offer for each page of Publishers content, and then place all the proper HTML code in the correct 0place. Please note this is not to be construed as criticism of Link. Share or its Advertisers. Rather, we found the existing process too onerous and decided to build something better for ourselves. Other people may also benefit from our work. Our Solution. We developed the NIHPO Ad. Server software platform to solve this problem Regularly download Link. Shares Advertisers Merchandiser Product Feed files. Read and parse each file to store advertiser attributes some have over 1. Filter and index the attributes using the title, description, keyword, andor other fields. Identify and program logic to use the stored attributes to select ads relevant to the user persona and content. Statically and dynamically incorporate the relevant ads into both websites as well as desktop and mobile applications. The NIPHO Ad. Server eliminates the complexity and manual labor by automating the above process, which in turn, has a positive impact on Link. Shares entire Supply Chain. Consumers win by being presented with more relevant ads and offers that match their areas of interest. Advertisers and lead generators win by having their ads and offers dynamically incorporated alongside relevant content. Publishers win by dynamically presenting more relevant ads and offers. Link. Share wins by default, coupled with the opportunity to attract Publishers and Advertisers using competing services. The NIHPO Ad. Server is available for licensing. Please send an email jose dot lacal at nihpo. Jose C. Lacal, our CTO, or call him at 1 5. NIHPO Ad. Server. Background Definition of Affiliate Marketing Network. Please skip this section if youre already familiar with the operation of an affiliate marketing network. Definition extracted from Wikipedia. Affiliate marketing is a type of performance based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliates own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players the merchant also known as retailer or brand, the network that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments, the publisher also known as the affiliate, and the customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super affiliates and specialized third party vendors. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization SEO, paid search engine marketing PPC Pay Per Click, e mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales. Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e retailers marketing strategies. NIHPO Ad. Server Technical Approach Solution. This diagram presents a high level overview of the NIHPO Ad. Servers platform. Further details are provided below. These are the steps listed in the above diagram 1. Publisher applies to join an Advertisers program. In an Affiliate Network setting, a Publisher needs to apply to and be accepted by each individual Advertiser. Publisher accepts a Lead Advantage offer. Some affiliate networks including Link. Share also offer Lead Generation offers. In this case, the Publisher needs to apply to join specific Lead Gen programs. Ad. Server downloads the Merchandiser Product File and Link files. Schedule periodic daily or weekly downloads of the Merchandiser Product Feed files for each approved Advertiser. Missing or problematic files are captured in an error file for review and resolution. E Mails that identify missing or problematic files get sent to system administrators. Newly downloaded files are compared with existing files of the same name to determine if subsequent processing should occur. Ad. Server parses, cleans, and harmonizes data in each raw file. Files containing new or edited records are parsed and prepared for Natural Language Processing NLP. NLP is used to extract the most relevant metadata from each record. Error checking is performed on each file. Suspect or problematic records are stored in advertiser specific error files. E Mails that identify suspect or problematic records get sent to system administrators. Remove expired ads. Ad. Server downloads image files from remote servers to local storage. A major challenge facing Publishers, Link. Share, and Advertisers is the increasing usage of ad blockers in Users browsers that block content and images that are retrieved from external websites. For example, website pages on NIPHOs website that reference images on magazine. We address this challenge by downloading, cataloguing, and storing images locally. Advertisement images are downloaded, catalogued, and stored locally. Error checking is performed on each image. Suspect or problematic images are stored in advertiser specific error files. E Mails that identify suspect or problematic images get sent to system administrators. Non standard image sizes are automatically scaled up or down to the closest industry size, for example, 1. NOTE Images can be automatically scaled up or down to create missing or needed standard image sizes not provided by Advertisers. Process load all data into single, unified database of offers across Advertisers, Lead Generation. Load all ofers from all Advertisers, Lead Generation programs into a single, unified database.