Well it’s great to be back at the CDF Networks world headquarters after 3 days in Vegas. I ended up cutting the trip short by one night, and getting back late last night. A little Vegas goes a long loooooong way. I have been there many times over that last few years and the pattern is always the same: I’m really happy to get there, but then even happier to leave. I made some great new contacts and have some new techniques that I am anxious to try out. Rather than a coherent post, here are some final random thoughts from the show.

• When you are a little hung over, getting French toast and a huge glass of orange juice from room service is great. Dumping the entire full glass of orange juice directly on the keyboard of your laptop is not so good. Talk about sticky keys.
• I found a couple new PPC networks to try out. These guys always claim their traffic is the cleanest, targeted traffic on the planet. The next PPC challenge we do should include 15 PPC networks.
• I went to a couple of the domaining sessions. I’m not into this currently, but I have always wanted to try it. It was interesting to hear some of the techniques people use and more importantly, how to use domains to drive traffic to affiliate offers. They claim that type in and direct traffic converts even better than search. I can definitely see the attraction of paying one fee for a domain and getting unlimited traffic, rather than paying for every click like PPC.
• The Google reception was fun. An open bar for 2 hours and a room full of Internet Marketers is a dangerous combo. The only thing we go after harder than free T-shirts if free booze. One small comment though to Google. What’s up with the chips and salsa? You have 100 billion in the bank, how about putting out a deli tray at least?
• I am really exited to test sending traffic to a new merchant that I met in Vegas. This is traffic I was previously sending to a CPA network type offer. I hope to eventually be sending most of my PPC traffic to companies like this. The flexibility and of course payouts can’t be beat when you go direct. Thanks for the awesome dinner guys, you know who you are!
• $12.99 for 24 hours of WiFi, sucks.
• There was a lot of focus and buzz on video. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how video can be used in the affiliate marketing world effectively. I have a few ideas of things to test, including video landing pages for certain offers. If done right, it could be great but there are some technical challenges as well.
• If I’m going to be a proper blogger I really need to take pictures at these things. I had every opportunity to take pictures with all the important guys but I didn’t do it. I’m not the biggest “networker” in the world, but luckily my business model doesn’t depend on who I know in the industry.

All in all it was a worthwhile trip. I met a few new clients, and learned a few new tips, which should pay for the conference easily. Now back to the real work.

Here are a few of the pics I did remember to take.

You could land a 747 in there.

The expo area, Yahoo had the biggest booth.

Not sure what a Ferarri has to do with domains, but there is was.

Well, the first day of Pubcon is over and I survived. There is a LOT of people here this year, way more than last year it seems. I went to some of the sessions and the cocktail party so my head is still spinning a little. Here are some of the more memorable items for the day. I will be devoting some full blog posts to some of these later.

-This year the main hall/expo area/lunch area is in this enormous conference hall. There will definitely be no crowding issues this year, you could literally fit 10 football fields in there.

-Listened to the keynote speech from Craig of Craigslist. Nice guy, not the most dynamic speaker.

At the PPC sessions with reps from all the search engines a few interesting points:

-Google finally admits to the keyword insertion feature. Something we have all used forever, but they have never documented until now.

-Adcenter now has a certification program, just like Google and Yahoo. They have a training course and cert test to take, if that’s important to you. Search for Adexcellence for details.

-When pressed, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, all claim to have offline editors in the pipeline. I really hope so, but I am not holding my breath. For now we’ll still have to build campaigns with Google and convert.

-Lots of talk about dayparting. I don’t use it, but I can see the value of it for some niches.

-MSN is coming out with a cool Adcenter add-in for Excel that will do keyword research, reporting, and optimization. Looks like an awesome tool.

-I talked to the head Yahoo guy for a bit and asked when they are going to start allowing Geo-targeting of any other countries besides the US and Canada. He basically told me, it’s not going to happen any time soon. So if you wanted to target a campaign to the UK, you would have to open a Yahoo UK account. I told him they are kind if missing the boat with this lack of flexibility.

-MSN is really working on their quality score algo that they will be rolling out soon. It will focus on a lot of the same factors as Google, but be much more transparent, they say.

-MSN doesn’t like arbitrageurs. In fact, “arbitrageurs we just don’t want them” was the direct quote. Our job is going to get harder.

-Learned some good new tips to game Google’s quality score. More on that in a future post.

-Finally getting 1 free drink ticket is good. Getting 2 more extra tickets from the Webmaster World dude because the bar is about to close before the night session is great. Thanks!

Got any questions you would really like to ask one of PPC product managers? Let me know in the comments and I’ll try to ask it in the next couple days. I’ll also try to take some pics on day 2 – if I don’t forgot the camera in the hotel room again!

I just signed on for the Affiliate Summit West conference in Vegas coming up this February.  I have been to other conferences, but never an Affiliate Summit so I’m excited to go. Big thanks to those guys for the free pass! From what I have heard the AS shows are an excellent place to network and learn some new tricks. I’ll be posting live updates from the conference.  I hope to meet some of you there!

I have a 25% off Pubcon coupon code for the first person that emails me. A company sent it to me, but I am already registered. This coupon code with the early registration price makes in only $524. See you can afford to go!

On the pubcon blog today they posted a super hotel deal for this years’ conference. Even though it’s way off in December I had to jump on this deal. Use coupon code WEBW1207 and you can book a room at the Wynn for $169. If you don’t know Vegas hotels, let me tell you this is the best hotel in Vegas, 5 stars all the way. They even have plasma TVs in the bathrooms! Plus its right near the convention center. Jump on this deal, because I’m sure they will sell these out quickly.

Looks like I will have a chance to attend a couple of conferences this year. Luckily, 2 of the best conferences are coming up:

SES San Jose – Which looks to be huge this year with 5 tracks of sessions each day, not to mention the big Google party. Should be an event not to miss.

Pubcon Vegas – Pubcon is always unique and definitely a great chance to learn new things and network. Plus it’s Vegas, who needs and excuse to go there?

I will have CDF Networks t-shirts to give out too, while supplies last of course

This post is written more from the perspective of web users and advertisers, rather than publishers. I do run contextual ads on a few sites, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking they suck.

Everyone knows that contextual ads are an easy way to monetize a website. But if you step back for a second and look at the big picture, you may realize why the whole concept sucks. Here are my 2 main reasons:

1. The whole premise of contextual advertising is based on mistakes. I’d say 90% of all publishers are using the content networks to advertise by mistake. Either it was clicked by default when they set up their campaign, or they just don’t know what it means, either way most people are clueless that they are using it. Those who have actually tested running ads on content networks usually find the results to be terrible and switch it off immediately.

From the users end perspective, most of the time they are clicking on ads by mistake. These hapless web surfers click on well “blended” ads, totally unaware what they are doing. This leads to wasted clicks and bad ROI for the advertiser. It’s pretty obvious that someone actively searching for your keywords on a search network is going to yield a better return for advertisers than someone accidentally clicking on your ads in content.

Are there exceptions to all this? Of course. Some advertisers do OK on the content networks, and some users purposely click ads. But for the most part, I’d say these figures are pretty close.

2. By my estimates 90% of all the websites that contain contextual ads exists only because of the contextual ads. They serve no purpose in life other than enticing unsuspecting users into clicking on crappy ads. There was a time when people actually created sites with content or at least to promote a real business, but those are far outnumbered today by pointless junk sites. Overall contextual advertising has been led to a huge decrease in quality of the internet overall.

Is contextual advertising going anywhere? It’s hard to say. MSN is still going full speed ahead with their network. Google and Yahoo make huge profits off theirs. But with all the fraud running rampant and advertisers bailing out like rats from a sinking ship something is bound to happen. I foresee a big class action lawsuit shaking up the industry one of these days. Stay tuned.

After planning on going, then not being able to go, then playing by ear, I am not going to the Affiliate West conference this year. I am just buried too deep in some major development projects and can’t break away next week for the summit. It’s amazing, now that I don’t have a full time job anymore (this is my job now) I am busier than when I was working full time and doing this stuff. I’ll have to catch the next one. I definitely plan on going to the SES show in San Jose and of course Pubcon again in Vegas and maybe the Adtech conference this year. Hope everyone has a great time