The online marketing world has been hopping today as Commission Junction announced that it is going to change its link structure from HTML to Java Script.
Scott Jangro says:
"There’s a rule-of-thumb I like to go by: ‘If you take the affiliate links off of your website, what’s left?’ If the answer is, ‘not much’, then your site isn’t likely to be considered worthy of ranking well in search engines (lately, this includes paid-search as well). CJ and other affiliate networks stand a much better chance by keeping their code out of the search engines than to leave it to the search engines to decide what gets obliterated."
"CJ is eliminating most of the existing poorly executed affiliate sites AND pleasing Google. Two birds, one stone. Quite literally this happens overnight in June as the HTML links go dark. The new network-provided Java script links give advertisers total control in the future if affiliates mis-behave."
He also says that the change is "designed to frustrate mom-and-pop affiliates that networks like CJ have traditionally enjoyed offering to advertisers.... So far affiliates are doing exactly what they should be doing. Nothing if they're valued partners to retailers; leaving in droves if they're amateurs."
We at The Alpha Marketer always talk about content being king, and this move by Commission Junction is just another step toward confirming it. Advertisers don't want their ads put on sloppy, content-free sites that bring no value to the viewer and denigrate their brand. This move is basically giving control to the advertisers and taking it away from the link sites.
Are you going to be affected by this announcement? What steps are you going to take in response?
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