Commission Junction changes link plans
Affiliate heavyweight Commission Junction caved to publisher complaints and changed its phase out plan for affiliate links.
If you’re like many domain name owners, you depend on affiliate programs in addition to pay per click revenue. One of the biggest affiliate networks, Commission Junction, recently disclosed plans to introduce javascript links to replace standard HTML links.
On the surface this is a smart move. It allows Commission Junction’s advertisers to better track performance and will reduce affiliate link cloaking. Still, Commission Junction originally stated that all existing affiliate links would no longer work following 6 months. This was a shock to me, as it would literally take hundreds of hours to go back and change all of my existing affiliate links. Some of them are embedded in eBooks and can never be changed. Although I earn a lot of money through the affiliate network, I know that others earn much more and have thousands more links effected by this change than I. Apparently our collective griping lead the affiliate network to change its mind regarding phasing out the old links:
We recently disclosed the release of the Link Management Initiative (LMI) planned for June 23, 2006. While the changes introduced by this initiative deliver considerable benefits, we understand some of our clients may need more time to plan for and implement the required changes. As your partner in affiliate marketing, Commission Junction is therefore extending the availability of Legacy links to all our publishers in the CJ Marketplace.
On June 23, 2006, JavaScript links will become Commission Junction’s default link type. Still, we will continue to offer Legacy links through the beginning of 2007. The Legacy links will be available for all your advertiser relationships, counting those joined to ahead of and following June 23, 2006. Although you will have the option to use Legacy links, we encourage you to start using our fresh JavaScript links to take advantage of the benefits planned as part of the LMI. At this time we have not scheduled a date for which the Legacy links will no longer be available or supported. We will notify you at least six months in advance of making this change and will not require the change during the 2006 holiday season.
Commission Junction could have avoided this snafu by paying attention to a case study at ClickBank a couple years earlier. Following months of internal work and investment Clickbank disclosed a change to its link structure that would drastically improve reporting. But they didn’t hold any focus groups with advertisers and publishers ahead of making this investment. The Clickbank community banded together to fight the change. Clickbank abandoned its fresh affiliate link program and stated something to the effect of “we had no idea how big a deal this would be and how many affiliate links people had out there that can’t be changed”. Clickbank made a modest change to its affiliate code, but all legacy links still work.
