In the late afternoon everyone got together for German beer and German-style food for more networking and good music.

Overall this was another great event in Silicon Valley zanox participated in – thanks PlugandPlay-Team!

What’s new: There is no download limitation (quota) anymore, the data for each programme can be retrieved as often as you like. Furthermore, we expanded the content, for example there is a new unique zanox product ID that remains the same throughout all product data updates. Also, we included ISBN numbers for productswe and introduced a coherent zanox category tree.

File names are now generated dynamically and include the creation date, programme ID, and partner ID - so you can see when the product data was updated and which programme and partner ID it was exported for.

More information and detailed descriptions are available in our Wiki:
http://wiki.zanox.com/en/Product_Data_Download

The zanox Application Store looks for applications that are relevant to the affiliate marketing industry and that provide publishers and advertisers with reliable added value. Developers can upload their own apps, like widgets, tools or software.

To recruit partners and apps for the Application Store, we provided various ad media in our partner programme – like banners, text links, and a video.

As a zanox publisher, you will receive commission for each new partner who registers in the zanox Application Store. Furthermore, attractive commission is paid for each application which is uploaded by the recruited partner and approved by zanox to be published in the Application Store.

Commissions:

• 5 EUR pay per Lead


• 50 EUR pay per App of category “Widget”


• 750 EUR pay per App of category “Tool and Software”


• 750 EUR pay per App of category “Software as a Service”

This campaign is particularly interesting because partners who upload a promising application by January 2010 have the chance to participate in our $2 Mio Application Store contest and can win investment capital amounting to a total of two million US dollars.

Please note that the current deal for applications will initially run for a limited period up to the end of January 2010. More information including detailed conditions for remuneration are available in the zanox User Interface.

Register here to recruit new partners and apps for the zanox Application Store:

• zanox Affiliates find Affiliates (international)


• zanox Partner werben Partner (Germany)

We wish you good luck and success promoting this campaign!

Especially during peak seasons like Christmas, affiliate programmes with a short confirmation time are way more attractive to publishers than others. So also as an advertiser, you can benefit from speeding up your Christmas business: The faster you approve transactions, and the shorter you set your auto confirmation time, the more money your publishers can reinvest into promoting your programmes, and the more attractive your programmes and promotions will become for other publishers too.

Advertisers who reduce their confirmation time significantly may let us know, so that we can point our publishers especially to those programmes.

The confirmation time is also one criterion for our selected Christmas offers: The weekly round-up of the most promising campaigns helps publishers finding out which advertisers offer the most attractive Christmas promotions, which products promise the greatest success or which ad media will lead to the best conversions: http://affiliate.zanox.com/global/affiliate-programmes

Have a successful and profitable end-of-year business!

If you want to know more about Philipp and get some more details, also have a look at our press release. And of course, we’ll be around for a while – so there will be lots of time to discuss your questions in the next couple of weeks and months. So just stay tuned!

We supported three projects in Kenya: Businesswoman Odilla founded her company Steod Beauty Products in 2005 and it has been growing ever since. She specializes in selling garments, shoes, handbags, hair products, cosmetics, perfumes, jewelery and other beauty products. She also runs a general shop where she sells sweets, cakes and rice.

The second Kenyan business we invested in is John Gitobu’s construction company Jozipy Hardware. John is selling construction materials and since he has some big projects coming up, he needs to buy a larger vehicle in order to transport his goods. The third Kenyan entrepreneur is Susan Kanyeki, who started her business called Friendly Farms in 1993.  She now possesses her own cooling plant which currently process up to 10,000 litres of milk per day. The business is looking to diversify into the more lucrative cheese and yoghurt markets. Susan has therefore begun constructing her own production factory.

We also made two investments in Tanzania: Sebastian Abdala Msola owns the logistics company Samtco Transport, which provides national and international transportation solutions to major African shipping companies. Since the demand for transporting big containers and logs increases, Sebastian would like to buy a new truck. The second entrepreneur from Tanzania is Imaculata Damas Paul. She owns a clothes and cosmetics shop and employs one more female sales person. She now wants to offer more goods to meet her customers’ demands.

We wish all of them best of luck with their business and are looking forward to more interesting projects we can support.

We are proud to introduce five new ‘VIP welcome’ partner programmes at one go: all GameDuell partner programmes running with zanox (GameDuell DE, ES, DK, SE, NL) have been approved for the ‘VIP welcome’ status. GameDuell is one of Europe’s leading games communities with 10 million registered users.

‘VIP welcome’ programmes fulfill high quality criteria and offer certain benefits for zanox publishers. We asked Sebastian Timm (GameDuell), which particular advantages publishers will get from working with GameDuell as a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser:

Sebastian Timm: “GameDuell publishers profit from our partner programme in a range of ways:

• We strive to structure our partner programme in a way that is as attractive as possible to as many publishers as possible. For this reason, we offer our publishers the possibility to advertise us with pop ups, layers or via cashback. In addition, we are GAP enabled and also offer post-view tracking.


• We are particularly proud of our advertising materials. As part of our partner programme, we have a large amount of regularly updated advertising materials which also include our so-called mini games. These are interactive advertising materials with content characters which have displayed above average conversion rates. We are able to offer the perfect mini game for almost all sites, whether a gaming site, sport site or dating site, due to the large range of mini games which we have on offer.


• Furthermore, offering our publishers personal assistance is very important to us in order to create a win-win situation for all parties. We, of course, consider individual and quick responses a must.


• We ensure our VIP publishers that all leads and sales will be confirmed and that all sales completed by the VIP publisher will already be approved after three days.”

Apart from the advantages for publishers, what does GameDuell regard as main benefits for themselves from being a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser?

Sebastian Timm: “The developments in online marketing reflect the increasing importance of performance marketing. As a consequence, more and more companies have turned to affiliate marketing which means that it is not always easy for publishers to find the correct partner programme. Being a ‘VIP welcome’ advertiser is a great honour for us and allows us to show that we can meet the highest quality standards and that we are able to offer the publishers an attractive partner programme. The interest generated from the status will hopefully result in more publishers finding their way to us.
In addition, we are, of course, interested in attracting high quality publishers to our programme. The zanox VIP Club fills the required gaps due to the incorporation of VIP welcome advertisers and VIP publishers which I am particularly pleased about.”

Speaking about the zanox VIP Club in general, what does GameDuell think about it?

Sebastian Timm: “Affiliate Marketing is a market which is complex and also shows a high amount of flexibility in terms of professionalism. The zanox VIP Club rewards all market participants who constantly deliver quality and fulfill a variety of standards. This further emphasises the professionalisation of the market displayed by the zanox VIP Club.”

More information about the zanox VIP Club including an overview of all ‘VIP welcome’ programmes and their benefits for publishers are available on our VIP landing page.

Greetings from IAB Forum Milano. I am here with the lovely Italian team and some French and Spanish co-workers. We can already look back on one busy and successful day at Fiera Milano City .
A lot of new and existing clients stopped by our booth to talk about the latest trends in affiliate marketing as well as the zanox Application Store.
Our booth has been a magnet for networking, even long after the official part of the show. Our Spanish intra-company exchange programme participant Javier did a great job serving German beer.
We are looking forward to more interesting and productive meetings today. Visit us at booth # 23 if you are in the neighborhood.

For further information and some more pictures from the event please visit our Italian blog later today.

Right in time for the start of the Christmas business, we kicked-off our exclusive, weekly round-up of the most promising advertiser campaigns today. Starting now, we will present you the most attractive offers and deals at a glance. As a publisher, you will receive three recommendations in comparison every week, via your Account start page, our promotion page (just click on “promotions” for your country), the weekly newsletter and our zanox Blogs. Find out which advertisers offer the most attractive Christmas promotions, which products promise the greatest success or which product will lead to the best conversions. You’ll also get all the information on commissions, confirmation rates and times, as well as specials, such as expanded SEM facilities, search deep links, standalone newsletters and special ad media can be seen at a glance.

The selection of the Advertisers is done by our local zanox teams and will focus on the appeal of the exclusive Christmas promotions and the programme quality. This should give you a perfect opportunity to plan your seasonal activities to perfection and to achieve the best possible conversions. We are looking forward to a great year-end business with all of you!