Recently, Adweek published an article titled “CMO’s Face New Reality”, which chronicled the struggles of marketers post economic slowdown. It reported on the challenge marketers are facing with regard to engaging new and existing customers as marketing budgets decline. Improving customer retention and loyalty, acquiring new customers and increasing sales to current customers were named the three most important issues facing marketers today. Interestingly, these same marketers indicated that they were rather lackluster in leveraging digital marketing and performance strategies to achieve their core objectives. This is difficult to reconcile considering that the hallmark of online performance marketing is continuous improvement, growth and efficiency. What exactly is the new reality CMO’s are facing and is it reality after all? It shouldn’t be that marketing budgets need to decrease. It should be the realization that marketing budgets are no longer the litmus test for an effective campaign.

Online performance marketers know that improving customer retention, acquiring new customers and increasing current sales requires a multi-channel approach that maximizes spend through continuous improvement and optimization. Marketers who are gun shy about investing in digital may believe that such optimization will cost more than it is worth. If done right, shifting to an online performance model will ultimately demand more from your marketing spend. It will enable companies to effectively target and re-target new and current customers, get the most out of your leads database and promote growth through cost-efficiency. Performance marketers know this. It’s time they spread this knowledge to recession-wary CMOs.

That’s right. It’s 2010 and we here at MediaWhiz are roaring into the new decade with a new logo and a new blog.

In the coming months this blog will be a destination for online marketing thought leadership. We will share our ideas and we hope you will share yours. We will discuss our results. We will utilize the fact that our company is made up of a team working to be the best and the brightest, and we are going to use our tenacious approach to being the best to redefine performance marketing.

We will be showing you our results; In the shape of case studies, white papers, and opinion posts, you will see our performance first hand. You will get a glimpse into how MediaWhiz can help you make the most out of every single marketing dollar.

Were also taking this show on the road. This year alone we will be attending a host of conferences including:

Affiliate Summit West – January 17 -19 2010
IDate2010 -January 27 – 29 2010
LeadsCon Las Vegas – February 23 -24 2010
AdTech San Francisco – April 19-21 2010

This blog will be sharing the highlights of all the stops throughout the year.

We’re going to have a little fun too. Check back often for guests, sports highlights, funny stories and online marketing fun.

We hope you are all as excited as we are. It’s going to be a big year for us and our family of partners and clients. Time to show tenacity, excitement, spirit and results! Here we go…

Kontera®, a leading provider of In-Text Advertising and Information Solutions for web publishers and advertisers, announced that ScribeFire will be utilizing the company’s patent-pending contextual analysis technology to power In-Text offerings to its vast base of publishers.

Through this technology partnership, ScribeFire publishers benefit from an easy, one-click implementation of Kontera’s In-Text Advertising solution directly from their respective publisher consoles.

Kontera analyzes the content of the ScribeFire®-enabled publishers, and highlights contextually relevant keywords. The technology discovers the keywords on a web page, blog, or widget in real-time and automatically matches them with contextually relevant advertising or information. When a user mouses-over a double-underlined keyword, a contextually relevant ad, known as ContentLink®, is displayed.

The real value of the ScribeFire / Kontera (ContentLink) integration is in its ability to engage users. Publishers running ContentLink experience engagement rates that are higher than with other pay per click advertising solutions. Publishers of user-contributed media regularly report equal or greater click-through rates with Kontera than with Google’s AdSense®.

“Today, bloggers and small publishers are looking for more opportunities to monetize their content,” said Patrick Gavin, founder and President of ScribeFire. “Thanks to Kontera’s proprietary technology, we’re among the first ad platforms to offer publishers the ability to run both high ROI in-text advertising as well as fully optimized banner ads. Contextually relevant ads will generate revenue for thousands of ScribeFire-powered publishers.”

“From reality TV to social networking and the blogosphere, user-contributed media is changing the monetization models for all forms of content,” said Mathew Haugen, VP of  Business Development, Kontera. “With Kontera’s technology being utilized by MediaWhiz (ScribeFire), we’re enabling thousands of bloggers and online publishers of all sizes to tap into a new revenue stream.”

The Integration of Leading Web-Based Dialing Technology Increases Sales Productivity

We are happy to announce that we have strengthened our Lead Management System, LeadROI™, by implementing JetDial®, a powerful web-based dialing technology that greatly enhances advertisers’ sales force efficiencies, lead throughput time, and conversion rates.

LeadROI’s JetDial is an innovative on-demand call center software that dramatically improves sales force efficiency. The technology automatically manages answering machines, busy signals, disconnected numbers, and fax lines to improve sales talk time by over 40%. For example, when an answering machine is detected, a personalized pre-recorded voicemail greeting is automatically delivered and the sales representative is promptly connected to the next available live party. Finally, JetDial is equipped with powerful monitoring capabilities that enable sales managers to track and analyze the performance of their sales team.

“The JetDial technology sets us apart from the other lead management systems, which offer very basic click-to-dial applications that don’t do much to improve sales force productivity when compared with our advanced preview dialer technology,” said Raj Parekh, General Manager of MediaWhiz’s LeadROI product. “LeadROI’s JetDial technology does everything from screening busy calls to leaving messages while simultaneously making the next call… enabling sales organizations to be significantly more efficient and profitable.”

Jeff Felman, JetDial’s Vice President of Sales, adds “JetDial’s integration with LeadROI is an important development in the lead management system space. LeadROI’s interactive reporting, automated lead distribution, workflow, campaign, and pipeline management capabilities coupled with JetDial’s powerful auto-dialer technology is a perfect marriage that has a huge upside for advertisers looking to improve the ROI of their lead generation campaigns.”

About LeadROI, Inc.

LeadROI was founded in 2004, and acquired by MediaWhiz in April of 2008. LeadROI offers lead buyers and sales organizations a web-based lead and customer relationship management solution. LeadROI provides a variety of point-of-sale tools, including credit reports, pricing and data transfer tools, and the JetDial auto-dialer technology. The proprietary software streamlines new customer acquisition, improves productivity, maximizes sales conversion, and provides critical insight into lead generation production metrics.

About JetDial

JetDial is a private call center technology company, whose founders have over 50 years combined experience in teleservices. JetDial’s expertise is in developing and executing cost-effective, scalable, and legally compliant customer contact solutions that help increase productivity and performance. JetDial is built on a carrier-grade, scalable platform packed with reliable features that assist customer service or sales teams in receiving or making calls. JetDial’s hosted call center technology allows users to analyze calls, track performance, and improve results in real-time.

Jason Cohen
Founder and President, MediaWhiz

When online advertisers think about affiliate marketing, they frequent­ly think of the larger affiliate programs such as Linkshare or Commission Junc­tion. These programs typically act like application service providers (ASPs), where the advertiser interfaces with and motivates affiliates.

In recent years, a plethora of cost-per-action (CPA) affiliate networks have evolved. CPA networks place the burden of managing affiliates and driv­ing traffic squarely in the hands of dedi­cated affiliate managers. This approach enables advertisers to leverage the expertise, relationships, and resources of their CPA partner.

Since CPA networks are closed networks, advertisers do not directly communicate with their affiliates. If you select more than a single network part­ner, it is important to understand that affiliates — even underperforming ones — may appear more than once during a campaign without you knowing about it. This is due to the fact that affiliates frequently join multiple CPA networks at a time, each of which identifies that affiliate in a different manner. Selecting one partner will enable you to perma­nently remove affiliates driving lower quality customers or sales.

If you cannot decide between CPA networks you like, identify a key strength for each. Some programs have very strong distribution through e-mail, while other programs work very closely with search publishers. Test firms by giving each a piece of your affiliate program, so that one partner manages search, while the other manages e-mail, for example.

Remember to establish different price points for different forms of traffic, as all sales are not created equal. See which firm does a better job with reporting, optimization of underperforming affili­ates, and, most importantly, servicing you as a client. With all of this in mind, you will be well on your way to finding a quality long-term CPA network part­ner and embarking on some great affili­ate marketing.

See this artilce in DMNews: http://www.dmnews.com/Mix-it-up-with-affiliate-marketing/article/108633/

For all you who have been peppered with rss updates on various feeds over the last few days sorry about that! You have found the new home of the one central blog for all of MediaWhiz’s properties:

Text Link Ads – Static Text Ads
ReviewMe – Buzz and Social Marketing
AuctionAds – CPA Product Ads
ShoppingAds – CPC Product Ads
Filinet – Affiliate Marketing
AdNet – Display Advertising
Coregistrations – Custom Lead Generation
MonetizeIt – Customer Acquisition
WhiteDelivery – Email Marketing
MediaWhiz Search – Search Marketing

Here at MediaWhiz we are striving to be the #1 performance marketing company and are well on our way. Please stay tuned as we have lots of exciting new features and products launching in 2008 and we are committed to doing a great job of communicating with our Publishers and Advertisers on our blog starting now!

Throughout the past couple of weeks, we have been working closely with Commission Junction to ensure that reporting was in sync with their records and our records. Last weekend, we unfortunately had some issues with the server network that operates and publishes the ads, so some of you may have noticed your ads with no thumbnails or bids. We are sorry about that. We fixed the problem as fast as we could identify it.

This transition from one set of hands to the next has been a long journey, but we are glad that you have stuck with us. We have been working day and night to get this service back to where it once was. We want, more than anything, for this service to be a huge success and for it to really benefit you, our publishers. We are working on new features, new ad blocks, and trying to expand functionality on a daily basis. We have a committed development team working together to pin point any issues, resolve them, and get the system back on track.

We want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, our publishers, the reason we are even continuing this service, and want to thank you for sticking with it. We know there have been some issues, we know there have been some downfalls, we know that there have been click-tracking issues, but please rest assured that you ensure that you get paid for every cent you earn. Thanks again!

AuctionAds Publishers,

AuctionAds Publishers, we have a great way for you to promote AuctionAds and earn 5% affiliate referrals. Spread the word (using your affiliate link) that we are offering an instant $25.00 balance to all new publishers who sign up for AuctionAds! New publishers just need to sign up and they will receive a balance of $25.00 automatically.

Please note if you signed up with us previously and have never earned a payout we will bump your current balance to $25 too! Our minimum payout is also being raised to $50 but everyone who hasn’t earned a payout to date will be halfway there already! By publicizing this promotion on your blog using your affiliate link you can take advantage of receiving 5% of all revenue generated by new AA publishers you refer for a full six months. Thanks again and look for more AA news soon.

AuctionAds Publishers,

we are happy to announce a nice raise in our affiliate payouts. Effective immediately you will receive 5% of all revenue produced from publishers you refer with your affiliate link to AuctionAds for the first 6 months of the new publisher’s earnings!

Please note that our affiliate link is built directly into the “Ads By AuctionAds” link in your ads and if you want to promote our program in a blog post you can login here to find your affiliate link information. More exciting features coming to AuctionAds very soon. Thx again!

AuctionAds Publishers,

We are excited to announce some big improvements to our service today!  We are working hard to make AuctionAds the best ad system with the best publisher service available.  Here are the new features and improvements you will notice:

• New “Web 2.0″ Ad Creative’s:  Login to your account and go to the “Get Code” page. You will notice a sleek new ad design with multiple color schemes to choose from that we think will increase click-through rates to your ads (which will result in you earning more money).
• Optimized Ad Images:  Our ad code is now optimized so that the auction images are no longer stretched or distorted.  This makes for a cleaner ad appearance and should also improve clicks. (Note: This feature will become fully available as the cache updates over the next few days.)
• Better Ad Network Performance:  We have doubled the size of our hardware infrastructure and optimized it to ensure near 100% uptime of ad serving (and to make sure your ads are served lighting fast).
• AuctionAds.com has a Brand New Look!  Stop by and check out our new design of AuctionAds.com where you will notice a cleaner look and feel that’s fun and easy to use!

This is just the start of improvements that you will see from AuctionAds over the coming weeks.  We look forward to servicing you and working closely with you to build the best ad system on the Internet.  Your feedback is always welcome!

Thanks,
Patrick Gavin