In my previous post I wrote about how smaller affiliate networks drive innovation. They feel the need to grow everyday and the only way to do this properly is through innovation. This strategy is quite promising actually since I observe more and more established networks falling behind.

For example let’s have a look at zanox. They’ve come out with an application store that encourages affiliates to make their own tools available to other affiliates as well. At first this may sound like a great idea.

But when you really think about it you start to realize that they’re trying to fool us here. In my opinion this application store is nothing else but their attempt to lower the internal IT cost and create some extra PR buzz on the side.

The message that zanox is sending out is: “We don’t want to innovate internally anymore. Dear affiliates, do the dirty work for us, please. And no, we can’t guarantee you any revenue from sharing your work with your competitors. Go and figure it out yourself.”

Maybe I’m missing the bigger picture here, but I don’t understand why successful affiliates should make their self-made tools available to competitors in the form of other affiliates or merchants.

I just got back from the opening event for zanox’ new Global Alliance Partners Campus. It’s an office space right next to the zanox headquarters serving as an incubator for new publishers. As far as I understand affiliates can use the zanox premises to work on their projects for using zanox as their affiliate and tracking network in exchange.

At the event zanox also promised the development of various APIs in order to let advertisers and publishers access as much information as possible without the usual web interface. In theory developers would then be able to create as much as their own sub-affiliate networks.

All this is a great step forward and convinced me that they are Germany’s most relevant affiliate network. They may not be the number one in terms of traffic yet, but they will be. Competitors are too far behind and way too slow to catch up. Good stuff, guys.

Instead of publishing countless videos that nobody wants to see, zanox have finally started blogging. Professional affiliates work efficiently. They won’t watch hours of videos with little information. They consume information via RSS including filter rules and all that. Well done.

Zanox introduced a new layout for their web interface. I find it really ugly. A crude orange on a white background doesn’t go down too well.

Auch nach der letzten Erneuerung der Statistik-Funktion bekomme ich bei gesetztem Häkchen immer noch die Nullzeilen angezeigt.

Ich kann die Nullzeilen erst nach dem Fahren der Statistiken durch Klick (Javascript-Effekt) verschwinden lassen. Ich finde das ziemlich nervig, da ich bei vielen Partnerprogrammen angemeldet bin und für die meisten kaum aktiv bin.