Shopzilla UK Publisher Program


Shopzilla’s free affiliate program

Posts Tagged ‘dynamic banners’

Mother’s Day Gift Ideas

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Christmas has been and gone, Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day have been and gone..and now comes the turn of Mother’s Day. To get the most out of this special occasion, think about implementing a BizRate Mother’s Day wishlist on your website to help those readers who may be stuck for ideas. Include product links and reviews to provide advice and options which your visitors can then choose from.

mothers-day-perfume

If you’ve never displayed advertising banners before, now is the time to get familiar with them. Especially after the usual annual slump in January/ February just after Christmas, Spring is the best time to get back on the online marketing bandwagon when sales pick up again.

For Mother’s Day banner ideas, try out the following in the Shopzilla UK Publisher portal.

Her –> Health and Beauty Supplies–> Perfume and Cologne

Women–> Gifts, Flowers and Food

Gifts, Flowers and Food–> Flowers and Plants

Any problems finding what you want, please let us know.

Otherwise, if you have other good suggestions, don’t hesitate to share it with us!

Pancake Day Banners

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Are we all ready for a feast tomorrow when we get stuck into the traditional Shrove Tuesday festivities?

Check out some of our Pancake Day utensil banners and make your visitors’ mouths water!

Help your visitors for their Shrove Tuesday preparations

Help your visitors in their Shrove Tuesday preparations

Try some of the following keywords within the Publisher portal and integrate your banners today!

Spatula –> Home & Garden –> Kitchen Gadgets & Utensils

Frying pans –> Home & Garden –> Cooking & Baking Equipment

Pancakes –> Home & Garden –> Cooking & Baking Equipment

If you’d like any help with finding your banner, please contact us.


Choose Your Banners in Time for Valentines!

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Get romantic and offer gift ideas with product banners

Get romantic and offer gift ideas with product banners

Valentine’s comes but once a year and whether you’re all loved up or not, make the most out of this year’s red hot day by adding Valentine’s Day gift banners to your website and earning some pretty pennies in the process.

Whether you wish to add deep product links direct to the Bizrate.co.uk product page, dynamic assets, or comparison pods, you can find everything you need in the Publisher portal.

Try adding Valentine wishlists to your site and help those who are stuck for gift ideas.

Here’s an example of a shopping ad you can integrate to appeal to those romantics looking for that special something for their beloved:

valentines-shopping-banners

Happy Valentine’s!

Happy Holidays from the UK Publisher Team!

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas

We’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas a Happy New Year!

It doesn’t seem so long ago that Halloween was the focus of all our festivities and now Christmas has arrived! Well, the last 9 months since the program first launched in the UK have been fantastic for us all.

Some highlights from 2009:

  • The launch of the French and German Publisher Programs in September and October
  • Introduction of our Dynamic Assets giving Publishers the freedom to choose the products they wish to advertise
  • The release of our ftp data feeds enabling Publishers to download the Shopzilla inventory either wholly or partially

We also attended some great events in 2009 including various networking events and in particular the A4uexpo Europe in Amsterdam in April, the E-Commerce held in Paris in September, DMexco in Munich also in September, Ad-Tech London and the A4UExpo both in October and not forgetting the monthly London Bloggers Meetup evenings. We’ve had the chance to meet some wonderful and really interesting people so we’re looking forward to a successful 2010!

The regular updates on the Publisher blog will begin again as usual in January so keep an eye out for the latest Publisher news.

On a final note it’s not too late for you to integrate your Christmas dynamic banners and reap the rewards for those Christmas sales.

See you next year!

Warm wishes,
The Shopzilla UK Publisher Team

Integrated Dynamic Assets With Your Website’s Content

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Hey Publishers,

Sometime it’s also worth reading the blog from our sister affiliate program in the US and see what Publishers are doing on the other side of the pond. There the Shopzilla Publisher Program has been around for more than three years now and has several thousand publishers onboard. One blog post in particular that we’d like to point out is Publisher Spotlight on Tim Flight and GPSReview.net from June  2008.  Tim from the GPS review site (www.gpsreview.net) gave some great tips on content integration which is why we’d also like to share this advice with our UK publishers.

How well does the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program content you select fit with the context of the page?  Is your audience reading about Nike trainers, but your assets display Adidas and Converse sneakers? We get a lot of questions about how to generate more quality clicks and one of the answers is integration. Our UK Publisher Program offers a wide set of product offerings from thousands of different merchants, so take advantage of it by displaying assets that suit the content of the page!

Tim also gave a very detailed tip for WordPress users interested in using Dynamic Assets. While we cannot be held liable for any code you may accidentally break (read our FAQ), Tim’s advice has brought GPSReview much success:

Create the Dynamic Asset using just the letter “a” in the “Search For” field as the keyword. Pick the banner size, set your colors, etc, and then get the HTML code. Look in the HTML code for the following:

/keyword-a/

Replace that with this:

/keyword-<?php echo(urlencode(strtolower(single_post_title(”,FALSE)))); ?>/

That code should take the title of the WordPress post and use it as the keyword for the ad unit.
Keep in mind, this will be optimal only for those publishers using the product name as the blog post title. Hopefully, this will help you save time by making our dynamic assets… well… more dynamic! As always, please contact us with any questions or comments.

Difficulties finding the right product category? Read more about the structure of the Shopzilla inventory.

Category Trees - How to Find the Right Product Banner

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

We’ve heard from some of you that you’ve been experiencing a little difficulty in finding exactly the right product banners for your sites. Well, look no further! Here we’re going to give you a few tips in order to help you spend less time looking and more time earning.

Our dynamic assets give you the most choice of products. (Stock banners are great, however have their limitations. As stock banners are prepared by the Publisher team for popular product categories you may not necessarily find what you are looking for  in this section not necessary. As mentioned here, the best idea is to use our dynamic content.) To begin go to the Dynamic Assets option in the Get Content tab of the Publisher portal.

Most of you have mentioned difficulties when it comes to refining the category for the product that you’re wanting to promote.  Here is a bit of background about how our product offers are structured, which might help you to find and create the product banners you are looking for: BizRate has a tree of categories meaning that the top level category (e.g. Computer & Software) is the parent category which is divided further into more granular categories, for example laptop computers, computer monitors, printers etc.  To find your product category you have to climb through the BizRate category tree.  To help you find your way, below you’ll see a few examples of recent products our Publishers have had difficulty finding and the “category path” needed to locate them:

product-category-trees5

Another suggestion to help you in finding the specific product you’re looking for is to go onto the BizRate homepage and type the product into the search field. Once on the landing page, check under the navigation bar for the “breadcrumbs” (the granular path which leads to the product in a deeper page - see example below). You can then see which category to choose when searching in the Publisher portal.

product-category-trees7


We have tons of products available so you’ll be able to locate the banner you’re looking for. Sometimes they may be a little hidden but they are there, just waiting for you to come and find them!

If you’d like any assistance in finding a particular product please get in touch with one of our Publisher team.

Christmas ad banners - be one of the first

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Christmas is nigh…

So it’s time to think about Christmas again. Well, if truth be told, most of us have been thinking about it since August (thanks to those cards and decorations peppering shop windows)  and it seems to be getting earlier every year.

Put a twinkle in your eye with early Christmas earnings

Put a twinkle in your eye with early Christmas earnings

Consumer habits are rapidly changing and stores adapt to feed those habits. If shoppers wish to plan ahead and buy Christmas presents in late Summer, why shouldn’t they have the same great deals that last minute shoppers benefit from? Some of you may be aghast by the sight of dancing Father Christmases when the sun is still high in the sky at 6pm. Others may delight in the early festivities.

More and more people are preparing themselves  in the weeks, even months, in the run up to the jolly holidays so that when the 24th December arrives they can look at their panic striken pals, still hunting for that perfect gift, with an expression that implies “told you so”.

Shopzilla’s got some fabulous gift ideas on our site and we offer some great product ads to go alongside. If you were already starting to think about doing something Christmassy for your site, why not integrate our Christmas banners and take advantage of the fact that people are already looking for decorations, Christmas lights and those extra xmassy stocking fillers..and if you’re getting yourself in the festive mood, why not your site as well!

Get in early for some pre-December earnings.

Try creating a wish list, including a dynamic ad in your navigation bar, or even a text link amongst your product reviews.

Have a look at this example* to get you going:

christmas-affiliate-banner1

If you’d like any assistance in finding certain products within our portal, please do not hesitate to contact Emma.

*In the UK portal, find this example in various formats under Christmas –> Gifts, Flowers and Food

Halloween is almost upon us

Monday, October 26th, 2009
Have you got your costume?

Have you got your Halloween costume?

Another year, another excuse to dress up as Morticia Adams from The Adams Family. Yes, it is once again that time of year in which you can don white face paint and fake blood without attracting strange glances. The shops are full of costumes, pumpkins, witches hats, dracula teeth, cobwebs  and anything else you can think of that would give your nan the heebie geebies.

We want to give you the chance to not just dress yourself up but to also dress your website up by adding the latest Shopzilla Halloween banners. A great site on which to see an example of our themed dynamic content is herfashioneye.buy.co.uk; you can see the banner at the bottom of the post.

Don’t forget that we are still offering the £5 bonus to anyone who hasn’t already implemented the dynamic assets, all you need to do is send us the URL showing the banner in action.

We have a great range of banners and products on offer - halloween party decorations, costumes, accessories…   shopzilla-halloween-banners

To find yours in the Get Content Dynamic Assets section, we recommend searching under Toys and Games –> Fancy Dress Costumes & Accessories if you’re really after costumes or alternatively for decorations, go to Gifts, Flowers and –> Food Party Supplies.

Why not play around with the background by using our Colour Picker tool and implement an orange Halloween-coloured banner on your site?

We’ve  got our outfits sorted for the Shopzilla office party next week, have you got yours?

For any questions regarding the product ads or for keyword/category suggestions, please feel free to get in touch with us here.


Dynamic Assets in-depth

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Why use our content as an everyday web ad when you can truly make it an asset?!  Our color picker tool allows you to customise your assets to complement your website’s design, helping you to better attract your audience and improve traffic quality.

When you log on to your Shopzilla UK Publisher Program account go to: Get Content > Dynamic Assets > find the asset you’re looking for > Get HTML.  Select the part of the asset you would like to change, then choose the color and other options depending on the part of the asset.

colourpicker

Image Border: The border (outline) around each individual image/product inside the asset.

Background: The background color of the full asset.

Link: The links of the images/products shown inside the asset.

A-Link: The color the link turns when it is clicked.

V:Link: The color the link turns once it has been clicked.

H-Link: The color the link turns when it is scrolled over by a mouse cursor.

Text: The text (non-links) inside the asset.

New Window (_blank): This link target will open the new page in a separate browser window.

Same Frame (_self): This link target will open the new page in the same page it was clicked on.

Parent Frame (_parent)*: This link target will load the new page in the immediate parent of the frame.

Main Window (_top)*: This link target is similar to the Parent Frame, but will load the new page in the full body of the window.

Randomise: Definitely take advantage of this feature!  The products shown will randomly change every time the dynamic asset is loaded, giving your audience a different experience each time they visit your website.  If you are displaying a dynamic asset containing products from category ‘MP3 & Media Players’, rather than showing the same three iPods, your asset will cycle between various BizRate product offerings in that specific category.

*advanced

Another feature worth noting is that color preferences will be saved in your user cookie.  If you’re building multiple dynamic assets, your color preferences will be automatically applied, you’ll never have to worry about our dynamic assets clashing with your website design again!

Once you finish touching up your asset, click Get HTML and then scroll to the bottom of the page to get the new code.  Don’t forget to update your dynamic assets periodically to take advantage of our new categories and product offerings, keep your shopping content relevant to your audience.

For further information have a look at the Dynamic Banners section here on our blog, and as always, contact us if you have any questions or comments about the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program!

Feedback on Shopzilla’s Dynamic Content

Friday, August 28th, 2009

As you all know, we released our long-awaited Dynamic Content a couple of weeks ago and encouraged you to try it out for yourselves. Thanks to all those who have already integrated it!  If you haven’t got around to having a look just yet, now’s the time to see what the new feature can offer you. Read more about our Dynamic Content*.

And if that doesn’t inspire you, we had some great initial feedback from some of our Publishers about the adaptability and efficacy of implementing these customisable assets:

Shopzilla's Dynamic Content - something to shout about

Shopzilla's Dynamic Content - something to shout about


“Great chance of getting more revenue…customer service is great”
britishbay.co.uk

“very useful and could be used instead of data feed related to the page content” shopire.com

“easy to integrate, looks fantastic and I was able to create a dynamic banner with exactly the content I wanted” dutchovenmonkey.blogspot.com

“very pleased with the result” drmventurestrading.co.uk

“love being able to colour the ads” herfashioneye.buy.co.uk

“I was able to find the matching products for my blog post and  add shopping experience” love-handbags-for-life.co.uk

“the cutomisable aspect is great, you can integrate it seamlessly into your website” Skylia.com


Your opinions are highly valued by us here in the UK Shopzilla Publisher team so if you have any questions or comments whatsoever regarding our Dynamic Assets please do not hesitate to get in touch. We are continually striving to improve our program so that you as Publishers get the best experience possible!

Try it for yourself; we’re sure you’ll give it raving reviews!

*Find it under the Get Content tab when you log in to your account on the portal.

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