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You can read about it after you login.
[edited by: engine at 4:02 pm (utc) on May 24, 2006]
Official webpage from CJ - but as Trust mentioned, you have to be logged in to view it (agreed that is dumb).
From now on, any time I receive a new invitation from a CJ advertiser to join their program, they'll get a canned "Sorry, but we only work with companies that can provide non-JavaScript links. Please contact CJ and let them know you do not support their JavaScript-only link policy."
Oh great, it just hit me: now all .js files will be hosted on CJ servers, meaning LOOOONG page loads and search engines will no longer see any text you might've linked. CJ connection slow? So is your site.
Why are they messing with something that works? How stupid can they be?
[edited by: walkman at 4:40 pm (utc) on May 24, 2006]
If i understand this correctly the old (legacy) links work for few months?
I expect I shall have to dump CJ
Just as they are starting to work nicely as well
I highly doubt that any merchant is going to spend that kind of time developing hundreds/thousands of keyword links for affiliates to use.
If i understand this correctly the old (legacy) links work for few months?
I don't think they have said how long they will work. If they are smart, they will let those work forever and just do js going forward.
Well, no, if they were smart, they would have just not done this.
I agree if CJ pushes this as mandatory and requires publishers to change all their links they will be losing HUGE amounts of publishers.
I for one will certainly be pulling the plug and I've been with CJ for about 7 years now and have always generated a sizeable income from them.
I have a feeling this is going to screw up a lot of things.
They already screwed up things last year when they did their "upgrade". I hate the new system. Things worked just fine before and they had to go screw with everything. Conversions are down, and reporting is always delayed. It is just horrible now. So much money wasted to pay those buffoons.
[edited by: crobb305 at 6:11 pm (utc) on May 24, 2006]
I generally try to not to comment on things that haven't been released yet, but I just read the CJ FAQ and I'm having a hard time seeing any upside to this.
The "benefits" section is absurdly, yet appropriately, short:
What are the benefits of introducing these changes?Once you begin using the new JavaScript links, your links will be future-proof and you will be able to take advantage of any future enhancements without having to change out these links. Key benefits of these links include:
- They can still be modified in all the ways important to you, including modifying destination URL, appending with SID, encrypting, changing destination URL and designating hyperlink location in text links.
- They are very common and can easily be incorporated into any Web site.
- They eliminate the limitations of affiliate links in the legacy format – specifically search engine ranking degradation.
- Support of multimedia – they will call any future link type, such as video.
We have improved the Keyword link area in the CJ Account Manager – it is now more user friendly and suitable to your needs.
The first couple sub-bullets don't show any actual benefit over plain links -- just that the JavaScript might not be worse in these areas. The bit about search ranking degredation doesn't make much sense either: if an affiliate doesn't want to pass PR to a merchant there are already plenty of ways to handle that. In some cases, affiliate may want the search engines to see that they're linking out to closely-related sites. Certainly merchants benefit from the incoming links. As for multimedia -- if I want a multimedia ad, I'll say so, thank you. I don't want to see my text links turning into videos anytime soon. And they're improving the Keyword area -- great! But that doesn't have anything to do with what I actualy publish on my site. So benefits of JavaScript are nil by my count.
The whole FAQ reads as if CJ's underlying assumption is that all publishers create the links on their site by manually logging into the CJ interface and using "Get HTML" to create one link at a time. Maybe some do it that way, but you can bet that their top-earning affiliates aren't. Datafeeds, affiliate-side link-creation tools, and other means of automation are where it's at. JavaScript calls where "the AID, PID, and text in a text link...are not visible via the code" probably aren't real simple to update other than with CJ's tools.
CJ says that datafeeds "will be updated to support JavaScript links in the near future." Wonder how that will work. Do they think that affiliates are just creating a single link from each record in a datafeed? Just off the top of my head I know that I use feed URLs to create at least nine different types of links -- text links, product image links, buy now buttons, etc. -- integrated into the content of our site. Our comparison shopping engine integrates datafeeds from CJ, other affiliate networks, and CPC advertisers into a single system. How do we link out? With nice, simple, old-fashioned URLs. Am I going to revamp that just to put CJ's slow JS on all my pages? Highly unlikely.
JavaScript opens up the possibility that CJ will be able to change the appearance or behavior of links appearing on affiliates sites without the affiliates' knowledge. If Merchant A decides to leave CJ, what's stopping CJ from just replacing all those links with comprable Merchant B links? CJ's inclusion of such goals as "Ways to match up clients and manage their creative," "Preservation of link quality," and "Optimization of link performance" would suggest that this isn't scenario so far-fetched. (No, I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist.)
CJ also claims that the JavaScript solution will help subvert ad-blocking software. Maybe so -- but only until the ad blockers are updated to block CJ's JavaScript URLs. Beyond that, how does the percentage of users with ad blockers compare to the percentage who surf with JavaScript disabled? I suspect it's pretty similar overall, but for sites in sectors with a high proportion of non-JavaScript users, this change could be a killer.
I'll try to keep an open mind on this. Possibly for some affiliates the JavaScript link model will make sense. However, I'm not one of them, and I don't really see what could be more flexible than the current system of giving affiliates URLs and letting us get on with our jobs.
I think some brand-conscious companies have demanded this so they can control the ads etc. Why not let the merchants choose the format instead of ruining it for everyone? Apparently the system can support both types of links. If a company doesn't want anyone to mess around with the approved text copy, let them choose js only link.
why would I want to put a javascript snippet that can be changed remotely, and appear the same exact way in 1000's of other sites?
On edit: just exchaged emails with 2 very popular CJ merchants, and they were NOT told, or asked about this. Apparently the CJ assertion that is as a result of feedback from both sides, is one big fat lie.
Good bye cj
I think some brand-conscious companies have demanded this so they can control the ads etc.
Agreed. I would guess that this has a lot to do with compliance issues - specifically with text links.
It sounds like for PPC search links the merchant will give you a link to the homepage and that's what you get to work with. Does anyone who does serious PPC link to the homepage? Mabye a few but probably not to many. If a merchant supplies keywords for direct linking they are immediately rendered useless.
This change is likely to seriously hurt your search engine rankings by removing link text, especially if you are using feeds.
Then, if you create pages that integrate links into the copy and you have CJ or the advertiser changing them, your copy may end up looking really stupid. On top of that, every affiliate of a particular advertiser is going to have the exact same links on their pages.
The only thing it seems like it might help is big brand avertisers who don't really want an affiliate program, just a lot of free branding ads that can't be modified.
If they are going to switch to JavaScript, the merchants should be able to choose what kind of links they want displayed. If it's an industry link financial services, pharma or something similar with regulations regarding copy then this would be a great option and be safer and easier for everyone invoved for most anything else, it sounds awful, let's hope it isn't but it sure doesn't sound good.
This should be a lesson to those who depend solely on a particular internet program for all their revenue. Just as in life, nothing lasts forever on the internet. Not CJ and not even AdSense as hard is that is to believe. Good luck to all.
My goodness! It's not the end of the world. If you're too lazy to update your links or not smart enough to invest your profits in a database system then maybe you don't deserve the income those links generated in the first place.
Not even close to why this is objectionable
If you're too lazy to update your links or not smart enough to invest your profits in a database system then maybe you don't deserve the income those links generated in the first place.
We're talking a minimum of dozens of person-hours. Person-hours that could be better spent on doing money-generating tasks instead of implementing a hack that was never wanted in the first place.
For us it's somewhat of a non-issue- we long ago diversified into other non-CJ programs. However, we still have several CJ merchants we work with that bring us money. So I guess it's time to talk to them directly about bypassing the CJ system.
