CJ questions about redirecting

[flobaby]

I'm really having a hard time finding answers to my questions on the CJ site, hopefully a kind soul or two here will help...

Say I'd like to send visitors directly to the red widget category instead of the affiliates index page. The affiliate has a text link that allows redirects, but the link text says "Company Name". Can I edit "Company Name" to say Red Widgets? Or is breaking my agreement?

Alternatively, I see another link that says "Advertiser allows image redirects for this link." What does this mean? Does it mean I can make a graphic link redirecting to the exact page I want? I'm thinking not, or it wouldn't be considered a text link.

Aargh, I'm truly confused. Help, please?

[growingdigital]

Can I edit "Company Name" to say Red Widgets? Or is breaking my agreement?

I don't think the merchant cares if you change the link text. I change them for all my links.

I don't know the answer to the second question. Personally, I turn off all tracking images from CJ and just use the link. I don't want advertisers to know how much traffic I get. However, it does come in handy if you don't have a reliable way to track your CTR (click-through-rate)...

[flobaby]

Great, glad to know I can change the text and not be booted out. Thanks.

[ralent]

Image redirect lets you supply your own image (or a copy of the advertisers) instead of the one provided by them.

Sometimes it's usefull if the image on the ad server gets a lot of traffic from other publisher sites. By making a copy you can host the image on your server and know only the users of your site are hitting it.

I usually only bother with a redirect if it's a home page banner that I want to display fast.

[growingdigital]

Thanks for the clarification ralent.

I would personally download the image to my own web server. What ralent said can be a major problem sometimes. However, if tracking CTR through CJ's reports is important to you you will need to use the CJ hosted image.

[ralent]

growingdigital ... are you saying the image impression isn't recorded by CJ?

[growingdigital]

The impression is tracked if you use a CJ hosted image. This helps you calculate your CTR. However, I just host my own images and track my own page views. This is a little more accurate for me.