Affiliate Tax Legislation Update

While affiliate marketers and industry peers continue to work to oppose 'affiliate tax' proposals around the country, a nexus law passed yesterday in Rhode Island. There are also proposals pending in other states, most notably North Carolina, where a nexus law is included in the budget proposal and could pass on July 1st and Hawaii, where the legislation will be enacted unless the Governor vetoes it by July 15th.

Google continues to work with trade associations around the country to ensure that policymakers understand the implications of these proposals on businesses and consumers. And we encourage publishers who may be affected by these proposals to take action in their home states.

Online sales tax is a complex and dynamic issue and each advertiser must evaluate the implications of any legislation on their business. Google cannot provide counsel on potential implications.

The Performance Marketing Alliance is a good resource to monitor progress on these issues.

Here are some interesting links to some recent press about the proposals:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124605688876763507.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ri-amazon-ri-taxes,0,6524224.story

Posted by Kristin Hall and the Google Affiliate Network team

Google Affiliate Network: One Year Later

It’s been just over a year since our affiliate business became part of Google. To say a lot has happened seems obvious but I am proud of what our team has accomplished. To name just a few of the achievements: a new brand & UI, numerous platform enhancements, fantastic client and employee satisfaction in the midst of integration and many, many, new customers. Google Affiliate Network is fully integrated operationally within Google. We had an exciting year, but I am even more excited about where we are going.

Our focus remains the same, drive exceptional customer satisfaction through affiliate channel growth; however, being part of Google brings a mindset in how to best achieve our goals. A culture focused on the user and the tenet that ads must be high quality now permeates the Google Affiliate team.

Our goals are clear as we invest in our Platform, integrate our Network and continue to refine and evolve the Practice of Affiliate Marketing. To this end, we recently launched an “opportunities center” in the platform allowing advertisers to more easily identify underperforming relationships. This capability generates growth by improving optimization. We currently are beta testing data feed integration with Google Base which will drive growth with improved category taxonomy and data validation, as well as an improved user experience for advertisers who will only have to send one feed to Google. Publishers benefit from a higher quality data feed. The integration with Google Base is also an example where integration with other Google products and systems enables our Affiliate engineers to focus on affiliate innovation, while the engineers supporting Base will drive that product forward. Our team and our users benefit in many ways from Google’s scale and engineering excellence.

Google brings a focus on making decisions based on facts and data, rather than intuition. Our Practice embraced this focus, and has conducted more than 20 structured optimization projects this past quarter, resulting in measurable lift in program performance. These are just a few of our accomplishments to date, and the possibilities and ideas endless.

There is a lot of hard work ahead. I am sure we will make mistakes and things won’t go as fast as we want. But know that we are 100% committed to our customers’ satisfaction and to bringing unprecedented innovation to affiliate marketing. Our collective futures are very bright.

Thank you for your business and continued support.

Chris Henger

Head of Google Affiliate Network