Almost two thousand subscribers watched the UK email newsletter advertising app Amigo launch today after the team of well known developers documented the seven month process on their blog BareNakedApp.com. Carson Systems, the company behind the file delivery tool DropSend and the developers’ resource site Vitamin, developed a loyal following as they blogged about Amigo’s development.
The end product is a simple but elegant web site to facilitate the sale of advertisements for email newsletters. Advertisers design and categorize their advertisements, set a price per click they are willing to pay, a campaign budget and time frame. Email newsletter publishers chose topics describing their newsletter and select ads available to them. They get a few lines of text to add as sponsor information to their email newsletters. Amigo takes 30% of the price per click.
Email marketing is not the prettiest thing in the world, and much of Web 2.0 is about moving beyond email for communication with constituents – but a person can’t live on kool aid alone and Amigo is an interesting development. While I try to get all my email newsletters through a tool like SocialMail so they end up as RSS feeds, obviously most people do not. Amigo doesn’t appear to offer RSS feeds, it doesn’t use tags and generally avoids most buzz words so familiar to readers of this blog; company co-founder Ryan Carson recently wrote a widely read piece titled Why I don’t use social software – primarily, he doesn’t believe it fills a real need. I know RSS and in many cases tags fill a very real need for me, but I’m someone comfortable with redirecting email to a feed so perhaps it’s no big deal.
The ads are provided in simple text format, with a URL from Amigo that redirects to the advertiser’s page. Newsletter publishers appear to copy and paste the text into their newsletters – it’s as simple as that. If the campaign budget is met or the relationship severed by the advertiser, the link stops redirecting from the newsletter and the links are no longer counted.
Advertisers and publishers can view their statistics in detail and aggregate in near real time and any relationship can be suspended easily. There’s a reputation system, though it only appears to apply to advertisers rating newsletter publishers right now. More than three negative ratings and you are removed from the system.
Site navigation is a little ways from ideal at launch and newsletter publishers aren’t able to select more than one subcategory in each major category so far. These sorts of things are likely to be worked out in time.
All in all, it’s a nice clean, simple system that was developed in a transparent way by some people who are active participants in the Web 2.0 community. There’s likely a real market for the application, as well.
Hola Mi Amigos y Amigas,
They choose Interesting choice of name. Web 2.0 caters to the fastest growing population in America. This looks like it has great potential.
Adios
You know, this blog is infamous for having really nasty commenters – but we’ve also got some really charming chronic first commenters. Thanks for your support, kind and critical remarks NeoTechie.
Anyone know what the average cost per click is? I like the concept alot.
OK, OK. Seems like a cool team and a product with potential.
But there are a bunch of hard questions that need to be asked.
Click fraud.
Do they have anything in place to deal with this?
Transparency.
As an advertiser I get the name of the newsletter and its website. That’s it. Shouldn’t I receive a copy of any newsletter with one of my ads in it?
On points 1 and 2, I need to be confident the Russian mafia hasn’t set up some sort of distributed click farm, sending out phoney newsletters (albeit from realistic looking sites) and harvesting sweet cash off me.
Conversly, as a publisher I have to be wary that an advertiser can pull their ads at any time. Unlike a web page, a newsletter is static. Once I’ve sent it I can’t change it. So if I pick an advertiser and embed their ad in my monthly newsletter to find they cancel the campaign the next day, I have totally locked in to them for the month, and can no longer generate any sort of revenue. Not to mention looking like a massive tool in front of my readers for running a dead ad.
There are so many thorny issues that crop up around trust and reputation, especially when money is involved. I can see very little evidence that Amigo has solid answers for these. (Yes, I did see their rudimentary ratings system. I don’t think that’s enough.)
It will be interesting to keep an eye on this and see how it is after a few months of usage.
Are email newsletters really a big business?
I mean, don’t people tend to “opt out” of those things whenever they are registering for a site.
I know I sure do.
In that case, I’m sure – but there are loads of interest groups that do use email newsletters. I’d love to see some numbers myself though, not including Yahoo! Groups etc.
Also, how many advertisers do they already have for a given category?
No mention of that either or did i miss something?
@Anson – your wrote everything that I was thinking the minute I read this article.
Its a solid concept, but I dont the lack of both advertiser and publisher protection.
Futhermore, what is the quality control over the newsletters that go out ? If I subscribe to the service, how do I know the site sending out the newsletter doesnt have a spam email list that gets my link a bad rep?
Futhermore to this, do I get to choose a category for my ads – or is it just any newsletter sends out my ads – whats the point in that then?
Get these answered and crystallised and I’ll use it.
Good luck amigoes !
So as a newsletter owner, I am going to get paid only for clicks athough the advertiser’s message is being exposed to thousands more people who don’t click but gain awareness of the advertiser?
Woah, negativity….
@Jeff;
Isn’t this similar to how Google Ads work? You get Payed-Per-Click. It makes sense that the Advertiser only pays for the traffic they get?
@Tchruncher2;
Most of us don’t read our SPAM so we wouldn’t notice the ‘good link’ in the spam. If you go to Amigo’s site and learn about their product you’ll see that both Advertisers and Newsletter owners get to choose categories, and then the Newsletter Owner gets to choose out of the publishers.
@Clickfraud;
Unlike the fact that your ad could be emailed as part of a SPAM list click-fraud is a real problem and i too would like to know what’s being done to safe-guard against it.
@The fact that my e-mail will contain the link even if the subscriber cancels after I sent it;
The link is via Amigo so it won’t link to anyone once the subscription has been cancelled. Also i am sure Amigo would have a friendly message advising visitors that the subscription has been ended (to explain the dud ad)
Ludwig, you are so not in beta.
You bet. I obviously can’t share exactly how we’re going to combat click fraud (because that would help the bad guys), but we’ve definitely thought this through.
Unfortunately we can’t automate this process. There’s no way to *force* the newsletter owner to send you a copy of the newsletter. We’ll have a think about this though …
You bet. When we were accepting beta applications, there were newsletters that signed up with up to 2.5 million subscribers. 2.5 million!
We didn’t think this was necessary to display. We’ll have a think about it though.
You can see which newsletters are using your ad. If you’re not happy with any of them, you can easily suspend them and you won’t pay for any clicks from that newsletter. At the end of a campaign, you can rate the newsletters. A newsletter with more than three negative ratings gets banned.
Yes, you choose categories for your advertisement’s target audience. Newsletters that have these same categories will be able to choose your ad, if they wish. For example, if you wanted your ad to go out to people who buy wine in Mexico, you’d choose the categories “Regional > Countries > Mexico” and “Society & Culture > Food and Drink > Wine” and then choose “Match with newsletters that have ALL of my categories”. This means the newsletter has to have *both* those categories in order to see your ad.
If you wanted to advertise in newsletters that were about Wine *or* Mexico, you’d choose the same two categories, but choose “Match with newsletters that have ANY of my categories”.
As an advertiser, I’d be very wary of paying someone to simply place my ad in their newsletter. How do I know they’ve actually sent it out? How can they verify how many readers they have? These are all things that are out of control of the advertiser. The only hard fact is how many clicks they get through, and that’s what advertisers want. Google has built a multi-billion dollar business of this concept, so it’s well proven.
@Ludwig
If the email is spam, then typically spam engines also include the links inside the email as spam – this is bad for business.
@Ryan
“You can see which newsletters are using your ad. If you’re not happy with any of them, you can easily suspend them and you won’t pay for any clicks from that newsletter. At the end of a campaign, you can rate the newsletters. A newsletter with more than three negative ratings gets banned.”
that doesnt really help if you have subscribed and all of the newsletters in there list are considered spam – google and other spam services consider links inside spam as negative. also as a publisher, if an advertiser signs up and i run my service to 2.5million members and then they pull out – this is bad for business for 2 reasons: 1. because i get no money. 2. because i cant exactly send out another email which a new link
you should have either a “dynamically” changing link portal inside the email that can automatically change the link if required so the publisher still earns money and is robbed of someone “advertising” then pulling out – but still really getting advertising by having there name in the newsletter. AND publishers should be able to leave feedback on advertisers with a 3 strikes and your out rule – BUT match this to their credit card so they cannot simply change username and do it again.
@ryan
other than that, thanks a lot of answering the questions. it seems like a great service and I have already signed up because of your transparency.
cheers
Frederick
Interesting concept, I hope they’ll soon add APIs so that you could for example pre-select 10 ads that you want to show in your newsletter and then have them included in sequence. Cutting & pasting won’t work well for people with lots of lists.
As to the first point, simply register for the newsletter yourself beforehand. As to the 2nd, while it’s imperfect, you can insert a tracking link in the ad that shows how many people visited your website as a result of the ad. If you are used to getting 4% and get 1% of the stated number of email recipients, you can then get suspicious that the stated number wasn’t true (or that it wasn’t the right list for you). Or you can ask for report after the mailing.. Yes, these are imperfect.
I have a targeted, desirable mailing list of over 60,000 people. I spent a lot of time (and money ) building it. If I can sell newslette ad insertions for, say, $60 CPM, why should I instead accept (cents?) per click?
Moreover, there is a difference between non-clicking impressions on Google and non-clicking impressions in an email: Many people successfully ignore Google ads altogether but it is much more difficult to ignore a well-placed email advertisement. If I send out an email that registers in the minds of 5000 people (building brand awareness at the very least) and that 500 people click on, why should I only get paid for the 500?
>>As an advertiser, I’d be very wary of paying someone to simply place my ad in their newsletter. How do I know they’ve actually sent it out? How can they verify how many readers they have? These are all things that are out of control of the advertiser. The only hard fact is how many clicks they get through, and that’s what advertisers want. Google has built a multi-billion dollar business of this concept, so it’s well proven
Amigo offers a simple/good approach to a market that is underserved. You are the first and surely won’t be the last, good job Carson and company.
Thanks Blake
@Ryan
You bet. I obviously can’t share exactly how we’re going to combat click fraud (because that would help the bad guys), but we’ve definitely thought this through.
Good that you’re thinking about it. I think you should have some note in your help mentioning at least in general terms you are on the case so far as click fraud is concerned. I think fraud in advertising is only going to become a bigger issue over the next 12 months.
It will be tough to build a marketplace from scratch, good luck! Obviously publishers won’t be so hard to get, it’s advertisers. Have you thought about seeding $100k or so in available advertising for publishers to run Amigo ads in their newsletters? This will at least get things off the ground, and really, your ideal advertisers will be amongst the readers of these mailing lists so it could generate quite good returns for you in seeding your advertiser market.
Good stuff Ryan and Gill! I’m really impressed, sounds like a brilliant idea and you should be pretty successful with it.
I’ve been inspired by your barenakedapp blog, so i’ve started a similar blog around the building of my own web app for personal budgets… http://smoothbu...et.blogspot.com
Maybe this could be a trend? Blog openly about how you made your app, to both give back to the community (advice, tips), whilst generating a bit of hype for yourself?
Sounds like you guys didn’t put a foot wrong. Hopefully the first month goes all smooth, after that it should be all plain sailing!
Well, congratulations to Ryan and company. You guys have a great reputation and that’s very important. I’m sure you wouldn’t put your names on risk without having a well tested system running.
The best way to see how it works it’s using it, so I just registered and will get my first ad running.
Regards!
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