PublisherSpot

Updated - 24/03/2009

Go to www.azoogleads.com

While founded in 2000, AzoogleAds has recently exploded in both popularity and size in the performance marketing world to become one of the leading affiliate networks. Their commitment to a close and personable interaction with their publishers, high-paying leads, and fast payouts has secured their place amongst the cream of the crop of affiliate networks.

One of many perks that AzoogleAds offers publishers is the ability of being automatically eligible for any campaign. Many ad networks require publishers to apply to each campaign individually, and it can take anywhere from a few days to even months before being accepted. With AzoogleAds, Publishers can start earning immediately from any campaign without having to wait or apply for anything.

Another, and perhaps AzoogleAds’s biggest, feature is their complete dedication and commitment to customer support (See the Customer Support section below for more information).

AzoogleAds also offers an optional toolbar to publishers. Their toolbar automatically keeps publishers logged-in and displays real-time report data including daily clicks, leads, payout, and even eCPC. The toolbar is a great option for publishers who regularly need or want to check their stats. It is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Note: Some publishers have found the toolbar to be a bit buggy, occasionally crashing Internet Explorer.

While AzoogleAds has a decent amount of offers available in a wide variety of niches, and while they’ve definitely been successful on growing this number, they could still use more in order to compete better with the likes of Commission Junction. For example, their finance category lacks the larger, better-paying companies. That being said, AzoogleAds still offers one of the highest-payouts and carries a decent amount of offers available.

In late 2006, AzoogleAds completely revamped their control panel software to “AzoogleAds 2.0”.

However, it does not differ greatly from other the affiliate networks. Publishers can search through offers by text, browse by categories, and use optional filters such as eligible countries and traffic types.

One basic but important feature that is missing is the ability to distinguish between leads and sales. Currently, the only way to tell the difference is if there is mention of it in the offer description, and more often than not there isn’t.

AzoogleAds also does not list impressions, but only clicks and leads. However, they do offer the ability to save reports for future use as well as export statistic data by CSV.

Overall, their control panel is pretty basic and standard, but could definitely be improved if the above caveats were addressed.

AzoogleAds has a special rewards program to help both motivate and reward publishers. Currently Azoogle offers a $50 bonus if $5K is generated in a month, $100 for $10K, $250 for $25K, and $500 for $50K+.

Applying for AzoogleAds is no different from the majority of affiliate networks out there. Thus, a W9 or W8-BEN tax form needs to be filled out and signed before publishers can receive payments. However, it should be noted that AzoogleAds requires these to be mailed in; they do not accept scanned copies via e-mail nor fax.

This is a bit of a nuisance as it creates a bit of waiting time, and other networks such as Copeac allow their W9 or W8-BEN forms to be signed electronically which takes seconds. It would be nice to see AzoogleAds adapt this.

In any case, this is one-time thing and once sent in and approved, publishers are set to go. It's important to note that publishers can still start using AzoogleAds before their tax forms are received, but just can't receive payments until then.

AzoogleAds does have a referral program, however they recently changed their payout structure. As of February 1, 2008, payouts are no longer paid for the life of a referral, but instead for the first 6-months after the first penny is earned.

In addition, referrers must also maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 on a monthly basis in order to receive referral payouts for that month. This revenue must be from actual affiliate commissions and not from referral income, making it extremely difficult to actually make any money from referrals.

These recent changes to their referral program have essentially made their referral program useless and defunct.

AzoogleAds pays NET-15, which means every 15 days, and is faster than most networks which typically pay out monthly. Publishers can choose to be paid via check or ACH (direct deposit).

One of AzoogleAds's shining points is their commitment to providing fantastic customer support. Each publisher at AzoogleAds is provided with their own personal affiliate manager. Many other networks provide this option as well, however where AzoogleAds stands out is that these private affiliate managers really are there to help you and are very available.

Most affiliate managers are available all week from 9-5 Monday to Friday, and many are even available on the weekends as well from their homes! They allow you to contact them via e-mail, phone, or even instant messenger. Adding your affiliate manager to AIM can be extremely valuable as you can get any questions answered nearly instantly.

Affiliate managers aren't there just to answer basic questions, they are more like personal assistants. They will help publishers find the best possible campaigns for their needs and find offers not publicly available. In addition, depending on the volume the publisher has, affiliate managers are even able to increase payouts and payment times!

AzoogleAds's affiliate managers are truly there for publishers and is one of the reasons they've taken off so well.

AzoogleAds geotargets advertising campaigns when advertisers request traffic to be from a certain area. For example, anybody outside of the US who clicks on an ad which is geotargeted as US-only, will automatically be redirected to another ad. This untargeted ad is part of AzoogleAds, but is not niche-targeted will receive commission if a lead or sale is generated. However, the downside to this is that it can be frustrating for AzoogleAds publishers to view the landing pages if they are not of the country that is being geogargeted. For example, a Canadian publisher wishing to view an advertisers landing page to research data to market the ad for their website, will not be able to see the landing page since they will be redirected to a completely different ad.

While fairly rare, on occasion some of AzoogleAds's campaigns won't link or redirect properly. The clicks will be counted but visitors clicking on the ad won't be sent to the proper site. This is usually the advertisers fault and not actually AzoogleAds. When such an occurrence is reported to AzoogleAds, they will notify everyone via their news section in the control panel, and will contact the advertiser at fault. They will then compensate publishers by taking the network conversion rate average and paying out according to number of clicks generated. For example, if publisher A generated 100 clicks and the campaign paid out $20 per lead, and the network average conversion rate for that campaign was 4%, then publisher A would receive $80.

These caveats are minor, however, and do not take much away from the network.

While AzoogleAds has a few kinks in it’s armor that could easily be ironed out, their commitment to a close and personable interaction with their publishers, high-paying leads, and fast payouts makes them one of leading affiliate networks out there.

Any publisher or affiliate marketer who doesn’t at least try AzoogleAds is making a grave mistake.

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