Category: Coull News

Coull video campaign for Tesco Direct engages Performance Marketing Awards judges

For the last seven years the Performance Marketing Awards (PMA) have rewarded innovation and excellence in what is a rapidly-expanding industry. This year we are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for the Best Brand Engagement Campaign award.

The PMA categories cover channels such as mobile and search, as well as verticals from travel to retail and technology. The Best Brand Engagement Campaign award, for which our campaign for Tesco Direct is shortlisted, focuses on campaigns that have been successful in engaging consumers and meeting client objectives across channels such as video, social, print, and email.

We worked with Tesco Direct over the Christmas shopping period to deliver an online video campaign with a difference, promoting product videos across mobile and desktop platforms, connecting consumers with Tesco Direct’s ecommerce site and driving sales. Coull’s comprehensive tracking of viewers’ consumer journeys enabled Tesco Direct to link video distribution costs to sales revenue and see a clear return on investment. For more information, see the full case study here.

The awards ceremony will be take place on May 7 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London. Last year’s was certainly a memorable event, so we’re looking forward to catching up with the movers and shakers in the performance marketing industry and celebrating everyone’s achievements over the last twelve months.

See you then.

Affiliates4u releases Performance Marketing Guide 2013

A4u has today unveiled the second edition of its epic Performance Marketing Guide, a great resource for anyone looking to get started in performance marketing or to broaden their knowledge of the industry.

Technology in performance marketing is one of the key areas of discussion in this edition of the guide, and Coull has rolled up its sleeves, flexed its fingers and contributed a piece on video in performance marketing. To find out more, flick to page 119 of the guide here.

Here’s Chris Johnson, Content Director at A4u, talking about the Performance Marketing Guide 2013:

“Over 9,000 downloads of the 2012 Performance Marketing Guide have been recorded by A4u in the 18 months since the launch of the inaugural report. It just goes to show there is a demand to be educated in the fundamentals of performance marketing and a desire to understand its intricacies.

“The performance industry evolves at a remarkable pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up with. All the latest innovations are firmly reflected in the additional content sections that have been added to this year’s guide, which expand on new commerce channels, technology and data.”

Enjoy!

Coull builds US presence with acquisition of Parallel Performance

Afternoon everyone, as you may have seen on A4U earlier today we announced the acquisition of US company Parallel Performance. We’re delighted to welcome the team to Coull.

Parallel Performance is a performance advertising agency specialising in affiliate marketing. Steve Winterhalter, Principal, now takes the role of Vice President for Business Development at our office in Santa Barbara, CA. Steve’s experience includes marketing roles at Linkshare, Commission Junction and buy.at/AOL, as well as his own business Winterhalter Affiliate Management (WAM), an early incarnation of Parallel Performance.

He commented: “Joining the Coull team was the perfect progression for our client-focused  business.  Coull is a leader in the most exciting segment of digital marketing and we wanted to be part of that.”

Ben Kiblinger, Coull’s US President, is delighted with the acquisition: “It’s great to have Steve and his team on board. Parallel Performance have a superb track record and this acquisition gives us an excellent platform for growth in the US.”

Coull’s acquisition of Parallel Performance follows that of RevUpNet, another Santa Barbara affiliate agency, earlier this year.

In-video price-comparison: Coull joins forces with Kelkoo

We are delighted to announce the launch of our groundbreaking new partnership with Kelkoo, the online price-comparison service, which enables the integration of price-comparison with video content for the first time.

Website and blog publishers now have the ability to add a trusted price-comparison feature to their video content and earn commission on a Cost-Per-Click basis.

Our self-serve platform enables users to upload their videos, add a clickable Kelkoo button for the product they define and publish it. When a user clicks on the Kelkoo button a list of price-comparison results appears over the video, which is automatically paused.

Irfon Watkins, Coull CEO, said: “We’re really excited about the potential of this partnership, Kelkoo’s price-comparison service is trusted by millions of consumers. Online video plays an increasingly important role in driving consumer demand for products and we think savvy shoppers will engage with the convenience of a price-comparison feature within the video they’re watching.”

Christopher Theodorou, Kelkoo UK Partnerships Manager: “At Kelkoo we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to deliver rich shopping experiences to our customers. We found that Coull think in the same way, with a deep understanding of video’s growing role in the purchase cycle. Their tool is so easy to use and we’re thrilled to be working together to deliver a great product to users across the UK.”

Click here to find out more and sign-up as a publisher.

Coull launches campaigns across online multimedia sites with Imagine Publishing

We have been a bit quiet on our blog recently (I blame the good weather and long weekends) but we’re back now to tell you about the beginning of an exciting relationship between Coull and Imagine Publishing, the worldwide multimedia content producer.

Two of our premium advertiser accounts, BigPoint and Getty Images, are part of the launch and we have managed to get their respective videos in prominent locations on two of Imagine Publishing’s global online magazines.

Getty Images are part of a deal which will see a series of their videos featured on WebDesignerMag.com across a period of 8 weeks, all promoting a 10% voucher code for purchases on their site. The videos showcase some of the latest and most creative imagery and footage that Getty Images have to offer and is targeting WebDesignerMag.com’s professional readership.

The BigPoint video, featuring their popular Drakensang fantasy online role-play game, is being promoted via Imagine’s very successful and renowned NowGamer.com. The video placement has been combined with a whole page takeover and is seeing significant traffic and proving to be a hit with the relevant audience of the site.

The relationship between ourselves and Imagine Publishing signifies our ongoing intent to provide the best solutions for our advertisers by focussing the video campaigns toward premium content producers, placing the videos in locations with high traffic and relevant content.

These campaigns have also been structured using our unique hybrid payment model which rewards publishers on both a CPA and CPV basis, simultaneously creating the demand and driving traffic to the advertiser’s site.

Both advertisers’ videos are available for all publishers on our dashboard, so register today to become part of our exciting campaigns.

Calling all Tech publishers: Enjoy exclusive commission rates

We are delighted to announce that registered publishers on our Video Performance Network can now take advantage of exclusive commission rates from both Dell and giffgaff. These commission rates should be higher than you have previously experienced with these great companies.

Dell and Alienware – earn over £100 per sale on some items

Sales made through videos available on the Dashboard could generate you commissions of up to 5.25% on Dell products or up to 7.5% on Alienware products. That means you can enjoy earning well over £100 for each sale on items such as the Alienware Aurora – a highly advanced gaming desktop with with stunning graphics.

giffgagg – earn great commission on FREE SIM’s

giffgaff – the mobile network run by you is offering publishers on the Coull Network an unbeatable commission of 75p for reach user that requests a FREE SIM card.

Stay tuned for more exclusive commission rates available on the Coull Network.

 

Top tips for making a viral work

E-marketer posted an article on the mechanics of how a viral video is spread yesterday, you can read it here. It turns out that the most effective way to get someone to watch an online video is to get their friends to tell them to.

Distributing a viral and making it a success is something of a dark art, sure you can seed it in the right places but nothing beats a personal recommendation. After all – The JK Wedding was not seeded, it got an extra bounce when a couple of celebrities started talking about it but the main way that it spread is simply by people talking about it.

The trick that marketers hope to repeat is to get people talking about a video in a way that builds their brand values into the viral. This is a current campaign for TDC in Denmark that our partners GoViral are running. It really doesn’t matter if you can’t speak Danish – it is funny and makes people want to watch, it is obviously an ad and the mechanics are in place to make it easy to spread and share. Have a watch – see what you think and if the mood takes you – go ahead and send it to your friends by clicking the ‘del film’ button. Danish bacon may never seem the same again.

If your video is not interactive you may as well be advertising Milky the Cow…

I’ve recently been talking to a lot of agencies about our products and one of the recurrent themes seems to be that advertisers using video are happy as long as their video is viewable on YouTube. In Coull’s opinion – this is missing one of the largest opportunities in online video advertising. If you have a product that you want to sell or an action that you want the user to complete then build that into the video. If a user is interested – allow them to satisfy that interest and if they are at the right point in the purchase funnel then allow them to go and buy without the need to go elsewhere.

Advertisers can be nervous around this concept so to prove that we believe what we preach, we have changed our business model so that the only charges come when a user clicks on the video after it is already playing. We hope that this will encourage agencies and advertisers to make all of their videos work harder for them. After all – if your video isn’t interactive then you aren’t taking full advantage of being online and your lovingly created video will only be as good as the one below for Milky the Cow.