Great to see coull being referenced by Econsultancy in their recent innovation report http://econsultancy.com/reports/innovation-report

Geno then picked it up in his recent blog, always a must read if you are in affiliate marketing

http://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2010/06/03/top-8-innovative-affiliate-marketing-ideas-per-econsultancy/

We are really pleased to release our new product across the buy.at network. We have been testing with selected publishers for some time and we look forward to introducing rapid developments to our product over the coming weeks.

News released at buy.at’s speakeasy today details a partnership between buy.at and Coull, specialists in online interactive video advertisements.

Leading affiliate network buy.at has partnered with Coull, specialists in online interactive video advertisements, to introduce the first fully-integrated video technology for the affiliate marketing industry.
This tool allows affiliates to transform any existing video into an interactive advert by simply adding affiliate links to the content.

http://www.affiliates4u.com/news/2010/05/its-coull-day-buy/

Coull and buy.at launch the first fully integrated video product for affiliate marketing.

The Coull Activator lets any buy.at affiliate generate income from any approved video even those from YouTube. It gives your site more interactive content and the SEO benefits that video can bring. The tool is free and easy to use, Coull host and stream the video and your affiliate links will stay with the video when it is passed around social networks and blogs.

Come and see us and buy.at during the Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas 17th-19th January 2010 for a demo or register here to be included in our beta program.

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.

Just read this study, late I know but the numbers are impressive

http://digital-media.net.au/article/online-ad-engagement-25-times-higher-than-click-rate/493542.aspx

“Video saw a 30% lift in engagement over non-video banners with dwell time nearly doubling from 37.37 to 71.51 seconds. With more than one in ten users spending over a minute, video banner advertising may be a popular alternative to intrusive pre-roll advertising.”

eyeblaster have done a great job on this report but why are they and other still charging on a cpm basis?
Surely paying for engagement is the way forward?

Digital Mission to New York is scheduled for 15th – 20th November 2009 and will coincide with the renowned Web 2.0 Expo (16-19th Nov 2009), New York.

This will be the second Digital Mission to visit New York and it’s shaping up rather nicely, building on existing relationships with New York-based entrepeuners, VC’s, agencies and digital practitioners to create a cracking line up of activities.

http://chinwag.com/digitalmission/nyc09

Really looking forward to this. We are just starting to work with clients in New York and I believe interactive video advertising is about to explode.

Unfortunately we did not win our nomination in the Best Use of Technology within Affiliate Marketing category of the a4uAwards last night.  However, a well deserved congratulations must go out to SkimLinks who won all 3 categories that they were nominated in the a4u Affiliate Marketing Awards!  Well done indeed.

It is nice to see a small company being disruptive and SkimLinks definitely seem to be doing that.  It just goes to show that disruption can happen in niche sectors too, it is not just a global phenomena.  Although we all hope for that globally disruptive concept, I am sure the team at SkimLinks are enjoying the recognition of their niche disruption this morning (or perhaps not, as the hangover kicks in).

Looking forward to more disruptions ahead

Getting the rest of the winners (congrats to you all) off twitter as they are not published anywhere else yet it would seem and interestingly enough, they are but in twitter

Gary Wilson – 2 June 2009

And the winners are:

Innovation in networks #a4uawards winner is @affwindow – ( posted by chrisclarkson )

Innovate merchant of the year #a4uawards winner is prezzybox ( posted by chrisclarkson, corrected by me I think the liquids were flowing and typos were a plenty)

Innovative publisher of the year #a4uawards winner is skimlinks ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Best use of intergrated campaign #a4uawards winner is Argos ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Innovative Affiliate of the Year #a4uawards winner is skimlinks ( posted by alexhoye )

Best use of technology #a4uawards winner is skimlinks ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Digital media agency of the year #a4uawards winner is i-level ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Best new entrant #a4uawards winner is skimlinks ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Finance Vertical (affiliate) #a4uawards winner is leadbay ( posted by chrisclarkson )

Retail (vertical) #a4uawards winner is Argos  ( posted by 10Yetis )

Casino & Gaming (affiliate) #a4uawards winner is bingohideout ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Casino & Gaming (merchant) #a4uawards winner is paddypower ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Travel & Leisure (affiliate) #a4uawards winner is artemis8 ( posted by chrisclarkson )

Travel & Leisure (merchant) #a4uawards winner is lastminute.com ( posted by chrisclarkson )

Technology & Telecoms (affiliate) #a4uawards winner is Formula (Top 10 Broadband) ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Technology & Telecoms (merchant) #a4uawards winner is Vodafone ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Publishers choice awards – account manager – #a4uawards winner is Hannah Swift from Existem Affiliate Management ( posted by exwebjunkie )

Affiliate manager  – #a4uawards winner is Chris Clarkson ( posted by chrisclarkson )

And that’s it… hell that was a chore, gleaning info out of twitter – there is an idea in there