Deal Group Media launched their new “dgmcompare Broadband” service for affiliates yesterday, which apparently is an easy way to incorporate comparison tables into your website content for the various Broadband Affiliate Programs out there. Which all sounds great, but as a renowned technophobe, I still didn’t quite get it. So I asked Jess from dgm to explain it to me in English:

We are very pleased to unveil a new tool aimed specifically at broadband affiliates. dgmCompare Broadband is an aggregator of broadband offered at a micro-geographical level using either postcodes or consumers telephone number.

The purpose of this tool is for the use of the long-tail affiliates and we will not be using it for our own PPC/SEO use. It is targeted more specifically at those affiliates who are not already in the space. We do not envisage that it will affect any current activity on any of our current broadband campaigns for those of you already promoting them.

This is the first of a suite of dgmCompare products that we plan to launch in the coming months. Each will focus on different verticals offering similar levels of functionality. dgmCompare Broadband can be created to your specification through your dgmPro (www.dgmpro.com) account.

If you would like further information on dgmCompare Broadband please visit our website where you will find a complete breakdown of the product or feel free to contact Cat or Jess. We would also welcome any feedback you might have to help us with future product development.

That made things a little clearer, but still as tech-savvy as a plank of wood, I decided the easiest way to find out what it’s all about is to have a play around. And the results were amazing – In less than two minutes, I knocked up the following content unit:

That’s just one of the swish themes that’s available, and at the moment I’ve set it to sort the results by monthly price, which I notice shows temporary introductory prices (i.e. £4.49 for the first three months) and then doesn’t show the actual price you’ll pay for the remainder of your contract which is a bit annoying, but I guess users might be more inclined to click through to the merchant to find out the fine print, which brings up another point – Doing this much pre-selling of contract lengths, prices, speed, download capacity etc, could (or should) Post Impression cookies come into play on this unit?

And the icing on the cake – you can even add Broadband affiliate programs (such as AOL Wireless Broadband) that aren’t on dgm to the unit! When doing the setup, you just choose the broadband provider from a drop-down box and paste your affiliate link in. You can do this for up to three broadband providers from other UK Affiliate Marketing Networks, which is a brilliant move – creating an affiliate-friendly tool that isn’t restricted to only work with that network’s merchants. Other UK Affiliate Marketing Networks should take note.

dgmcompare Broadband is still in beta, but as far as the first version of the first comparison tool goes, it’s a pretty good start – What will be the forthcoming comparison tools? Energy Prices? Mobile Phones? Credit Cards? Bookmaker’s Free Bets? It’ll be interesting to see how this one develops, and how the other networks will respond.

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