I am not sure where you have got your information from but I think you are confusing dgm UK with dgm PLC. The UK is a separate entity from the PLC and we have not take any loans. We have not wiped out the sales team either, we have restructured the sales team but that is a positive move. Sales is clearly the core of any affiliate marketing business so this would never be a step we would take.

Helen

The Affiliate Summary Report allows you to see clicks, impressions, sales and other data broken down by the Network IDs that you use (‘View by’ option). We’ve been toying with the idea of doing a breakdown by referrer page but you run into issues of how to index strings as long as some of the URLs we see can be. We could probably do a breakdown by referrer domain?

If you direct link to the client then a useful feature of the Sales List is that you can see the search term(s) and search engine, based on analysis of the referrer page we captured – again it’s another couple of options in the Sales List near to the referrer page one mentioned by Kev.

As for development, we’ve introduced dgmCompare Broadband (v2 released last week) that allows you to offer a Broadband search facility based on postcode on your own site, introduced Easy Links (which allowed us to integrate with EasyContentUnits.com), made various improvements to the affiliate interface and launched ww.dgmKnowledge.com to help inform you about our campaigns (linked from dgmPro). We’ve a new datafeed system going live soon that should increase the number and types of feeds we can offer, some more dgmCompare-based technology on the way and in 2009 we’re concentrating on the way affiliates interact with the interface. You were obviously unaware of the features you mentioned above, so we need to look how we educate affiliates on the features we already have.

Moose: We don’t currently store data on PPC guidelines in the manner you suggest to make an answer that easy to compile. We have a 3 figure number of clients and each account manager knows their own accounts so it’s hard to coordinate an answer. If there is a campaign you like the sound of, let us know and we’ll give you feedback on it, but giving an exact list of campaigns that fit your requirements is difficult. There are Ts&Cs for each campaign that include the restrictions for you to check manually. However, we’ll look at codifying the storage of that information to make answering that sort of request easier.

That’s the fella – he’s well hidden, but now I know where to find him, I’ll be making full use of it!

Cheers for the post! An interesting and pretty fair account I would say!

One thing to pick up on… Refferer url’s…

dgmPro does give access to this info. As follows:

Login > reports > sales list… down the left hand side you will notice reporting filters. Here you will see a host of options. Towards the bottom of the page is the section “select your reporting parametres” one of these options is refferer. Tick the box and run the report, this will give you your reffering url’s on sales.

I think that’s what you’re after?

Cheers,

Kev

With regard to BBG’s, like all networks we do have some of these in place but to be honest the market has changed a lot over the years and there are less and less opportunities as clients are able to manage their own PPC better and more conflict arises with duplication of channels. Our stance has always been that we will only promote a BBG if it is in the interests of the client and in the interests of affiliates we try and offer any rights to a range of affiliates who have proven their worth on the campaigns historically and can add value above and beyond bidding on brand.

It wasn’t singling out DGM on BBG’s. my thoughts on which networks have been well documented on blog & forum. To elaborate on the above criteria I laid down to DGM. I requested a list of programs which permitted the use of the merchants display url in paid search, then from that list eliminate any merchants with BBGs. From those simple two criteria a final list would have been created for me to look at the programs a little deeper to ascertain which would have been suitable for me to promote. Unfortunately I was informed there wasn’t 10 programs to be found I could even look at. Which brings me onto a point I blogged about where networks / merchants / agencies are generally too pre occupied with telling affiliates what they cannot do, rather than “hey affiliates did you know you can do xyz!”. Which raises a question that if the affiliates cannot do ppc on brand / generic, is the network doing it instead? I could say the same for several networks on all the above.

Even though they seem a nice enough bunch there, I still reserve judgement on whether things have really changed for affiliates to sink their teeth into, or is the affiliate side less profitable than other things whether paid search or seo etc.

My point was for those affiliates driving sales from PPC, other networks offer reports whereby you can see a report of sales, clicks etc from each individual keyword, and/or see the referring URL of a sale (particularly useful for a content site if you’ve forgotten to append custom IDs cos you couldn’t figure out where to put them…)

I *think* I’ve found a workaround for the keyword report though – using “&k=%keyword%” in adwords should pass through the referring search term as the custom tracking ID. Would still be nice to see some of the reports developed further though.

Helen – Oh, you’ve come on miles and miles since “the dark days”, and that’s testament to the hard work and downright brilliantness of people such as yourself, Matt Bailey, Jess, Cat, Kevin & co, who persuaded me to give DGM another go after the first expo in 2007, and gave me every reason to continue pushing DGM merchants in 2009 and beyond – just keep doing what you’re doing, and badger the bosses for a less clunky interface

Moose – I don’t think it’s fair to single out DGM as having BBGs – pretty much every network has them for the major brands. That being said, I do agree that the network that has access to affiliates most profitable keywords should not be performing PPC on behalf of merchants – I’m sure that no-one would be as underhand as to use that data, but it’s far too easy for that suspicion to be there, and that will prevent PPC affiliates from really pushing DGM merchant heavily.

I think that DGM have (quite rightly) re-built their reputation around the people rather than the technology – that doesn’t mean they’re not looking to innovate, but I think they’re going to tread very carefully with what they roll out after making such a hash of DGM Pro the first time around.

Finally, thanks for the plug for Easy Content Units, which of course is an easy way to add more than 150,000 products from DGM merchants to your site (all instantly deeplinked, with custom tracking IDs added and prices automatically updated etc)

They are a likeable network but the interface is way too “clunky” for me, especially reporting, so I rarely login to even see what programs are on offer & thus doesn’t get my juices flowing to see what programs they have.

However several times over the past 18 months (maybe two years) I have requested something quite simple, and that is give me ten programs (that is all) that I can direct link through ( ie use the display url) to on paid search for product & generic terms (brand not essential) however they musn’t have any bbg (brand bidding groups) either. After sometime, the answer each occasion was they don’t have that many.

I don’t think DGM will ever be one of those networks we can expect bells & whistles from, innovation has been left to a couple of other networks or to give you a plug John, “Easy Content Units”. I am beggining to see them more as an agency than a network.

Thanks for the review, a very honest appraisal. As janusz says above you can track search term and referral URLs are captured and reported in the sales report. Search term can be tracked using the k parameter which is reported in the front-end as “networkID”, but this could definitely be clearer so will take this onboard.

I think we have come a long way since the ‘dark days’, we can still improve on a lot of what we are doing like every network but we are constantly making improvements to our technology, service and processes. I have a great team here in account mgt, affiliate mgt and the tech team so I know that dgm will continue to improve in 2009, taking on board all comments and feedback that we receive.

Helen