BEST PRACTICES | NOVEMBER 2008


Keeping Links Current and Intuitive for Consumers

Step One: Include start and end dates for promotions in the banners and copy of text links.

Often, expired links will still be posted on various publisher sites. By including the expiry dates as part of the creative, consumers will know whether or not a promotion is still active.

This is especially critical with text links. Since the copy of text links are hard coded, they need to be manually updated or removed by the publisher. Therefore, it is important to communicate the start and end dates to the consumer in case the publisher does not keep his/her site up to date.

Example Text:
Get 10% off your order at yourwebsite.com! Offer valid 11-Nov-08 to 23-Dec-08.

Banner:


Step Two: Changing banners automatically across publisher sites

The most effective way to keep your banners fresh across all publishers is to update the creative itself.

If your program hosts its own images, simply overwrite the old image with the new one. For example, you have a £5 off banner located at http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/promotion_125x125.gif. You would like to replace it with the new 10% off promotion. Give the new banner the same file name as the old one, then upload it to the http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/ folder. The £5 off banner will be updated with the new 10% off promotion across all publishers instantly!

Be sure when you upload the new creative that it is the same file format as the previous banner. If the previous creative was a gif, it must be replaced with another gif, not a jpg.

If your program’s banners are hosted by LinkShare, updating the banners is as simple as updating the link itself in the interface. Underneath “Image URL”, click “Browse” and select the new image much like you would do to create a new banner (it does not need to be the same file name or format as the previous image unlike advertiser-hosted images). Then, click “Save Changes”. Your banners will be updated with the new creative across all publishers within an hour!

Whenever you update banners, regardless of advertiser or LinkShare served images, it is imperative that the new creative is the same size as the image it is replacing. This way, the new banner size doesn’t disrupt the layout of the publisher’s website and incline them to remove your links.