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Luke Smith from Motive Interactive contacted me a few weeks ago to see if I wanted to have a closer look at their new network. Motive Interactive is a performance based (ie. cost per action) advertising network which has been online since 2003.

Their new system is known as ‘The Motive Network’ and is powered by Advent 2.0, a new performance advertising platform which they have designed from scratch.

So What is Avent 2.0?

There are thousands of affiliate companies on the web. You probably don’t realise it but most use commercially available affiliate scripts to power their sites. Some use it ’straight out of the box’ but most customise the script to suit their needs. There are of course many benefits for doing this, one of which being that another company can take care of the technical side of things which may give your company more time to work with customers etc.

However, there are some limitations too. When using a commercial script it rarely does everything you want it to do. This is why Motive Interactive decided to build their own afiliate platform from scratch. In their own words :

When Motive Interactive analyzed the most commonly used interactive advertising industry tools, we found them to be inadequate, antiquated, and uninspired.

Advent ™, Motive’s flagship performance advertising platform, was designed to maximize a publisher’s revenue and increase advertiser’s ROI.

The result is a publisher client area which looks a different to most other affiliate networks on the web.

Motive Network Publisher Client Area

The first thing you notice about the Motive Network client area is how quick it loads. The top of the page shows you the contact details of your account manager and the main content area is split into 3 columns.

All in all I think they’ve got the home page of the client area right.

• Navigation is on the left hand side (called the applications column). This is where you can go to the offers (all programs), my offers (ie. the ones you have joined), reports and accounts areas. Throughout the whole site the navigation column never changes.
• The central column (called the home column) has the latest ‘Offer Spotlights’ and ‘System Notices’ too. The ‘System Notices’ is a nice addition which shows you the latest news regarding the offers you have signed up for ie. you don’t have to read news regarding offers you haven’t even signed up for.
• The last column on the home page shows you your campaign performance (and is known as the Dashboard). Total clicks, leads and conversions are all shown on the left hand side in text and on the right hand side in a graph. The ‘Campaign Watch’ area is shown underneath the ‘Performance Section’. This is a useful feature if you have signed up to a lot of offers. You can add the campaigns you are most interested in to this area. This allows you to quickly see how specific campaigns are performing from the home page. So for example, if you had signed up to 50 offers you could place the 5 offers you have only been promoting a few days to see how they are converting

Offers

The client area which I was given access to for the review does not have all offers listed. At the time of writing the client area has 24 offers available but over the next few days they will be migrating the 200+ offers they have from their old system to their new Advent 2.0 system.

Searching for offers seems to be a lot quicker than some other affiliate companies (for example, I find Comission Junction to be terribly slow). There is also a wide range of filtering options ranging from offer types to distribution types to what’s new. The results area tells you about the offer, the distribution options (eg. banner, text link or search etc) and the payout. If you click on the offer you will see some more details about the offer, most importantly what restrictions there are on the offer (for example, USA websites only). You can also preview the offer itself and the links which you are available to you to advertise the site.

Reports

The reports area shows the number impressions, clicks, conversions and revenue generated from your campaigns. I imagine that publishers who have signed up to a lot of offers will have a lot of information on this page but thankfully you can filter the results by time period and offer type. You can also export all of the data as a csv file so you can view the results via exel or a database.

Will the offers interest blog readers?

Although they are still migrating all the offers to their new system this week, the offers which I did check out indicate that these type of offers would work very well on blogs. Most of the offers are related to current events or products which offer a free trial.

For example, the offer below is a presidential survey which offers $1 per completed form. With the presidental race reaching a close next month this offer is sure to convert well on a lot of blogs.

These type of offers always work well because the visitor is not handing over any money and is simply answering some questions on a subject they are probably interested in anyways. You can always use incentives too and give out prizes to those who complete the survey.

Again, I stress that I have not had a chance to see all of the offers because they are still migrating data over but the offers I have seen so far are encouraging. I have signed up to the network so in a few weeks I will hopefully be able to talk more about the offers, what ones are suitable for bloggers and how you can integrate and implement them on your site.

Referral and Rewards

To conicide with the launch of their new advertising platform, Motive Interactive have added a referral and a rewards program.

• Referral Program : The Motive Network offers 5.5% of lifetimes referral
  earnings for those you refer. There is a stipulation that ‘The referred publisher must continue to generate commissions without a lapse of twelve (12) calendar months in order for the referrer to continue receiving the 5.5% commission from that publisher each month‘. This basically means that you only get credit for active affiliates. I do see why they are doing this however many of my long term commissions have come from people who signed up and didn’t use a site for a while or used it on or off, so hopefully this rule will be reviewed in the future. At the moment it seems that if one of your affiliates is using Motive actively and making you a lot of money, those commissions would stop if your affiliate decided to promote another site for a month or two.
• Rewards System : The rewards system gives an extra bonus to affiliates every month, similar to the way shopping stores give you points. The reward payout starts at 1% then increases to 2% the higher the tier. Here’s the current structure :
  • $1,000 - $10
  • $2,500 - $25
  • $5,000 - $50
  • $10,000 - $100
  • $15,000 - $150
  • $20,000 - $200
  • $25,000 - $250
  • $30,000 - $300
  • $50,000 - $500
  • $100,000 - $1,250
  • $150,000 - $2,000
  • $200,000 - $3,000
  • $500,000 - $10,000
  • $1,000,000 - $20,000
  • $1,250,000 - $25,000

  1% isn’t a huge amount but it’s still good to get a little extra on top of your commissions.

Since these programs have not been launched as yet I’ve not been able to try them out however they do sound like nice additions to the site.

Summary

Because I was given a sneek peek of Motive Interactive for this review, I have not been able to comment on the websites which use the network and how well they perform. However, I must say that I have been impressed so far with their new Advent system.

It’s quick to use, easy to navigate and the filtering options make it easy to find the offer you are looking for. They seem to be emphasising the personal touch with support too. Every affiliate has a picture of their account manager at the top of every page together with a direct phone number, email address and messenger details. On top of that they also have a support forum.

I encourage you all to check out the Motive Interactive Publisher page and see the companies which you can promote on your blog. They will be migrating all accounts to the new system over the next week but don’t worry, you can still sign up today and see all the offers they have on offer. As I mentioned previously, I will show you all in a few weeks time how you can integrate these offers into your blog and make a little extra money.

Link : Motive Interactive

* This was a Paid Review