Commission Junction Launch Web Services
Yesterday saw Commission Junction claw back a little creditability amongst the affiliate world when it unveiled the beginning of its web services platform. I say beginning as this appears to be a stage by stage roll out having just come out of beta testing by a select bunch of publishers.
So what’s Web Services then?
Web Services allow both publishers and advertisers to access the commission junction application server without the need to log in through the regular management interface. It also allows you to strip out only the required information you’re working with, this may be statistics and reports, product feeds or program relationship. It appears that future options will be made available depending on the popularity of the new service.
Sifting through communications I’ve received as both a publisher and a merchant it appears the benefits so far are as follows:
For Merchants:
- Branded Sign-Up and Confirmation E-mail - This API is used to customise the sign-up experience for your publishers and enables you to tailor the look and feel of the sign-up form when recruiting publishers to your affiliate program.
- Branded Login - This feature is designed to enable you to authenticate a publisher to your affiliate program, resource centre or the Commission Junction network. It provides branding options to customise the look and feel of the form.
- Publisher Look Up - This API is intended for use in conjunction with the Branded Login API. You can access details about the publisher, including their status within your affiliate program, program name, Web sites, categories, promotional methods used and other information related to their account. Authenticated publishers are sent to your specified landing page where you can present relevant information.
For Publishers:
- Product Catalogue Access - This API offers real-time access to the Product Catalogue database. Using it, you can find a product or group of products to display on your site since the API enables keyword searches as well as item specific searches by UPC, manufacturer, model number, advertiser, SKU and more.
- Link Search Functionality - Publishers can use this API to search for links through a SOAP interface using a set of parameters to return link results that include information like their relationship status and link code that can be used to capture publisher referrals. In addition, you can find the perfect link for display on your site using search options that are very similar to those available via the CJ Account Manager, including searching by link type and size, advertiser, language and other link attributes.
- Advertiser Search Functionality - This API allows publishers to search for advertisers through a SOAP interface using a set of parameters to return advertiser results that include information such as their relationship status and program terms with the advertiser.
The most important step for publishers appears to be access to the product catalogue and that the above suggest that this service is now FREE! If this is the case then this will answer the prayers of many affiliates and affiliate managers. Previously Commission Junction has charged its affiliates where every other affiliate network offers this service for free.
Web Services certainly isn’t something new, the likes of Amazon and Ebay have had this type of setup on offer for some time. Closer to home, affiliate networks such as Zanox, Webgains, TradeDoubler, Affili.net. DGM and many more offer some kind of interaction so this really is a case of Commission Junction playing catch up. Whether or not the full system will see CJ compete and over take their competitors is a topic for another day but one thing is for sure is that the above is certainly a step in the right direction.
If you are looking to sign up for the new web services head over to the new CJ Web Services site.
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