Amazon Courts Publishers In Affiliate Push; Twitter Earns Its Wings

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Affiliate With Me

Amazon is in talks with major US publishers including BuzzFeed, The New York Times and New York Media about expanding their affiliate businesses overseas. The ecommerce giant already pays publishers affiliate revenues in the United States, but sees huge opportunity in other markets. Publishers usually only make money off of affiliate links when the click leads to a purchase, but Amazon is offering publishers upfront guarantees to lure them into international partnerships, Recode reports. It would be the first time Amazon pays media owners to make specific kinds of content, following in the footsteps of Facebook, Google and Twitter. It’s still unclear if Amazon is underwriting publishers’ expansions or will eventually be paid back in the form of referral revenue. More.

Twitter Earns Its Wings

Google, Amazon and Facebook have been hammered recently over revenue deceleration. But Twitter’s ad revenue is still trending up since its turnaround efforts began two years ago. Twitter is still a “strongly considered second tier” for most advertisers, Kieley Taylor, GroupM’s global head of social, tells The Information. In contrast to Facebook, which has built its programmatic business on the backs of millions of advertisers, Twitter has grown by solidifying its relationships with relatively large brands, according to Twitter CRO Matthew Derella: the type that spend on TV. “We were certainly guilty of trying to be everything to everybody, trying to compete in every single area of the digital and broader advertising ecosystem,” he says. Now Twitter focuses “on the things that we’re really good at.” More.

Long-Form Push

Facebook made changes to its video ranking algorithm Tuesday, prioritizing original content and engagement. The social network wants to distribute more high quality videos as opposed to “unoriginal or repurposed” content from other sources, which could lead to a crackdown on recycled memes in favor of professionally produced video, TechCrunch reports. Facebook will also downgrade videos that are part of “sharing schemes,” or content farms that pay other pages to repost or promote their videos. And the platform is upping the amount of time creators should get people to watch their videos from one minute to three minutes, and will reward videos that people return to weekly. More.

But Wait, There’s More!