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Commission Junction (CJ) is one of the most popular affiliate networks on the Internet. Unknown to many, the ValueClick organisation allow affiliates to make use of datafeeds for online advertising in addition to other available marketing services.
Datafeeds, in Commission Junction, are product catalogs which are made up of a group of product links that share the same advertising ID. They allow tracking and reporting of performance-related data so as to make updating products and offers by Website owners or publishers a lot easier. As a result, whenever an advertiser makes changes to an existing catalog, those changes can be reflected in a subsequent publisher feed.
Although in most cases an advertiser will have a single datafeed containing all their links, CJ offers free multiple datafeed to its publishers. Presently, these feeds are available in TAB, CSV, PIPE, XML and EXCEL formats for a trial period. Although publishers are allowed to customise their feed to contain product data (in any format and sequence) from any advertiser they have subscribed to, customisation is not possible with XML formats.
How to Set-up/Customise Product Feed
Setting up a feed in Commission Junction is easy. Click on Contact Us and select Ask A Question. Choose Data Transfer (Publishers) category and either Data Transfer Requests or Product Catalog as the sub-category.
How to Access Product Feed
Product feeds can either be pushed to your FTP server on a scheduled basis or pulled from an FTP server account created for you by Commission Junction. Follow the instructions that are sent to your email once your Feed has been set-up to gain full access.
How to Cancel Product Feed
Cancelling a datafeed in Commission Junction could not have been any easier. Publishers may cancel at anytime by using the Contact Us interface and Ask A Question feature.
EXTRA: How to Display Product Feed (in Joomla)
Displaying a product feed may not always be as easy as it seems. However, I found this great Joomla extension called Affiliate Datafeeds by Bram Brambring. See an example of Affiliate Datafeeds in use here. While it was a little difficult to set-up at first, Bram was always willing to help and almost always responded to emails immediately.
Talking Point
Do you have any previous experiences of using or displaying product datafeeds?