The day has come. Commission Junction now has new Javascript affiliate links in its interface.
I took a quick look at the new interface. It was already possible to specify your source website, indicate that you wanted the link encrypted, set the link to open a new browser window and hide tracking code within the link, and these options are still available. Search engine marketers will be pleased to note that you can still specify a shopper ID (SID), which they typically use to indicate the keyword used to generate the conversion so that they can optimise their campaigns. It is also possible to specify that you wish to use the link in email rather than on a web page, which generates standard HTML code containing an <a> element and an <img> element (used for impression-tracking only if the link is a text link), very similar to the old-style links; and there is also a way to indicate the text that you wish to use for your link when you are using a text link.
You get the option to access legacy links, and if you select that option then you are warned that legacy links will only be supported for a limited time. It is also possible to select a keyword link where the merchant has provided such a link, and that link will be presented as a raw URL.
Some of the available options will presumably be controlled by the merchant providing the link.
Here is the source code for a typical link from the new system (split over three lines), and the link itself is presented below:
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.kqzyfj.com/placeholder-3037?
TARGET=_top&MOUSEOVER=N"></script>
Although it’s hard to believe that the link can possibly contain all the information needed to identify the merchant, the link, and the source affiliate and website, accessing the Javascript URL directly reveals Javascript code incorporating some document.write statements that write a HTML form into your web page. The statements within the code clearly include identification codes to indicate these parameters.
The code that is written by into your web page by the Javascript appears to be XHTML-compliant to me. It’s interesting to note that impressions are still tracked by making use of an image for text links. I would have thought that the simple fact that the Javascript URL is called up would be sufficient to register an impression, to allow determination of click-through rates.
One of the things worth noting about this approach is that some search engines, including Google, apply a penalty to the organic ranking of web pages that are seen to consist mainly of affiliate links. However, Javascript links are harder for robots to decode than standard HTML links, so these search engines may start giving pages that use the new links higher organic rankings in their results.
David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer
