Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has launched the final phase of Project Rover, their new affiliate linking infrastructure.

eBay is asking that their affiliates migrate all of their affiliate links from Commission Junction before November 15th, 2006. During the migration, both the Commission Junction tracking and the new Rover systems will run in parallel.

All Rover URLs will use the same server name, rover.ebay.com, regardless of the target destination domain or eBay site. The general form for Rover links is as follows:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/PlacementID/1?SID=KEYWORD&AID=XXXXXX&PID=XXXXXX&loc=TARGET ENCODED URL

The PlacementID and AID pair is a country and tool specific value that associates the click with the correct eBay Affiliate Campaign.

Other variables in the URL:

• PID: Publisher Site ID available in the Commission Junction Interface.

• SID: Shopper ID (SID) is an affiliate defined variable used to monitor the specific link that produced each transaction. The SID can be up to 64 characters and is URL-encoded (%20 for a space, %2E for a comma, etc).
• loc: Target URL or landing page where user will be directed and must be URL-encoded (ex: http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2F).

The eBay Flexible Destination Tool and Keyword Linking Tool now output updated Rover links.

Additionally, no action is needed if affiliates are using the eBay Editor Kit, Product Kit, RSS Feed Generator or API - links will be automatically updated.

Visit the eBay affiliate discussion board for more details on working with Project Rover and Commission Junction.

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