I just got an email from Tom Vadnais at ValueClick informing me that they will turn 10 years old this year. Here’s the email I got:

ValueClick commemorates its tenth anniversary today, representing a decade of performance and leadership in online advertising. On behalf of ValueClick employees worldwide, I would like to take this opportunity to say a sincere “thank you” for the contribution you have made to our success.

From our humble beginning in 1998 as a cost-per-click ad network, to our position today as one of the world’s largest online marketing services companies, ValueClick has always focused on delivering cost-effective customer acquisition for advertisers and robust revenue streams for publishers. Along with our dedicated team, it has been a commitment to performance by you, our advertiser and publisher clients, that has driven the phenomenal growth and success of ValueClick.

Today ValueClick operates in all major online marketing channels and some traditional marketing channels, including affiliate and search marketing, display advertising, lead generation, ad serving and e-mail technology, agency management software and comparison shopping. ValueClick brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Mediaplex, PriceRunner, Smarter.com and CouponMountain.com.

Together we have built a strong and diverse organization designed to help propel you into the future. Thanks again for your business. We’re excited about the opportunity our relationship represents and look forward to growing with you in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Tom Vadnais

I’m also looking forward to grow with them in the year ahead, but I would rather have received a nice gift from them then just a “thank you” (with “” around ). Wouldn’t you?

One thing that’s amazing me about ValueClick is the lack of technology development from their side. I’ve been using WebSponsors.com for a few of my sites because they got great freebies and sweepstakes, but what they really need to work on is the lack of innovations. For example you have to manually select your offers, they don’t have any feed you can import your offers from like for example TradeDoubler.com got. Another bad thing is that when a visitor clicking on the ads are not from the desired country they redirect the user to another offer, but it doesn’t look like you (the webmaster) will get any commission on that sale

When WebSponsors.com where a part of Web Clients (before ValueClick acquired WebSponsors.com) they had a co-branded web site called free2try.com where you as a publisher could setup a sub-domain with your own layout Really cool since you could redirect your visitors to an up to date directory backed with free offers, sweepstakes and trials and get commission on everything. The best part was that you could set your own brand on the site so the visitors could feel at home. This service was silently cancelled when WebSponsors.com became a part of ValueClick

If ValueClick will survive another 10 years they really need to create some new and innovative like the peel-off ads from adtoll.com, a community like Entrecard, integration with webmasters blog feeds, ad auctions like Project Wounderful or maybe just ad feeds like Tradedoubler. Good luck ValueClick, you really need it if you don’t start develop your technology and your services.

We’ve just released version 4.0 of our banner design service CreateBanner.com. We’ve added some new banner sizes and a lot of new functions and features like:

• Gradient backgrounds
• Write your text in an angle
• Cooler shadow function
• More text and background colors (now you can use HTML color codes if you like)
• More font sizes
• More text lines can be used (up to 15) and you simply just click on the banner where you want to write the text

To create your own banner simply visit CreateBanner.com. If you have suggestions for new banner sizes, please feel free to let us know.

Entrecard special offer

To all Entrecard members we have a special offer until the 29th of February: Create your own 125×125 banner (the Entrecard size) completely free of charge and completely without the text “CreateBanner.com” on your banner! Visit www.createbanner.com/v4/entrecard/ to create your own Entrecard banner.

Entrecard contest

Write in your blog about the offer above and you can win 700 Entrecard credits! Simply write in your blog about the offer above, post a message here (i.e. post a comment in this post with the link to your blog) and on the 29th of February we’ll randomly draw one lucky winner of 700 Entrecard credits.

At Thoughts.com you can sign up for your own blog, personal online journal or forum in the style of www.thoughts.com/your user name/ with free unlimited bandwidth. You can upload photos, videos, podcasts, chat in the community forums and bookmark the latest news. Thoughts.com allows you to decide for each blog post if you want it to be public, private, or only viewable by your friends and family. So long everything good, but unfortunately they didn’t have many themes to select from (to be correct you could only change the color of your blog ) which is clearly a downside when other blog services offer so many ways of making your blog a unique place for your friends.

When making a post in the blog you can select between four different post types: Normal post, upload photo, upload video or post podcast. For all post types you can select if it’s going to be private or public, you can set tags to make it easy for you and your visitors to find similar posts or uploads and you can use features like bold, italic and under lined text in your posts just like any other blog service. You can also include some nice looking smilies in your posts to show your visitors your mood and your current state of mind .

The best part of Thoughts.com is the community forums they have. You can discuss everything from politics, religion to writing and lifestyle. When I visited the forums they had over 30,000 registered members and 62 of them where active in the forum during my visit.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! We at Xavier Media hope to see you all soon again after the holidays and we’re planning some new cool services for you all during 2008 so keep visiting our sites.

You have still time to join our contest in our blog where you can win free advertising credits from EntreCards. Check out the Xavier Media Blog for more information on that.

You also got a few days to get your own domain names at discounted prices from eXavier.com. So if you got the time and want to save a few bucks, check it out.

/Andreas

Why should you blog? If you got something you’re selling or something you want to promote (like affiliate programs) then you should definitely blog about it. I for example are blogging about domain names, hosting and other webmaster related stuff at the Xavier Media blog where I’m publishing most of my posts is packed with ads for my companies products. By blogging you also show your new and existing customers that you know at least something about your area of expertise (you’re blogging so you must know at least something about what you’re writing ).

Posting quality articles in your blog is also a fantastic SEO technique since the search engines will find your blog posts. When I’m posting something new in one of my blogs I usually get an email from Google Alerts that Google has crawled my new post in less then 15 minutes from the time of posting. That’s really impressive and also something really good for your company (the more quality pages the search engines got about you and your company, the bigger chance new customers will end up on your site ).

So how do I start blogging? Well, it’s easy. There are several free services out there on the Internet like Blogger and Wordpress, but I prefer to use my own domain name for my blogs instead of subdomains to domain names owned by someone else. That’s because then I can move my blog anywhere I like and I can also do whatever I like with the blog. It’s also better to use your own domain name when you’re building your own brand or trademark and it looks much more professional.

When you register a domain name for as little as $1.99 at eXavier.com your also get a free blog ("QuickBlog").

/Andreas