The Official Amazon Associates Blog recently posted two blogs (on December 1st and November 30th, 2006 respectively) about the launch of the new discount stickers display on product images in Omakase ads and on how Amazon will address the ISBN-13 issue.
Pertinent content of both blogs are reprinted here:
New Omakase Feature - Discount Stickers
"Today we launched a new feature that displays discount stickers on product images in Omakase ads. These stickers show the percentage that Amazon.com's price has been discounted from the regular list price for Amazon products. Amazon.com customers appreciate this added information, and we believe your site visitors will as well. This feature was requested by many Associates worldwide, and we thought it was a great idea.
This feature has been applied to all active Omakase ads on the bottom right corner of the product images where the discount is greater than 10%. We have enabled current Omakase users to turn this feature off by going to the Build Links page for Omakase and selecting the “Remove Discount Sticker” pulldown from the Amazon Discount menu option.
For our readers that are not familiar with Omakase, the links uniquely combine information on each site visitor's taste, your Web site's content, and historical trends to generate relevant ads. We have placed an Omakase ad at the bottom of this post."
ISBN-13 and Amazon Associates
"The International Standards Organization (ISO) recently approved a change to the length of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) from 10 digits (ISBN-10) to 13 digits (ISBN-13) effective January 1, 2007. We have created an FAQ in Associates Central (login required), but here is a condensed version of some of the information in that FAQ.
Amazon plans to continue using 10-digit ASINs; so, in the future a book's ASIN will be different than its ISBN, just as items in product categories like Electronics or Kitchen may have a manufacturer SKU (stock keeping unit) different than the Amazon ASIN.
How does this affect Associates links to books?
ASINs for existing books will not change. So, any Associates links to specific books on Amazon will continue to work, and you do not need to update them.
If I know the 13-digit ISBN for a book, can I use that in a Associates Link to Amazon?
No. Associates Product Links must include the 10-digit ASIN of the item. If you know the 13-digit ISBN, you can look up the ASIN by searching for the book in Associates Central or on Amazon.com using the ISBN as your search term. Our Build Links (login required) tool in Associates Central will generate the HTML needed to build the link to Amazon.com.
Is there an automated way to create a Product Link if I have the 13-digit ISBN?
Yes. You can programmatically generate Associates links from 13-digit ISBNs using the E-Commerce Service (ECS) from Amazon Web Services. The ECS ItemLookup function allows you to look up items using an ASIN, international article number (EAN), or other identifiers. For more information, see the ECS documentation."
