 Trends in Affiliate Marketing
I've joined two networks in the past month and noticed two welcome features.
1. Affiliate contact details to be provided to the merchant.
Our contact details have always been on our sites, merchants are welcome to visit our offices and I visit theirs, business relationships are built, we work together, and come up with ideas for mutual benefit - just like business in the real world.
At the other extreme, anonymous affiliates deliberately hide their identity and methods from merchants. It is these affiliates that we see when investigating adware and other tricks used to divert commissions from other affiliates and claim commissions for sales the merchant would have made anyway.
2. Publisher sites only with 20,000+ page views per month accepted.
The other network restricts affiliates to the model that attracts most merchants to affiliate marketing - appearing on a website that has an audience. No more monitoring ppc affiliates to pick out those who merely bid on your brand or lure clicks with words that do your brand no favours.
Both these networks are actively moving towards what I see as the future for affiliate marketing - a performance model where merchants (advertisers) work with affiliates (publishers) to provide a benefit for both. There is still a place for networks here - provided they add value with the tools for affiliates to build (genuine) sales and help merchants monitor the way they are promoted.
Where networks aren't making these moves to differentiate between affiliates, many merchants are. They decide what sort of sales they are willing to pay for, set their own terms and conditions, and police them - cancelling sales and removing affiliates that don't comply. It is possible to do this with most networks provided you know how.
The downside of this is that it could make it hard for new or small affiliates to get started. It doesn't have to. By providing mechanisms for affiliates to provide information about themselves and what they plan, and by having strong terms and conditions that affiliates must work within, affiliate marketing can still be available to businesses of all sizes.
Posted by Gayle at May 13, 2008 10:01 AM
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