A much touted statistic this year was US ecommerce’s market share, growing at roughly one per cent annually for the past ten years, which then recorded that decade’s worth of growth in the space of eight weeks when the country was plunged into its first lockdowns.

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern, Scott Galloway, points to the food sector as indicative of the wholesale change that such shifts are having on the entire retail ecosystem: “Online grocery, which was about 1.8% in the US; is about to jump 15-20%. Think about what happens when $100-150 billion of grocery transitions from tertiary to online: you’re talking about cold storage, logistics, pick and pack automation. This is going to create tremendous disruption and tremendous opportunity as online grocery accelerates.”

Affiliate marketing has its own chapter to write in how it has helped play a role in supporting this daunting change which will, no doubt, spring further surprises in 2021.

Here I’ve picked a handful of insights gleaned from Awin experiences in 2020 that, if nurtured and supported, can sustain the affiliate channel in 2021 and beyond.

New customers driving affiliate success

Probably my favourite trend of this year has been the acceleration in new customers the channel has driven. At the start of 2020 our network data showed around one in four shoppers were new to the brands they bought from through affiliate links. At the peak of the UK lockdown in April this surged to 37% and has remained consistently above 30%, hitting those spring peaks again this month. 

This was obviously anticipated. Fraud protection company ClearSale analyzed e-commerce customer data in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Mexico and Argentina, all countries where some form of lockdowns were in effect. They found the average number of brand-new online shoppers rose by 12% between March and April.

But affiliate marketing seems to have outstripped general trends. While cashback sites drive high quality customers, their incidence of new to file shoppers tend to be amongst the lowest. However, proportionally these numbers increased 50% to close to one in three. 

In April 2019 discount and coupon sites were attracting around 26% new customers. By April 2020 this had exceeded 41%.

If you’re looking to tackle the ‘incrementality’ in affiliate marketing dilemma, this is a useful place to start. 

While context and additional datapoints are necessary for a more three dimensional view on shoppers referred by the channel, 2021 will require a concerted effort to retain these customers, both for publishers and advertisers.

And think of the opportunity for travel companies; the rebound should happen in 2021 and with it a new swathe of shoppers to tap into for the first time.

Pivoting to the publisher model

Necessity was the mother of invention for advertisers who found revenue streams drying up in 2020 and that has seen some embrace the publisher model in a further blurring of the lines between what we label a publisher.

The most notable Awin example this year is tastecard, the dining membership card business, which runs an affiliate programme on the network. Faced with restaurants shuttering across the country, the company built a customer loyalty scheme for members to drive retention. 

Identifying ‘good fit’ Awin advertisers, in the space of two weeks, tastecard had partnered with a dozen new brands, offering deals and exclusives to their members.

tastecard is not alone in pivoting their business and looking to the affiliate channel to drive that growth. Anecdotally from an Awin perspective, it is filtering through and becoming one of the most requested strategies from clients across the network.

There are two additional considerations that will need further clarity in 2021. Firstly, brands are not necessarily looking to build additional revenue streams through commission payments from other advertisers, but they are looking for compelling offers that bake in customer loyalty. This requires a mindset change away from our classic last click, cost-per-acquisition approach to affiliate marketing.

Secondly, the affiliate landscape is already crowded, and with brands now competing against traditional publishers for the credit in driving sales, we need a more nuanced view on how we apportion revenue and sales. As ever this remains one of the key roles of a network, to arbitrate the interests of multiple parties in the affiliate relationship.

In-app is a must-have

About a year ago the then newly formed Publisher Board published a code of conduct focused on core areas they felt needed to be addressed to ensure affiliates are fairly treated in an industry that historically has always focused more energy on advertiser needs.

One of the themes they highlighted was the need to track all sales across the path to purchase. Mobile analysts Sensor Tower estimate UK consumers will spend more than £3bn on non-gaming app purchases by 2021 and across Europe AppsFlyer found a 35% increase in ecommerce app installs in Europe during this year’s lockdowns from March to April 2020.

There remains a curious dislocation between what we think is acceptable or unacceptable to track through the affiliate channel. We talk expansively about how we can theoretically track anything and everything, yet ecommerce enabled mobile sales are a traditional blind-spot that is seen as technically separate.

Perhaps it’s the legacy of many programmes being integrated and launched in days when they didn’t have transactional app functionality but the days when app-tracking can be shunted to the bottom of a technical to-do list seem numbered.

Awin’s November 2020 results showed a 14x annual increase in app sales. Progress of course, but there’s much to do. And that will require us to formulate a compelling narrative for brands about the benefit of tracking these sales.

A surge in SMEs embracing digital marketing

Awin has made no secret that 2020 has been the year of the SME. Launching Awin Access in January; our service targeting micro-SMEs, start-ups and entrepreneurs, saw more than 500 signing up to  the network. SMEs are a largely untapped opportunity for affiliate marketing. 

With businesses scrambling to mitigate the damage from closed physical stores, the importance of not only a fully functioning online shop but also the ability to connect consumers is notable.

In June the IAB found that more than half of SMEs consider digital advertising crucial in their future survival. 

But marketing to this cohort of companies requires a rethink. Traditionally successful publisher models may not be a natural or easy fit for many SMEs, necessitating we offer easily found alternatives. Similarly the positioning of an affiliate network needs to be as a vendor that enables a business to easily track online interactions and iterate out their own network of partners.

Next year we must work to make the channel relevant to small businesses. For these companies the networks and personal relationships beloved of the channel may be less important than the automation and plug and play aspect of our technologies. Time poor and potentially strapped for resource, they will be looking for partners who can fast track their ambitions with minimal fuss.

Publishers pushing affiliate marketing into the mainstream

The affiliate channel has spent years convincing brands that they need to align affiliate marketing with their other digital channels. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard people say we should be at the top table when campaign planning.

More recently however that discussion has been resonating strongly with media publishers who are experimenting with their affiliate efforts, and recognising the halo effect the channel offers other revenue streams.

Digiday reported this month that Cyber Weekend saw Wired drive its second and third biggest days for subscription sign-ups, noting that affiliate content had been instrumental in driving traffic and interest to their site across peak trading.

Wired’s affiliate content is not behind a paywall but for subscriptions, the affiliate e-commerce pages used display ads and contextual marketing in the stories to promote the publications’ own subscription deal. As such affiliate commissions and subscriptions now drive 30% of Wired’s revenue, up from 20% as reported in the first half of the year.

Similarly BuzzFeed’s decision to launch their gift guide weeks earlier than 2019 saw revenue soar more than 575%, thanks in part to producing more than 200% more gift guide content.

As these in-demand publishers grow their affiliate revenues so 2021 should see the channel positioned as a commercial front-runner than a way of plugging gaps between more important streams. They will also bring new brand led-strategies to the table, melding the words of acquisition with rich content.

The post How 2020 Will Shape Future Affiliate Growth appeared first on PerformanceIN.

American publishers considered it most important and when asked in addition whether they have a complete understanding of the regulatory requirements in disclosing commercial relationships, almost 60% said they do. The power and risks of hefty fines from US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could explain why the percentage is so much higher than among publishers polled in the UK (32%) and Germany (22%).

Low adoption rates

Yet the affiliate industry faces a dichotomy. While our survey found a good level of awareness of the topic in our three largest markets, publishers generally do not meet their regulatory obligations. On-site disclosure messaging within our channel remains rare and inconsistent.

For the longtail, there may be the assumption that they’re too small to matter, but size plays no part in who regulators investigate. It’s not just publishers under the microscope, brands too are held responsible for their affiliate partnerships. A worrying side effect could be that retailers, nervous of the reputational damage consumer complaints against them generate, decide to pare back their affiliate campaigns and with it slash their investment in the channel.

Ignorance is no defence

Ignorance is no defence with regulators tightening their guidance for influencers, bloggers and the wider publisher community over the past decade. The FTC and UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) now offer broadly aligned, prescriptive advice on an affiliate’s disclosure responsibilities.

Last updated in late 2019, the ASA states “in instances where there is an affiliate marketing arrangement in place, you need to make it clear whether parts or all of the content is an ad.” The FTC provides this additional context, “if you disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement”.

The growth of the influencer industry has no doubt expedited regulatory attention with brand partnerships and sponsorship deals attracting major money.

Social media solutions

For publishers reliant on social media, the technical or word limitations of social networks has necessitated simple and succinct solutions. It is now common to see labels such as ‘#ad’ or ‘#spon’ in posts endorsing brands and products.

According to a second study we commissioned of UK consumers, this seems to broadly resonate with audiences. One in ten users say they see such disclaimers almost daily, two-thirds at least once a week.

Unsurprisingly health and beauty and fashion are the sectors most likely to attract such notifiers as these are the most favoured by influencers. Our survey also found an overwhelming majority of consumers (81%) believe influencers should be more transparent about the commercial partnerships they are forging. 

A potential industry-wide solution

The direction of travel seems clear, but the industry has failed to coalesce around a central message or drive a concerted effort to encourage compliance through an ongoing education and training programme. At Awin we’re trialling a new plug-in for our longtail and content publisher community designed to automate and remove the confusing array of existing solutions. 

Offering page level and link level automated labelling for publishers, adMission is our first attempt to create a degree of standardisation for an industry where none exists. Successive surveys have shown that awareness of the affiliate channel by consumers is low (our own survey found that almost three-quarters of them were unable to correctly identify what ‘#aff’ or ‘#affiliate’ mean), but as more and more publishers feature disclaimers in their content, awareness of affiliates should grow, enabling publishers to talk more honestly and frankly about how they’re able to produce content because they earn commissions to fund it. 

Context was an important consideration when scoping out adMission, which is why publishers can tailor individual notifiers most appropriate for their pages. In a nutshell, the widget allows publishers to customise text that explains how they drive revenue from affiliate and other commercial relationships. Drilling down further, for publishers with links embedded in product reviews, advertorial copy or anywhere else on site, they are then able to automatically append each link with an icon, character or text of their choosing.

Enhancing consumer trust

Earlier this year we spoke to some of the mass media publishers who are opening up new revenue streams for brands in the affiliate channel and it was clear there was a demand for a technical solution. Anecdotally they told us anything that helps maintain trust with already engaged audiences should only be seen as a good thing.

This sentiment was reflected in our survey, as when we asked whether publishers would make use of a free and easy to integrate solution, 85% said they would with remarkable consistency across Germany (84%), US (84%) and UK (86%). Encouragingly, an even higher number (87%) felt the impact on their site would either be positive or at worst neutral. Just one in eight would eschew any sort of disclosure believing it to be a negative addition to their links.

One final consideration when we built adMission was that it had to be agnostic. There’s no point in offering publishers something that only recognises the Awin domain and appends a notifier to Awin links. Not only would this be confusing to the consumer, it would also be a non-starter for publishers. As a result any network, agency, vendor or SaaS provider’s domains can be added to the widget, providing a run of site answer to one of our channel’s biggest challenges. 

Ultimately it’s easily fixable

While the threat that disclosure poses isn’t existential, it’s one that is fixable and within our purview. It also demonstrates to regulators that the industry is capable of meeting challenges head-on. John Constine, Head of Content at SignalFire, writing in TechCrunch on this issue, neatly encapsulated why it should be nipped in the bud before it becomes inflated: “society has enough trouble with misinformation on the internet, from trolls to election meddlers. They should at least be able to trust that if someone says they love their new jacket, they didn’t secretly get paid for it”.

The post 70% of Publishers Understand the Importance of Ad Disclosure appeared first on PerformanceIN.

New data from Awin shows approved affiliate applications to the global network have more than doubled since the lockdown took effect in many countries. Kicking in around mid-March, total applications spiked 80% before accelerating further in April. The situation was further compounded by Amazon’s announcements that it was removing a raft of longstanding publishers from its Associates’ programme. 

That decision was then followed up by the news that Amazon commissions would be slashed across its entire programme by up to 80%, leading to Awin applications seeing a sharp increase of 150% on January and February’s average.

Awin assessed every approved affiliate application across all territories from January 1^st to April 21^st. Segmenting the data on a weekly basis, the upward trend across March then ramped up in mid-April (week 16):

The coronavirus has decimated marketing spend across the world. According to a recent survey of 400 businesses by IAB US, 74% feel the pandemic will have a bigger impact than the financial crisis of 2008, with seven in ten pausing or adjusting their planned spend. One in four have halted all advertising until the end of June and, while traditionally resilient, digital ad spend is down 33%.

Affiliate marketing hasn’t escaped unscathed, with high profile brands like Macy’s suspending their affiliate programmes. Despite some notable exceptions, especially in the travel sector, Awin is running more than 95% of its retailer campaigns as normal, presenting publishers with an opportunity to plug revenue gaps they may be experiencing through other channels. 

Global commissions in April are running 25% higher than the same period in 2019 as consumers turn to ecommerce, with sales in certain verticals such as beauty and homeware doubling at certain times, offering a positive story for publishers of all varieties.

Digital services are experiencing unprecedented demand. Despite UK retail suffering a general 5% slump in March, The Office for National Statistics said 22% of all sales were driven by ecommerce, the highest it’s ever been and a figure that could hit one in four pounds spent online in April.

Meanwhile many publishers are facing shortfalls in anticipated revenue as keyword blocking of coronavirus related terms is leading to ad units being blocked online. With some of these sites also dependent on Amazon’s Associates programme for income, affiliate marketing’s focus on performance is proving an attractive option for publishers and brands alike.

As Amazon’s commission changes are currently limited to the US, the biggest uplift in affiliate applications has been witnessed across Awin US and ShareASale. From mid-March to the middle of April, publishers have flocked to the networks, the team processing almost four times as many approvals in the second half of April:

Similarly the application to approval rate on the network has improved significantly to almost 60% as established affiliates register their interest in alternative promotional sources, thus underlining the revenue opportunity for brands.

But it is not enough to just expect affiliates to switch from one platform to another. The Amazon Associates’ programme is one that thousands of affiliates are familiar with and have been using for years. By contrast they may find other programmes and network interfaces alien to them and additional guidance will be necessary. 

To support publishers affected by Amazon’s changes, it is imperative networks and SaaS platforms make access to their technology and advertisers as seamless as possible. Awin has expedited applications from publishers new to the network, ensuring they will be processed within one business day, as well as speeding up application times to individual advertiser programmes. 

The current pandemic and decisions to pause programmes or slash commissions from major campaigns represents the biggest upheaval seen in the channel since Google exited the affiliate space in 2013. The difference now is affiliate marketing is firmly part of the mainstream marketing mix in a period of pent-up consumer demand. The industry’s pure payment on performance heritage and the continued commitment from the overwhelming number of advertisers operating affiliate programmes demonstrates the resilience of the channel in these turbulent times.

The post Affiliate Marketing Demand Soars as Budget Cuts Kick In appeared first on PerformanceIN.

How big is the affiliate marketing channel in the UK? This was a question the industry asked itself seven years ago when 27 companies collaborated to bring to life the world’s first size of market study.

Coordinated by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC, the weighty report grabbed headlines with compelling revenue and return on investment numbers. Boasting £16 in sales for every £1 invested and accounting for £14bn of the UK’s e-commerce market, it definitely showed affiliate marketing was a channel to be taken seriously.

Fast forward to 2020 and no such report exists to show the current scale of the industry. While this may seem like a retrograde step perhaps it also indicates how much affiliate marketing has integrated into the wider digital ecosystem.

However, the IAB still produces a couple of headline affiliate numbers. And that’s where we need businesses operating within the space to come forward and submit their data.

Wider contribution

As part of their Adspend Study, the IAB only measures network and platform fees. Given they don’t take into account commissions in the wider study, they aggregate both sets of data to produce a top-line number specifically for the affiliate industry.

This can only be achieved, however, if we have as wide a contribution from the industry as possible.

These are the companies who submitted numbers in 2019:

Awin, CJ, Impact, MyOffers, Optimise, Partnerize, Quidco, Rakuten, Tradedoubler.

It’s worth noting that this is a significant drop from seven years ago and it would be great to see other companies add their revenues to the total. That’s why we’re reaching out to the wider affiliate community.

Snapshot of the channel

If you’re interested, there are a couple of considerations. Given networks and SaaS platforms typically capture most publisher commissions, we do not need publishers to contribute unless there are revenues not captured through these types of platforms. 

Similarly, some advertiser run direct programmes which may be missed from the overall picture. Agencies too may be using software that isn’t offered by the aforementioned businesses. As a general rule of thumb, if you feel you can submit numbers that won’t be accounted for twice and are based on driving CPA-based activity we want to hear from you.

While we don’t have the resource to model numbers from major programmes like eBay and Amazon, and therefore cannot measure the full scope of UK affiliate marketing, what remains is an important snapshot of the channel. The only data needed is full-year commissions and fees tracked in the UK through your business.

Now for the serious bit. The IAB collects this data in a secure environment, subject to the rigour of PwC’s data handling standards. No submitting company’s data is shared with another submitting company’s. All data is collated and represented as a ‘size of market’ piece; nothing is separated out.

Here are the results from the last three years:

It’s completely free to submit your numbers and you do not need to be a member to participate. You’ll also receive a copy of the report when it is released in April.

If you feel you should be included please drop me a line and I will pass your details onto the IAB who can send out the submission form. Time is short so you’ll need to get in touch this week.

The post How You Can Support this Year’s IAB/PwC Affiliate Marketing Study appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The affiliate channel has always had a chameleon-like ability to adapt to its environment. However, as consumer and regulatory concerns about privacy and data escalate, brands ramp up their demands for transparency and the tech giants clampdown on what can be tracked online, so affiliate marketing is faced with a barrage of new challenges.

In 2020, what should brands be doing to futureproof their campaigns for the next generation of affiliate and partner marketing? Here, we outline a future blueprint for marketers in the channel.

Privacy and data

Privacy and data will be two major battlegrounds and it is imperative marketers work with trusted partners who can demonstrate they have robust systems to minimise the risk of customers’ data being exploited. 

In 2017, PwC surveyed 2,000 American consumers to better understand their attitudes to data security, cybersecurity, privacy, trust, and regulation. They found that 92% of respondents want to control the data collected about them with a similar amount saying they will not do business with a company they do not trust. Overall, PwC found there is a strong correlation between the trust a consumer has and the amount of data they are willing to share.

With a quarter of US consumers using ad blockers and a flurry of data protection laws coming into place across the world, we need to establish a new standard that puts people’s privacy protection and cybersecurity first to maintain confidence in our channel.

The first consideration needs to be what data do you capture and can you justify doing so? Privacy by design is now a default setting. Every product, iteration and service developed by companies should take this as a starting point. 
The smaller the amount of personally identifiable information the better. Consider a classic affiliate sale. Strictly speaking, this could mean an IP address or order ID. Both of these data points can be scrambled, truncated or anonymised within a reporting interface. 

If you want to capture further customer data, you must have checks and balances in place to ensure it is safely stored or used in an aggregated form. It can be tempting when speaking to clients to ask them to share as many data points as possible with a view to creating a suite of hugely detailed reports. But, with a data protection approach and as a general rule of thumb, if you don’t need to capture certain pieces of information, then don’t.

The critically important European legislation GDPR bakes in a number of principles based around how any of the European Union’s 500m citizens’ data can be used. With many global companies selling products to the EU, it’s vital marketers across the world are informed about the regulation. 

Futureproofing tracking

Another core challenge marketers face is being able to accurately track their online campaigns and interactions. With Apple, Chrome and Mozilla moving from supporting third-party tracking to the reliance on first-party cookies, it’s incumbent on vendors to develop technology that mitigates the impact.

Apple’s high profile Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) has already seen an erosion of around 3% of affiliate commissions and while Awin has clawed back lost commissions in the form of compensation payments for impacted publishers, clearly a longer-term approach is needed. The situation is reminiscent of when mobile sites first launched without affiliate tracking in place. However, in that case, a shift towards mobile responsive sites eradicated the problem. This is not a topic that can be solved without companies investing in new tech solutions while also recognising that affiliates do not work for free. Commissions shouldn’t be a price these partners pay for a lack of advertiser urgency in futureproofing their programmes.

The industry is now able to offer solutions that ensure the continued tracking of affiliate programmes. Server to server tracking helps to tackle the consequences of adblockers and browser tracking preventions. Similarly, mobile app tracking not only supercharges the number of sales an advertiser can report on but also boosts conversion rates. Awin’s longstanding MasterTag and another similar industry tracking relies on first-party cookies which means the affiliate industry is able to offer tough tracking solutions that other digital marketing disciplines can’t necessarily rely upon.  

For now, this hybrid approach offers valid solutions, however, how do we futureproof tracking so that it isn’t beholden on changes that browsers can make with little or no notice? Similar to Google’s Parallel Tracking, Awin has recently launched a tracking solution that sends the consumer directly to an advertiser site by ‘bouncing’, rather than redirecting, thereby ensuring no adblocker or browser can impede the technology.

While moves to block tracking aren’t typically aimed at affiliate marketing activity, we are impacted as a consequence of bigger initiatives, underpinning why it’s critical we work as an industry to continue to invest in robust solutions.

A more accessible platform

The final area of the affiliate marketing evolution is in how partnerships are formed by creating a more egalitarian and accessible platform for businesses of all shapes and sizes to connect from. One of the key developments over the past 18 months has been the emergence of a number of non-traditional affiliate businesses, software companies, banks and brands who are looking to explore the CPA model and build additional revenue streams.

By developing a trusted ecosystem of innovative companies who are capable of augmenting everything from publisher feeds to on-site conversions, so the industry will take a more ‘open source’ approach to affiliate marketing.
In recent months Awin has started working with visual product recognition companies, single basket solutions, dynamic search and product recommendation companies, white label price comparison sites and advanced attribution businesses.

We need to stop thinking that networks should be constantly looking to build these solutions themselves. Why try and iterate world-beating business intelligence tools, for example, when Tableau exists? 

We should be positioning affiliate partners and advertisers as part of a seamless and dynamic ecosystem, connected by a network and payable on a last-click CPA basis. Instead of a focus on the affiliate model, we will instead put the consumer at the heart of our connections and adapt working practices and payment models based on what works for that particular relationship. Breaking free of that mindset should engender a more creative approach to all our jobs and secure the next generation of affiliate and partner marketing.

The post #PILIVE19: 2020 – A Future Blueprint for Affiliate Partnerships appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Online shopping events have traditionally coalesced around local and seasonal points in the calendar; Easter, Christmas, and other regional festivals. However, with the growing internationalisation of e-commerce, we have witnessed a more homogenous and commercially driven approach to events that transcend national borders.

The obvious manifestation is Black Friday, an American retail phenomenon with in-store roots. It has long resonated with consumers in the US, falling the day after the national holiday of Thanksgiving and marking the traditional start of the Christmas shopping period. 

But more recently the aggressive expansion plans of Amazon have transformed the retail landscape by exporting the basic principles of discounted and time-sensitive deals to an overseas audience, proving both irresistible to consumers and hugely disruptive for brands.

With Black Friday set to consolidate its position as the most important trading day in the West, what trends do we anticipate seeing in the ‘Golden Quarter’ this year?

1. November consolidates its leading position

Conventionally Christmas ensured December was the busiest month of the year for advertisers and publishers, but since 2016, November has taken that title with consumers resisting the urge to buy in October in anticipation of the slew of deals across November.

For brands looking to steal a march on their competitors, this would appear to be pushing higher growth in advance of Black Friday. Over the past couple of years, Awin has seen greater year-on-year numbers in the run-up to the big day with the Monday preceding Black Friday posting the highest comparative revenue growth in 2017.

This dragging of the trade earlier in the month could also find itself blurring with events like Singles’ Day and Australia’s Click Frenzy. While there’s no doubt Black Friday is the main event, as the years progress, so brands will be looking for anything that will give them an edge over the competition. This could solidify the whole month of November as a discounting free-for-all, something that could create additional headaches for already squeezed brands.

2. Awin’s first 50% smartphone day

Peak trading has often been associated with network firsts. 2016, for example, saw Black Friday track more than €1m in sales in a single day on smartphones with that figure set to top €2.5m this year.

However, with mobile now part and parcel of the wider digital landscape, as we stand at the end of 2018 certain brands are tracking three out of every four clicks and nearly as many sales. 

Black Friday usually witnesses a spike in smartphone conversions, as well as some affiliates organising additional, non-acquisition payments, representing a perfect opportunity for them to take advantage of the major events in November. Because of the significant increase in mobile traffic, we can expect Black Friday 2018 to potentially track more than 50% of transactions through smartphones. The wider cyber weekend, incorporating the two days of the week when mobile sales peak, should also follow this trend.

3. Finding a creative angle

It’s increasingly common for brands to run week-long events and we would anticipate seeing more of the same this year. This challenges our perceptions of running deals and discounts as evidence shows that when they are considered time sensitive (i.e. contained to one-day or an extended weekend), conversions, and therefore transactions, increase. Is this land grab concealing a longer-term problem? Potential sales fatigue over time and suspicion among consumers that when products are fully priced, the cost has either been artificially inflated or doesn’t represent value for money?

It should be hoped that every year a handful of brands will offer something groundbreaking, or at the least quirky, to break the monotony. 

Perhaps we will start to see the Singles’ Day approach of ‘retailtainment’ take root, whereby theatrics and a sense of occasion accompany the basic human desire to shop. While we wouldn’t expect to see anything on such a grand scale associated with Singles’ Day, the event offers a window into how branding and sales can merge to create an engaging customer experience, both off and online. As a counterpoint to Black Friday’s blunt instrument, this presents an interesting alternative.

4. Regional trends may play a part

While e-commerce grows increasingly international in focus, regional variations and quirks are still likely to play a part.

Take Black Friday in Brazil. Despite the turmoil in South America’s largest economy, locals are guaranteed some extra spending money ahead of peak trading thanks to a ‘13th paycheck’, mandated in law. This means that every employee receives a bumper bonus during their summer months, an additional pay packet to supplement their normal earnings. This undoubtedly helps account for Brazil’s outlier status around Black Friday, with more than 20% of the entire month’s sales on the Awin network tracked on a single day. The next biggest market is the UK at around 17% of November’s total:​

Similarly, the US remains the only Awin market whereby Cyber Monday tracks the greatest revenue, with this date remaining a predominantly online event in contrast to the in-store focus of Black Friday.

5. Looking beyond the sale

Ahead of Black Friday and peak trading this Golden Quarter, we hope that both greater controls and analysis will be carried out that produces insight to support continued investment in affiliate marketing. For several of our clients that has meant focusing on tracking new customer acquisition through the affiliate channel and aligning this approach with offers pushed to consumers via their publishers.

For one, Black Friday was the only day during the six-week peak trading window that new customers exceeded existing, with the wider cyber weekend also drawing in higher-than-average new-to-file shoppers.

While it’s difficult to draw concrete conclusions, this could support a theory that Black Friday traffic is distinct and enables brands to reach consumers they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to.

Research from the Brazilian e-commerce specialist e-Bit in 2016, found that Black Friday was potentially a perfect opportunity to attract new customers. According to their insights, the big day directly impacted the growth of online shoppers in the country by up to 17%, with an extra 280,000 shoppers making their very first online purchase during the 24-hour Black Friday period.

Given we know that Black Friday is an exceptional event in the retail calendar, a combination of assessing new customers and their subsequent purchase behaviour should be a central part of evaluating affiliate performance around peak.

Awin has released a Whitepaper revealing some useful insights that brands can leverage for success. Access the Whitepaper here.

The post Black Friday 2018: Trends and Predictions to Expect in the ‘Golden Quarter’ appeared first on PerformanceIN.

A sleeping giant; the best-kept secret in digital advertising; the biggest bang for your buck.

These phrases have been used over the years to describe affiliate marketing; a channel that can boast a return on investment of more than £12 for every £1 spent (IAB/PwC).

Undoubtedly one of the initiatives that have helped showcase the power of affiliate marketing to a wider audience, establishing its rightful place in the top tier of digital channels, is the Online Performance Marketing Study (OPM), an annual appraisal of the UK industry.

The project is coordinated by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC and was born from a desire to better measure the whole scope of the affiliate channel. Until 2013 network fees and overrides were the only aspects measured by the biannual IAB AdSpend Study and these were then categorised as a subset of display.

Recognising this ignored the many millions of pounds spent by advertisers to drive those sales through the diverse mass of affiliates, we lobbied for a separate research project. And thus the Online Performance Marketing Study, additionally capturing lead generation budgets, came into being.

This was no mean feat; with more than 23 companies submitting their numbers and a similar number contributing funds to support it, the OPM was truly a pan-industry initiative that underlined the collaborative nature of the channel to bring this pioneering piece of work to life.

When the first numbers were released (£814m spent on driving £9bn in sales), the findings were nothing short of revelatory. For the first time anywhere in the world an authoritative, comprehensive survey of the affiliate market showed how significant it is in driving e-commerce sales as well as funding countless businesses and boosting the digital economy.

From mainstream conferences to trade press, from sales pitches to published works, the UK OPM Study has been referenced in hundreds of places, underlining it should not be ignored by brands interested in connecting with millions of consumers across the country.

Fast forward five years and this project is potentially in peril. Despite the revenue and spend doubling in that time and the Study feted by the affiliate industries in many other countries around the world, the UK seems to have become complacent with fewer and fewer businesses contributing their numbers. And this means it’s left to PwC to model the data that was previously supplied by all the affiliate networks, some affiliates and agencies and self-serve SaaS platforms.

The result is the Study carries less gravity and supporters nervously tout the numbers, hoping they broadly reflect what is happening in the wider market, with a fear they may be wide of the mark and misleading.

And so, five years after the first Study was launched, we’re attempting to breathe new life into OPM, reaching out to companies who contributed in the past and asking them to do so again. The data is submitted completely securely, accessed only by PwC and helps to continue to define the UK as the world’s most mature affiliate market. This week, the IAB will be reaching out to more than a dozen businesses asking them to consider adding their data to the overall picture.

There will also be some other changes. In an age when the term performance is no longer limited to the remit of affiliate marketing, we’ll be redefining the Study as one focused on the affiliate and lead generation channels by name. It will also be launched as a standalone piece of research, hopefully in May 2018, and we’ll ask major players to support it with commentary and PR pieces.

2018 will see a new, reinvigorated Study – the envy of the world – but it can only succeed if we rekindle the spirit of collaboration that made it such a significant breakthrough first time around. The result will be we all win. Interest will be piqued, budgets secured and the affiliate channel’s journey to the heart of brands’ marketing efforts will continue.

If you think the revenue you’re driving isn’t being recorded by traditional affiliate networks, agencies and SaaS platforms, please get in contact with the IAB who will be able to advise on whether we’re able to include your numbers in this year’s Study.

The post ‘All-Win’: Why the Industry Should Back the 2018 Online Performance Marketing Study appeared first on PerformanceIN.

What does Black Friday tell us about the global state of retail? In 2017 this question could be harder to answer than ever before as the creep of offers starting ever earlier turns the second half of November into one long discounting event.

In 2016, the biggest year-on-year daily increase in the run up to and across the Cyber Weekend was the Monday preceding Black Friday and with one trade publication reporting that of more than 20 major brands running promotions, just two planned to start on Black Friday, it’s clear the retail landscape is continuing to reinvent itself on an almost annual basis.

What do this year’s November statistics tell us about this changing picture? Looking at sales generated across the entire Awin network until Weds 22nd, we can see performance is trending significantly up:

The 20% global increase on the Monday preceding Black Friday is possibly indicative of the increasing pressure on retailers to ensure they steal a march on the competition but also raises doubts about whether Black Friday could, at some point, run out of steam.

When sales’ revenue is factored in, the same Monday saw a 23% spike indicating that consumers are spending more per transaction, in fact more than €8 on average for every sale. Perhaps this is a consequence of deeper discounting encouraging greater spend or it could be due to the complexion of retailers driving the most sales.

Global variances are becoming ironed out across Black Friday, making it a truly universal affiliate event. This is an important hook for marketers in an industry historically noted for its vagaries and variances leading to issues around scaling affiliate programmes beyond their local territories.

What is clear from a series of interviews Awin carried out with brands across the various countries it runs programmes in, is Black Friday witnessed phenomenal growth last year and has rapidly cemented itself as an event that the channel is expertly placed to take advantage of.

Media exposure and attention has played a large role in promoting the concept of Black Friday to consumers in these countries. In The Netherlands, for example, BlackFridayNederland.nl was the first dedicated website for Black Friday and launched as recently as 2015. Its founder, Pablo Druijts, described the recent transformation in popular understanding:

“At the start of our platform you could notice that visitors were especially interested in the meaning of the concept of ‘Black Friday’… now the majority of them are therefore looking for offers and participating stores,” he said.

“The impact on our business has been enormous; our visitors increased by about 320% in November 2016 compared to November 2015 and we have seen our sales increase fivefold.”

For retailers in the US, Black Friday has a different significance as this year could be the day it overtakes Cyber Monday for the first time, marking a symbolic shift away from the traditionally in-store event following Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile in the UK brands will be nervously anticipating the Brexit effect and ironically looking to Europe and beyond to shore up their numbers.

Black Friday and the wider promotional window remains an event in flux and this year’s numbers will undoubtedly raise as many questions as it answers.

To help affiliate marketers make sense of the data this year, Awin will be launching a global report on Monday that will showcase the breadth and depth of Black Friday. The interactive data visualisation will also allow for localised insights across both the advertiser and publisher base.

We will also be live blogging the day from 8am on Friday where we hope to bring you insights across the day as it unfolds.

The post Are Retailers Ready to Capitalise on Cyber Weekend? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Black Friday, the retailing juggernaut that seems to have changed our shopping behaviour forever, can legitimately claim to have forged new breeds of consumer.

Such is the mainstream hysteria that has been whipped up by Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), we have a special kind of deal hunter, poised to pounce on the biggest and best promotions on the stroke of a new day. 
When the 12am stampede subsides and traffic dies down, another type of consumer is stirring: the early-rising breakfast buyers who reach for their smartphones before parting with their pounds.

It’s these fascinating developments that help Black Friday contribute so much to the retail industry and offer a frenzy like no other. 

Plotting sales, conversions and average basket values across the 24 hours of Black Friday highlights consumers’ surging and waning interest as retailers cross their fingers and hope the day has delivered one of the best for trade they’ve ever seen. 

When the dust has settled, the numbers have been tallied and the data crunched, patterns and insights emerge. And in walks the Black Friday elephant. 

If you’re a retailer who embraced Black Friday last year, plot your sales hour by hour and check the profile that emerges. Using data from our own network, we have a reflection of when consumers will take to the sites of retailers, as well as an uncanny resemblance to a certain large mammal. 

Considering this, it will be telling if a number of retailers launch their offers at midnight, or, in the quest for eyeballs and Christmas cash, perhaps we’ll see a greater number of offers launching on Thursday evening. If so, peak trading will continue to creep ever earlier in the shopping calendar.

What does this all mean for those occupying the performance space? Well, having already touched on the early-morning shopper, it’s worth delving deeper to appreciate how they are purchasing. Typically reaching for their smartphones, traffic through handheld devices peaks between 8:00am and 9:00am, unlike tablets which lend themselves to late-night browsing when the gap between the two platforms is at its most pronounced. 

But while traffic may peak for smartphones, the sales tend to lag. The importance of tracking consumers as they switch between connected platforms is brought into view, with data from our network showing handsets fulfilling their role as a key initiator of consumer interest in retailers’ products. That the conversions happen later and elsewhere demonstrates the increasingly vacillating path to purchase as shoppers weave between multiple sources of content across static and mobile devices.

For email marketers, being on point at the break of the day gives the greatest assurance that as people scan their smartphones, offers will be noticed. Those who have built multi-channel offerings in particular have the opportunity to target consumers who may not convert in the moment but return to their site later in the day on a tablet or desktop.

Similarly spare a thought (and commission bonus) for longtail bloggers, who have been constructing their content only for it to act as a source of initial inspiration, piquing interest but often failing to convert earlier in the day. 
Such is the swell in clicks and unqualified interest, these affiliates are the foot soldiers who often fail to reap the commission rewards.

Many of those sales will happen later – in the early or late evening – and after the working day is over, expect average order values and conversion rates to soar. For affiliate marketers, being present in a consumer’s mind at this time of day is critical to success.

And when the day is over, digital’s role in driving interest and transactions at each stage of Black Friday becomes clear. The Black Friday elephant is here to stay… For now 

The post Are You Ready for the Black Friday Elephant? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Commission erosion is a subject that impacts us all in the affiliate industry yet is somehow a topic that never seems to attract much attention.

It’s a curious thing because for a channel premised on being paid for conversions you’d think we’d ferociously ensure our tracking was robust, cookie overwriting was mitigated and we future-proofed our business model.

It’s this central premise that will be at the heart of Affiliate Window’s presentation at this year’s Performance Marketing Insights, at 12:30 on day one.

The title of our session, referencing ‘commission killers’ may seem melodramatic, but the consequences for affiliates ultimately determines whether the mid to longtail can build viable and sustainable businesses. For an industry that claims this silent army of affiliates is so vital we seem fairly lackadaisical in our attempts to defend their (not to mention networks’) revenue.

I suppose the classic course of action that has long impacted commissions is de-duplication; that is whether an advertiser chooses to pay an affiliate for a sale that ultimately was attributed to another channel. 

I think few of us that would feasibly argue against some form of de-duplication, such as generic search for example, but we should draw lines in the sand about what is and isn’t acceptable. Direct type in a search box… brand paid search? What is the general industry line on this? There actually isn’t one and therefore what’s to stop ‘de-duplication’ creep.

Very often the conversation with advertisers about de-duplication (often mistaken for attribution) is also framed incorrectly. By focusing on the last click CPA model that we’re all so wedded to, we ignore the 20 clicks or 200 impressions that affiliates generated via Affiliate Window last year for every sale that the advertiser received, without any marketing cost.

Moving forwards?

We had an opportunity about five years ago to outline some definitive guidelines. With the advent of remarketing and retargeting and the new kids on the block wanting to establish themselves within the sphere of affiliates, we decided some rules were in order. Hence the dawn of the so called ‘soft-click’ that establishes cookie hierarchies and states that a remarketed ad with affiliate links cannot overwrite a prior affiliate interaction. It was a bold move but one that was broadly supported by the networks and showed that a middle way could be found. The affiliate industry is an ongoing jostle of competing business models fighting for the conversion and as such walking that fine line is often tricky, but this seemed to offer a satisfactory compromise.

Sadly I think we’ve gone backwards. I know there are competitors of mine who still adhere to the central principle but I also know there are some that don’t. Where’s the guarantee that agnostic tracking companies and other players in the market are abiding by the rules? A changing in the guard at a number of the companies that were involved in the project makes it feel that the impetus has been lost and the issue obfuscated. Again, who suffers the most? Affiliates, and most likely the longtail who can least afford to.

But de-duplication is nothing new. There are more recent trends that continue to chip away at the earnings’ potential of every sale generated. 

Mobile tracking…

Over the past two years Affiliate Window has been building a cross-device tracking solution, now in place on around 10% of our advertisers and generating roughly 1,000 additional sales per day. In a nutshell, if an affiliate sale starts on a smartphone, for example, we can trace the journey should it complete on a desktop and assign a commission where previously we wouldn’t have been able to. 

Mobile as a commission killer is not a new topic. Affiliate Window regularly tracks in excess of 20% of sales per day via smartphones and astonishingly there are still advertisers who lack tracking on their m-commerce sites. It’s one of the reasons we put a ‘fix’ in place to re-direct traffic in order to record at least some commission. Either that or demand a compensation payment; the affiliate channel may give its traffic away for free but we categorically draw a line at doing the same with our sales.

This is another topic that offers little visibility to affiliates. Despite best practice guidelines, advertisers continue to generate millions in sales that they offer no commission for sales via handsets. Being able to understand the impact in a multi-device age however, takes this to a new level.

Long-term survival

Some new trends are becoming apparent to us for the first time. Affiliates who rely on mobile for a larger part of their traffic are being disproportionately impacted (fashion bloggers, price comparison and those with Facebook content). And mobile first companies, looking to CPA networks to optimise their business models, should approach with caution. For one of our leading retailers a majority of their September sales were cross-device, a doubling of their earning potential on that programme. That’s clearly impressive but it’s also deeply worrying; for an industry that prides itself on both shaping and developing new business models in line with digital trends, are we shutting ourselves off to mobile companies? Too often we’re an insular industry that focuses on smaller issues that, without belittling them, are smaller battles. A focus on voucher or cashback overwriting pale when set against a bigger canvass. And the commission eradication doesn’t stop there. Who can say they know what every company’s attitude is to downloadable software? Do you know whether ad blocking is impacting your earning potential with all the businesses you work with? That’s not to mention general compliance and ethical standards that allow unchecked activity to persist, furthering undermining existing cookies.

These are the issues we’re be exploring at PMI this year. Too often these issues go unreported or creep up on us unannounced. We need to sharpen our minds, collaborate and react to digital trends in ways we have done so before; the industry’s longer term survival could depend on it.

The post The Hidden Commission Killers in Affiliate Marketing appeared first on PerformanceIN.