AFFILIATE DIGEST

Affiliate Marketing takes centre stage

Ahead of our first ever Performance Affiliate Conference, Kevin Edwards, Global Client Strategy Director at Affiliate Window shares how he is thrilled that affiliate can finally be shared with a wider audience.

When you’ve been firmly entrenched in an industry for well over a decade, certain announcements can reorientate your perception of it, jolting you from the daily, well-worn path you tread.

Fast-food giant McDonalds announcing it was appointing an agency based on a ‘pay-on-performance’ model last month was an announcement that made many sit up and take notice.

While the statement of intent attracted acres of column inches conjecturing how the restaurant chain (and its agency), could make such an arrangement work, it is music to the ears of the affiliate industry, an area of digital that placed performance at its core two decades before it became a necessity of digital marketing.

It seems prescient then that the IAB has announced it will be running its first affiliate performance conference on January 25 2017.

Considered one of digital marketing’s secret weapons in driving both consumer interest and intent with the hard metric of sales as its ultimate vindication, the one day event will unlock some of the key tactics and approaches taken by blue chip brands in helping them target consumers with the right messaging at the right time. This is one of the reasons Affiliate Window was keen to support the event.

A number of leading brands have already committed to sharing their insights at the event. Senior representatives from BT, Marks and Spencer and Direct Line are set to take to the stage alongside some of the entrepreneurs who have forged powerful, consumer empowering businesses that are now part of the daily routine for shoppers.

The affiliate industry doesn’t stop still, it both bends and adapts to technological change with some of the brightest minds choosing to monetise the latest app or innovation through affiliate relationships. It should come as no surprise that in an age when traditional publishers are struggling to drive revenue from their online operations they are increasingly turning to affiliate marketing to plug the gaps. Pinterest too recently announced its intention to allow affiliate links in its content with Tumblr following suit.

With interest in the industry at an all-time high (and responsible for more than £17bn of online sales in the UK), the conference will take the ability of our multifarious channel to tap into consumers at every stage of the consumer path to purchase, from initial interest to the eventual conversion as its cue. 

A PwC survey carried out in conjunction with the IAB for 2014’s Performance Marketing Study found more than half of British consumers had encountered and interacted with some form of activity tied to an affiliate marketing relationship, be it redeeming a voucher code, accessing niche blogger content or a price comparison site at some point in any given month. The industry is stealthily mainstream; often the activity it supports isn’t considered affiliate marketing at all.

This is both a strength and weakness in that some say it struggles for its position at the top table but this is also due to a misinterpretation of the ecosystem; the majority of budgets sit outside of agency control and as such it often isn’t afforded the respect it reserves. Others bemoan the channel as low margin but this has ultimately resulted in a lean, results focused approach from practitioners beloved of the advertisers who fully embrace it. 

So the Affiliate Performance Conference represents the industry’s shining opportunity to showcase its wares and celebrate the stories, sophistication and successes that those of us ‘on the inside’ are thrilled to be able to finally share with a wider audience.