Therefore I thought it would be useful to write a quick post on what we look for when approving affiliates to the campaigns that we run.

Where will you promote them

Brands like to have control over where they appear, and in other channels go to great lengths to ensure that they know exactly where they will be represented. This is not just to be able to differentiate between cashback sites, voucher sites etc, but to ensure that their brands are not featured next to content that is likely to reflect badly on their brand. I think it is key that we increase transparency, and of course, as discussed elsewhere in our IAB meeting, this transparency must go both ways.

How you will promote them

As I’ve written about previously there are many different types of affiliates, requiring different approaches. As more merchants are beginning to realise this, more of them will wish to segment affiliates by type. By default we do this for all merchants on any i-level campaign now. This is vital when attempting to understand how your affiliate campaign is working. I’m sure we’d all agree that a campaign where 80% of sales are coming from voucher code and cashback sites is not a healthy campaign.

So it is key that affiliates are open in demonstrating to merchants how they are driving traffic. Personally I would like to see different accounts for voucher code activity, cashback activity, email and any brand PPC allowed but I appreciate that this isn’t feasible.

Again this goes both ways. Numerous times on the forum affiliates complain about the amount of communication they receive and how they miss important information because of the volume of email they get. Differentiating your activity would allow a merchant to target communication more effectively. It would also allow merchants to more accurately measure the value of different channels, therefore ending the assumptions about how cashback and voucher codes are cannibalising other channels that have been made without people being in full possession of the facts.

What works well for you?

In my time managing campaigns, it is very seldom that any affiliates have come to me and suggested ways that they can increase sales. Maybe the communication channels haven’t existed before or up and coming affiliates don’t feel confident enough to make these suggestions. I know, however, that if I’m managing an account and an affiliate were to approach me and say that something has worked with another merchant, is there room to try it, I’d be more than opening to discussing it.

How do we do this?

I fully appreciate that a lot of this is the job of the affliate manager> They should take the time to build up a relationship with their affiliates and get to know and understand what they do and how they do it. Realistically though, this isn’t always feasible so what’s stopping affiliates taking a lead on this? There are clearly benefits to affiliates as merchants will work more closely with those displaying transparency and coming up with ideas.

I’m afraid I don’t have any answers on how this should be facilitated. Communicating individually with every merchant is obviously draining on an affiliates precious time. Maybe this is something that networks can champion? One idea that has been put forward is that affiliates operating in different sectors put together a portfolio site, that can be offered up to a merchant to explain their business methods within the network interfaces.

I’m sure plenty of debate will follow on how transparent affiliates need to be, but I would like to emphasise again that I completely agree that this transparency should be two-way and if merchants are not approving affiliates then the reason should be clearly communicated – article to follow…

Sector differences

Different vertical sectors have different buying cycles and so this should influence the length of the cookie period. For example, buying a CD can be an impulse purchase, whereas people generally tend to research substantially when buying items such as holidays or loans.

My question to networks, agencies and merchants is do they take their traditional purchase cycle into account when setting the cookie period?

Rewarding affiliates fairly

Any merchant that truly buys into the affiliate model will be aware of the need to reward affiliates fairly for what they do. Whilst metrics like CPA and deduplication criteria are hotly debated by affiliates to ensure they’re getting their dues, is cookie length examined as closely?

This works the other way round too. An affiliate should only expect to be paid for a sale that they can reasonably claim to have played a major part in influencing. I struggle to see how anyone can justify that a click from an affiliate site has been the main influencer on a sale 12 months later.

Finding a balance

So how do you find common ground between these two factors. You have to weigh up the need to reward affiliates effectively for the work they have done, whilst merchants need to know they are only paying for those sales that affiliates have played the mejor part in.

So back to my point about varying this by product and understanding how consumers go about buying different items. Currently, it seems to be accepted that 30 days is the norm. Where has this come from? Is there any thought put into it?

Do networks have any data on what percentage of sales this would influence? It seems that as we speak more about moving to multi-attribution models this will become more of an issue, so time to address it now?

Because of the last click wins model, many affiliates contribute to sales that they do not get rewarded for, and content affiliates are generally considered to be the worst affected category. With the advances that have occurred in cross channel tracking and deduplication, is there now an argument to reinstate PI as for affiliates?

Most large merchants nowadays utilise a third party tracking solution that automatically deduplicates between marketing channels and awards the sale to the party that generated the last action. In affiliate marketing this action is a click, in search a click but in display advertising it is a click or often simply a banner impression.

The argument in the display channel being that a consumer has seen this advert and this has influenced their decision. Why is the affiliate channel not treated the same? If we now have the ability to examine the journey of the consumer, and it can be demonstrated that they have had no other touchpoint with the brand apart from viewing a banner on an affiliate site, then there is a compelling argument that the affiliate has driven that sale.

I often feel that in the online world we live and die by the same sword because what we do is so trackable. You don’t need to have this argument when selling radio, press or TV advertising. Sorry Mr ITV, we’re not going to pay you for that sale because the consumer saw our advert in The Sun after they saw the ad during Coronation Street.

Obviously this would have to be policed correctly. Previously affiliates have “bent” rules by hiding the ad at the bottom of a page or even reducing the image to make it invisible whilst allowing a cookie to be dropped. Maybe it should only be allowed to occur on certain high traffic affiliate sites? Would it only benefit certain affiliate sectors? Maybe the CPA should be lower for a PI sale rather than a click driven sale?

So there are things to be taken into consideration but I feel that this issue may have been ruled out too soon. Because we have complete visibility, why should affiliates miss out when they can demonstrate that they are driving awareness and value to a merchant?