Category: Affiliate Marketing Tips

Affiliate marketing demand soars as budget cuts kick in

Publishers are flocking to affiliate marketing despite coronavirus wreaking havoc on retailers’ advertising plans.

New data from Awin and ShareASale shows approved affiliate applications to our global networks 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 it was removing a majority of longstanding publishers from its Associates program.

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

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

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 10 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 programs. Despite some notable exceptions, especially in the travel sector, Awin and ShareASale are 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% above the same period in 2019 as consumers turn to e-commerce, with sales in certain verticals like 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 e-commerce, 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 program 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:

Therefore 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 and ShareASale have expedited applications from publishers new to the network to ensure they will be processed within one business day, as well as speeding up application times to individual advertiser programs.

Publishers can also apply to Awin through our fast tracked approval process via this dedicated sign up form, and to ShareASale here.

In addition, we know that publishers want to quickly find deeplinks to the millions of products available from retailers across the network. Therefore we’ve launched a new product availability report on Awin that is searchable and allows for quick integration within your content.

For more information on COVID-19, please visit our information hub where we bring you the latest news from the Awin Group, as well as links to network insights and useful pointers, alongside wider updates.

The post Affiliate marketing demand soars as budget cuts kick in appeared first on ShareASale Blog.

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Why Recessions Give Rise to CPA

You may not know this, but TUNE built our first product on the back of the 2008 financial crisis, now known as the Great Recession. In the two years following, we saw the largest percentage growth we have ever seen as a company. Over the years, entrepreneurs and executives alike asked me why I thought this was the case. Now, the impact of COVID-19 on our culture, unemployment rate, and economy has me reminiscing on that time. 

True performance marketing means paying your partners after they bring in sales. That is what makes this the ultimate ROI channel. 

The greatest reason for our growth in a recession is the nature of performance marketing (or as many call it today, partner marketing). Because this channel of marketing and advertising works by compensating publishers and affiliates for the actual sales and conversions they drive, budgets are much more fluid. Some even describe them as evergreen. If you know that you only have to pay that $2 to a partner after you make $10 on a sale, then your risk is extremely low. The more sales that come in, the more budget you can spend, all without the exposure of paying for advertising that didn’t work. 

The challenge in performance partnerships is always scaling. In times of economic uncertainty, marketers are willing to put in the sweat. 

For companies that have a clearly defined conversion funnel and the right message and creatives to provide their affiliate partners, this channel should be a no-brainer. However, it does require some management; it cannot compete with the simplicity of today’s Google and Facebook ads. With these ad platforms, you only have to deal with one huge partner — and that partner has a complete interface designed to help you buy ads. This is why marketers flock to these platforms to get rapid scale, especially when said marketers are just starting out. 

At TUNE, we’re in the business of building software to help solve the problem of scale for marketing partnerships. And we’re not the only ones. In order to find scale, marketers need to automate onboarding tasks, protect terms and conditions, access real-time reporting, set automated decisions, and generate invoices for paying commissions. And that’s just the beginning. There are plenty of tasks required to manage each partner relationship, but there are only so many people to do them. 

In the past, marketing relationships were managed by humans and spreadsheets, the latter of which made it difficult to scale. We now have the technology to help marketers easily scale the number and quality of their performance-based partners — marketers just need to put in the effort to build a program. 

Recessions require everyone to be more flexible. This is especially true for publishers, influencers, and affiliates who make their living from monetizing their audiences. 

When advertisers are spending big, and the demand for traffic is higher than the traffic available, the power of price sits with the supplier. 

In this case, publishers are able to demand higher prices for their audiences and require payment in flat fee structures. We’ve all seen influencers that demand an upfront fee to publish a single post, regardless of the sales that post may (or may not) drive. Yet in times of economic uncertainty, everyone must consider more flexible ways of doing business. 

Performance-based campaigns are an excellent place to grow. 

Publishers with valuable audiences should be able to easily monetize their traffic for advertisers, based on the return they are able to drive; they should be able to do so regardless of the economic climate. As we see CPM and CPC campaigns dry up, we will see more marketers turn to CPA, and more publishers willing to give it a try. 

I have never seen a scrappier set of marketers than those in the performance space. 

It is times like these that our sweat equity counts the most. 

Looking back, it was the insatiable grit of our founders and our alignment with so many like-minded performance marketers that helped grow TUNE into a major player in the space. Many of the individuals I met during those days are now managing millions of dollars a month in their own marketing budgets, or have gone on to build and sell their own companies. 

These are the times when capital is in low supply, and these are the times that return us to the fundamentals of business and risk. Spend $2; make $10; rinse, and repeat. Do you agree? 

Here’s to the scrappy ones, and I wish you all the best of luck during this historic time. 

The post Why Recessions Give Rise to CPA appeared first on PerformanceIN.