Affiliate marketing is establishing itself as a valuable and sophisticated acquisition channel for advertisers and a growing revenue stream for publishers, IAB Australia’s Affiliate and Marketing Partnership report shows.
IAB interviewed agencies and advertisers, along with publishers and partners.
Retail, fashion and technology were revealed as the top advertiser industries of operations for affiliate marketers, while retail, fashion and food & beverages are the top publisher industries of operations.
Reward models – including cashback websites and loyalty points/programs - were rated the highest affiliate models amongst advertisers, closely followed by content and email. For publishers, however, content came out on top as the primary promotional method, slightly ahead of reward models and coupons/deals.
COVID-19, inflation and other headwinds faced by the industry seemed to have unaffected the affiliate marketing space.
69% of advertisers/agencies are reporting their budgets for affiliate marketing have increased over the last year, while 68% intend to increase their spend on affiliate marketing again over the next year.
Asked about the impact of the past two years, 75% of advertisers have reported increases in revenue from the affiliate model, with 80% of publishers reporting an increase in revenue.
Content is key in affiliate space
Focusing on targeting consumers at the right time was raised as a driver for success in the affiliate space in a panel hosted by Zac Selby, programmatic solutions director at dentsu.
Jade McDade, head of eCommerce - audience and partners at News Corp, said: “With News Corp, coming from a print perspective, print is very linear right? You read a magazine, you get inspired and then you may or may not go to the store and buy something.
“In digital, there's a lot more levers you can pull to influence what stage of the marketing funnel you're targeting and how you’re targeting that as well.”
“The customer journey isn’t linear in digital, so content can play a really strong role in both guiding a purchase and capturing people at the end of the funnel.”
Rogelio Alcaraz, affiliates and partnership manager at vitamins company Vitable, said: “The challenges [in the affiliate space] are really around how you can manage all your volumes of partnerships and how you can optimize the campaigns, more than a budget constraint from the top.”
McDade highlighted that listening to what customers want is crucial, saying: “If we're not thinking about the audience - getting someone to an article and getting someone to buy something - then we're not going to be successful.
“It’s about figuring out what consumers are telling us and how we can make these experiences more authentic and contextual.”
On the challenges around tracking and third-party cookies, Alcaraz said: “I think it's very important that we all take it very seriously and develop an action plan to make sure the tracking is accurate.
“If we don’t, our partners won't get the reward, meaning that they will be less incentivised to work together, meaning that we will lose the relationship.
“At the end of the day, our partner’s success is our success; if they grow, we grow.”
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