Last week Linkshare's Joe Sabatino, ShareaSale's Brian Littleton, Collectibles Today's Mitul Gandhi, Brad's Deals Brad Wilson and Performics' Chris Henger provided the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association with a report on the state of affiliate marketing.

Questions from the audience ranged widely and included "what's the different between 'affiliate' and 'business development' partners?" Ghandi says it's all about perception.

"If you consider your affiliate partnerships to be just revenue share deals then you're limiting your scope," Gandhi says.

What's more he suggests that it's "a very cheap way (for merchants) to do branding" as an inherent part of the cost-per-action affiliate process. When controlled Gandhi suggested it's a boon for merchants.

"If someone starts an affiliate program worst case is the get no sales and free branding... best case is they get branding and sales," says Wilson.

Many of the questions posed to the panel in the Q&A session were aimed squarely at controlling affiliates, network quality and what networks are doing to facilitate greater control for marketers. Surprisingly most network representatives on the panel suggested that since 2004 network quality has been less of an issue for the industry (perhaps in an attempt to quell questions aimed on quality issues).

When asked to comment on trade articles suggesting that affiliate marketing has peaked and there's potential for dis-intermediation Wilson was quick to react by suggesting,

"I've read some of that too and I don't think it's right... I don't think it's sound. People (affiliates) are always going to be doing useful, interesting things. Whether or not we're still able to do that in five years that's a different story but someone will be... and I think there's going to be more of that. If you take the entire affiliate realm I think more of it is going to be that kind of thing and less is going to be the stuff you really can't place."

Henger believes there will be a role for affiliate marketing for a very long time based on its ability to add consumer-side value, "We've trained the consumer, when they shop online, to find a benefit. They derive some type of benefit and affiliate marketing has contributed to that whether it be in the form of a discount or... a rewards program or loyalty points."

Interestingly, Henger's comments seemed to put a box around affiliates that send repeat customers to marketers. Search affiliates were not mentioned and other panelists did not respond.

On the subject of "off line" (not tracked on the Web) affiliate tracking Littleton shared a case study scenario wherein a marketer coded individual catalogs (on affiliate basis) so as to reward future sales (of any kind) coming from customers who had requested a catalog from the marketer.

Posted by Editor on June 18, 2006 02:34 PM

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