According to a document in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR), marketers may need to closely evaluate the impressions they receive from affiliate marketing partners as these suppliers often have their own way of estimating such numbers.
Rainer Olbrich and Michael Hundt (both from Hagen University) and Patrick Mark Bormann (Publicis Media) were the authors of this paper.
And their research–entitled Analyzing the click route of affiliate marketing campaigns: interacting impacts of the design parameters of subsidiaries with the search engine ads of merchants–was based on an affiliate marketing campaign, and Google paid for searching for a dealer who offers educational facilities for professional economic and IT training.
In view of the comparatively elevated cost–reaching “several thousand euros”–and the complexity of such transactions, the writers stated that clients are “extremely engaged in the purchase.”
The excellent news: “The amount of publicity impressions… has had a beneficial impact on the affiliate marketing campaign clicks, indicating that more impressions are positive for sales.”
The scholars also reported, however, that “the positive effect of advertising impressions may depend on the method of estimation.”
While the assessment stated that the “publicity impressions have a beneficial impact on the clicks,” the differences in the estimation and reporting of such numbers by subsidiaries require attention.
“So researchers may need to consider distinct approaches to advertising-impression taken by subsidiaries, which could not be distinguished from the information accessible for this research,” they said.
The study was conducted between the beginning of July 2009 and the end of January 2015. 183 affiliates covered 120,138 advertising activities, including 230,145 clicks, 3,653 leads, and 101 revenues.
And the Google rank of an advertising campaign “had no influence” in the study – an outcome, the authors suggested, that may have resulted from various possible factors.
There was enough variation on this score was one suggestion; users also might ignore ranks and ads; and the merchant involved was a well-known brand, so it did not matter as much as it might for a smaller player.
“The lack of significant correlation between the Google rank and the Google click-through rate …also might offer an explanation,” the scholars wrote.
“In this fiercely competitive market, well-known merchants might enter into bidding wars for specific keywords. More expenditures on a Google search-engine advertising campaign might result in better rankings but not necessarily a higher click-through rate”.
