The 4 Most Common Questions Advertisers Have About Affiliate Marketing

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We’re more interconnected than ever before. With the internet, social media, and our mobile phones, people can get in touch with their friends and loved ones with the click of a button. This new level of connectivity has created new careers for people with the knowledge to turn a profit from the palms of their hands. Social media management, influencers, and affiliate marketers are included amongst the new and highly profitable job options.

If you have a high amount of website traffic, the right affiliate link could provide you with passive income that keeps on coming as people read through your material. This is especially popular in blogging nowadays – including a link that leads to a paid product or service.

As more and more people realize that affiliate marketing is a source of income that could benefit their needs, we are seeing an influx of advertisers moving online. Brands have noticed this trend as well, and 2017, 81% of brandshad affiliate marketing programs implemented in their campaigns.

The more advertisers jump on the affiliate marketing train, the more people start craving information to make their affiliate programs work. At Admitad, we’ve put together the top 4 questions advertisers have about affiliate marketing. Let’s get started.

1. How can I protect my brand and ensure the traffic I get from affiliate networks is quality traffic?

If you aren’t careful, you could end up with traffic that doesn’t suit your marketing needs. Until recently, transparency was essentially non-existent in affiliate marketing. Advertisers had no idea who was promoting them, and their advertisements ended up on seedy websites. Methods from BlackHat CPA hackers would send advertisers’ ads to these shady webpages. No matter what network an advertiser selects, they need to carefully read the terms of use and see if the following terms are included:

Affiliate marketers must now provide regular, real-time reports that show full visibility of which affiliates or publishers are promoting the advertiser’s product. Advertisers need to know which publishers are promoting them across the web. If the publisher fails to provide the relevant data, their access to the client could be suspended, and any revenue generated could be forfeit.

Furthermore, the publisher needs to ensure that when they are using creatives, they are not violating the holding rights of a third party. This takes into account trademarking, brand, and personal rights as well as other rights, which require the permission of a third party. Publishers must also refrain from using spam when they send out emails that contain the creative.

According to the Admitad terms and conditions, “Admitad reserves the right to request data on the traffic source and access the statistics of the Ad Space. If the publisher does not provide the requested information, Admitad reserves the right to stop displaying the advertisements on the Publisher’s website and/or to take other measures to protect the interests of the Advertisers, whose advertisements are displayed on the Publisher’s spaces.”  This proves that Admitad constantly ensures that the quality of traffic is high and that advertiser’s materials won’t be displayed on seedy websites.

2. Do I have the ability to pick and choose specific affiliates/publishers I do and do not want to work with?

Beware that while some networks allow this option, others do not. Some affiliate marketing networks allow any publisher to pick up an ad, which could lead to distress for the advertiser given that they have no control over where their brand is being promoted.

In 2014, some major brands such as AT&T and P&G found out that their advertisements were being promoted on pornographic websites. While being unaware of the advertisements on the x-rated sites helped nullify any fault on the side of the brands, it didn’t stop the public relations nightmare that followed. This is exactly what brands want to stay away from.

As such, advertisers should only work with networks that allow them to pick and choose where their advertisements will be published. For example, at Admitad, we have this in our terms and conditions, “Only the advertiser shall make the decision to admit the publisher to the partnership. The publisher does not have a legal basis for obtaining such an admission if the opposite decision was made.”

3. What is deduplication and does your network provide it?

Deduplication, in essence, is a process which was created to prohibit channels such as paid search or affiliate from getting credit for the same conversion. If a brand has multiple affiliate programs with more than one network, those networks might try to get more than one credit for the one conversion which was made across numerous channels.

With deduplication, only one channel is given the credit for the conversion. This is important because brands do not want to be spending double or triple the amount owed for only one converted lead. Let’s say, for example, that a prospective client starts to search for a product that they need to buy. They compare the prices across multiple websites, and check them from both mobile devices and desktop traffic sources. From every site they visit, they get cookies and are tracked by different publishers assigned to different networks.

Then, the consumer decides to buy a product and adds it to their cart (e.g. using the mobile device – tracked by 1 network). They leave the site, and perform the final purchase from the desktop source using the same account at the same e-shop (the desktop purchase may be tracked by 2nd network). As a result, both networks claim that their publishers converted the client, which has to be paid to them as an “action.” To find out which publisher is the one that should receive the payment, a deduplication tool, such as Admitad’s TagTag tool, is needed.

In order to remain transparent, which is an overarching concern of advertisers, affiliate marketing networks should provide deduplication tools. At Admitad, a tracking code-named TagTag is equipped with deduplication features to ensure that advertisers are not charged twice for the same sale if a publisher is working on two different affiliate marketing networks.

Be sure to ask the publisher about their deduplication tools, as they can be beneficial to saving on budget. In fact, it is estimated that if companies don’t deduplicate, it could lead to more than 20% of their budget wasted in the affiliate program.

4. Can your affiliate marketing network offer me control of which geographic areas my product or service is advertised in?

Imagine investing in an affiliate marketing program, and then realizing that the product or service is being advertised in countries in which the business does not operate. By having control over the specific geographic areas of a campaign, brands can avoid this. Advertisers do not want to pay money for sales or leads in countries to which they do not ship.

Advertisers need to be sure to have a click button solution to choose which areas to market to. For example, when an advertiser develops their program on the Admitad platform, they need to develop the program rules and regulations, including the regions in which their ads will be displayed. This is reflected in the program’s description.

Advertisers may also want to hyper-localize their ad campaigns to a specific city or region. This means narrowing the geographical sector to be as specific as within a couple of blocks or streets in a certain city. In terms of driving traffic to a physical store, this is one of the best options. An affiliate marketing network should have these tools in place to carry out this type of campaign. On Admitad’s website, advertisers can easily filter by which geographic regions the network covers.

From the very start, advertisers should clarify their terms and conditions in the contract with the affiliate marketing network regarding which geographic areas are acceptable to advertise in by publishers. They need to be certain that these details are made clear, to avoid any future geographical marketing headaches.

Affiliate marketing is a growing and diverse industry. With internet usage growing 1052% from the years 2000 to 2018, online advertising cannot be ignored. As we move forward, we will continue to see developments in the world of affiliate marketing, and a general shift towards it being seen as a major if not primary force in the marketing field. Having said that, advertisers need to know what to look for, in order to avoid issues along the way.

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