Jangro.com: What are Affiliate Network Responsibilities as a “Trusted Third Party”?
JP Werlin
· 2 years ago
Scott -
I am a firm believer that the role of the ANP is changing and will evolve as new revenue demands are placed on them from new owners. Rakuten, Google and ValueClick do not care one lick as much about affiliates. A few years ago the networks new where the value of the relationship was on both sides of the fence. Despite all of the flack some affiliates threw at the networks, some of it rightfully directed, I think it will be very soon that affiliates will be longing for the days of Messer, Hanger, Pike and Crawford. I did a similar post on August 13th that illustrates where at least one network is going vis-a-vis their Affiliates. This is no doubt a timely topic and one that will only really blossom in the next year or two.
Questioner
· 2 years ago
For clarification, my response posted above was in reply to Scott's original blog post, since removed, where he commented specifically how some hotel affiliate programs work. He did not include those comments in his replaced blog post so some may question why I gave the specifics that I did. My point is that my response is in response to what no longer exists on jangro.com, not Scott's existing comments.
Oleg
· 2 years ago
Personally, I think there should be full communication between network and merchant and the network should be involved in what the merchant does. This will ensure that if there is a slip up of any sort, the network already knows about it and does not jump to conclusions and make irrational decisions. Nowadays, these big networks don't give a rats ass about their merchant and if a problem arises, account closed. They don't want to deal with the problem and no contact is ever made between the two "partners".
Carsten Cumbrowski
· 2 years ago
JP, if you mention a related post, please provide a link also. No, that is not comment spam. The deactivated nofollow is not meant to deter people to post useful links. :) Correct me, if I am wrong Scott.
I can only find the beginning of your original post, but what you described sounded familiar. I saw enough to get my suspicion confirmed, that it is who I thought it was. If it would have been January/February and the merchant would not be inactive, then I would have had a good theory for what happened. It would be interesting to know who that merchant is, is it a big brand? Did their bail out of affiliate marketing or completely out of business, or only out of the network? If thinks turned bad and the merchant has no contact information of its affiliates, how would he be able to communicate with his (former) affiliates, if he did not collect the information outside of the network somehow?
I agree with you that networks are like credit card companies who state that their responsibility is like the one of a phone company. That could be seen in the past and it only gets worse. It does not make sense at all and only creates more issues and pain for everybody (in different ways) and makes you think why that is... What is the intention? There are more than one answer to that question and I don't like any of them.
JP has a point and it is also hard to ignore that there is some major consolidation going on (beyond affiliate networks). I don't believe that affiliate networks will become history. There will always be the need for a solution provider and there will always be somebody like an affiliate who promotes another business and needs the means to do the tracking and reporting. The details will probably look different than they do today and you might not even recognize them at first glance, but they will be there.
For me does it look like a movement back to the roots of affiliate marketing. Some of the larger players who call themselves affiliates, were/are not real "affiliates", compared to classic Amazon.com and CDNow affiliate partners, in the first place. They use the affiliate tracking technology and that is were the similarities end. Those guys can (and will) be perfectly integrated into old school direct marketing etc.
Affiliate marketing as in getting an incentive for referrals of business existed for ages before the internet and will continue to exist unless the world turns into something fictitious that could be described as the wildest dream of a grass root communist.
The old networks sit kind of in between the "chairs" right now. I agree with JP that the big three are probably going down the route that has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, or at least they will try to first. It's the most lucrative one, the low hanging fruit so to speak.
Pat Grady
· 2 years ago
While I do like your idea of picking one role, or the other, there's a third working solution that one of the smaller affiliate networks, ShareASale, uses.
They transparently show which merchants are essentially escrowing (they call it auto-deposit) and let the affiliates make their own decisions regarding what value this extra information has in choosing their partner merchants.
Since it is true that expecting all merchants to conform with a network-wide pay-up-front method likely isn't palatable in recruiting all merchants, I think the "display the role we play" works better than expecting the network to choose one method, or the other, as their sole choice.
Then again, expecting transparency from some of the bigger networks is fairly naive, given their history in so many other areas.
Pat Grady
· 2 years ago
Who said it's hopeless? I said it's naive to expect folks like CJ and LS to provide transparency in how and when their merchants deposit funds... do you expect them to do that soon?
Scott
· 2 years ago
sorry, pat, I guess I misread you.
CJ shows a lot about the payment process. I don't see why they wouldn't also show this once they realized the impact it could have.
I don't expect it from LS, but more because I don't really expect anything from Linkshare.
Pat Grady
· 2 years ago
"I don’t see why they wouldn’t also show this once they realized the impact it could have."
I share your hope! Reducing affiliate's risks by providing information is a sure fire way to get them to push harder to make more sales.
Every marketer makes choices every day about where to allocate their next slice of money and time - the more I know about each choice I have, the less risk I have in it and the more inclined I am to pursue that as a "channel" of mine, to then focus on growing and fattening it.
As far as giving affiliates things to help them, information is likely the easiest and cheapest thing for them to provide... networks would be wise to consider the "ROI" of providing more information!
Egidijus
· 2 years ago
Hi,
I agree that there are a lot of affiliate networks who protect their affiliates as long as merchants/advertisers pay everything as they should... And the worst case is that affiliates are actually left without any payment. I think that all affiliate networks should treat affiliates as nr.1 priority members - not merchants. Why? That's because in most cases the affiliates generate all the incomes. If affiliates are happy, then they will reward the network with all their work - they will use the system. And more happy affiliates = more happy honest advertisers who will pay their affiliates always on time. To add more, I think affiliate networks should implement the affiliate protection system and would always stand on the affiliate's side. Just my 2 cents.
All Comments
I am a firm believer that the role of the ANP is changing and will evolve as new revenue demands are placed on them from new owners. Rakuten, Google and ValueClick do not care one lick as much about affiliates. A few years ago the networks new where the value of the relationship was on both sides of the fence. Despite all of the flack some affiliates threw at the networks, some of it rightfully directed, I think it will be very soon that affiliates will be longing for the days of Messer, Hanger, Pike and Crawford. I did a similar post on August 13th that illustrates where at least one network is going vis-a-vis their Affiliates. This is no doubt a timely topic and one that will only really blossom in the next year or two.
Correct me, if I am wrong Scott.
Okay, here is the link to JP's post
http://bluetent.typepad.com/onlinemarketing/200...
I can only find the beginning of your original post, but what you described sounded familiar. I saw enough to get my suspicion confirmed, that it is who I thought it was. If it would have been January/February and the merchant would not be inactive, then I would have had a good theory for what happened. It would be interesting to know who that merchant is, is it a big brand? Did their bail out of affiliate marketing or completely out of business, or only out of the network? If thinks turned bad and the merchant has no contact information of its affiliates, how would he be able to communicate with his (former) affiliates, if he did not collect the information outside of the network somehow?
I agree with you that networks are like credit card companies who state that their responsibility is like the one of a phone company. That could be seen in the past and it only gets worse. It does not make sense at all and only creates more issues and pain for everybody (in different ways) and makes you think why that is... What is the intention? There are more than one answer to that question and I don't like any of them.
JP has a point and it is also hard to ignore that there is some major consolidation going on (beyond affiliate networks). I don't believe that affiliate networks will become history. There will always be the need for a solution provider and there will always be somebody like an affiliate who promotes another business and needs the means to do the tracking and reporting. The details will probably look different than they do today and you might not even recognize them at first glance, but they will be there.
For me does it look like a movement back to the roots of affiliate marketing. Some of the larger players who call themselves affiliates, were/are not real "affiliates", compared to classic Amazon.com and CDNow affiliate partners, in the first place. They use the affiliate tracking technology and that is were the similarities end. Those guys can (and will) be perfectly integrated into old school direct marketing etc.
Affiliate marketing as in getting an incentive for referrals of business existed for ages before the internet and will continue to exist unless the world turns into something fictitious that could be described as the wildest dream of a grass root communist.
The old networks sit kind of in between the "chairs" right now. I agree with JP that the big three are probably going down the route that has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, or at least they will try to first. It's the most lucrative one, the low hanging fruit so to speak.
They transparently show which merchants are essentially escrowing (they call it auto-deposit) and let the affiliates make their own decisions regarding what value this extra information has in choosing their partner merchants.
Since it is true that expecting all merchants to conform with a network-wide pay-up-front method likely isn't palatable in recruiting all merchants, I think the "display the role we play" works better than expecting the network to choose one method, or the other, as their sole choice.
Then again, expecting transparency from some of the bigger networks is fairly naive, given their history in so many other areas.
CJ shows a lot about the payment process. I don't see why they wouldn't also show this once they realized the impact it could have.
I don't expect it from LS, but more because I don't really expect anything from Linkshare.
I share your hope! Reducing affiliate's risks by providing information is a sure fire way to get them to push harder to make more sales.
Every marketer makes choices every day about where to allocate their next slice of money and time - the more I know about each choice I have, the less risk I have in it and the more inclined I am to pursue that as a "channel" of mine, to then focus on growing and fattening it.
As far as giving affiliates things to help them, information is likely the easiest and cheapest thing for them to provide... networks would be wise to consider the "ROI" of providing more information!
I agree that there are a lot of affiliate networks who protect their affiliates as long as merchants/advertisers pay everything as they should... And the worst case is that affiliates are actually left without any payment. I think that all affiliate networks should treat affiliates as nr.1 priority members - not merchants. Why? That's because in most cases the affiliates generate all the incomes. If affiliates are happy, then they will reward the network with all their work - they will use the system. And more happy affiliates = more happy honest advertisers who will pay their affiliates always on time. To add more, I think affiliate networks should implement the affiliate protection system and would always stand on the affiliate's side.
Just my 2 cents.
Have a nice day,
Egidijus