Advertisers are continuously being tasked with the challenge of successfully maintaining a working and efficient partnership between an established paid search team and the affiliates that use PPC as their main income source.

For the majority of paid search teams, PPC affiliates represent a major challenge as the lack of direct communication and an often precarious overall strategy makes the affiliate unpredictable and sometimes results in conflict for all sides.

In order to make the two parts work together, the client must sit down with their appointed PPC agency team and not only construct a “crystal clear” strategy that points out the “allowed” and not “allowed”, but also to establish what is the role of the PPC affiliates in the overall picture.

It is important to consider that some of the “converting” terms could be distributed to the affiliate, as the earnings they make on these terms can then be invested in generic keywords. The PPC partner will not survive and can not sustain the activity on misspellings and low volume terms alone;  this has been reinforced with the launch of Google Instant.

If the affiliate manager and the advertiser decide that the PPC affiliate should be involved in the programme, they must understand that this partner is a compliment to the main paid search channel and that with good planning the results can be more than satisfactory.

One strategy is to implement dayparting to bring balance between the two sides and also ensure that the highly converting times are covered and that potential converting terms are explored thoroughly.

There is no doubt that a good partnership can bring good results, but it is essential to lay down the rules of the game and ensure both sides are happy before campaigns go live.

In the last few months the affiliate industry has been embroiled in the debate of whether we’ve become dependent upon “cashback” and “aggregator” sites, rendering the production of old school ‘real’ content  dead and just not worth it any more.

Although cashback and incentives sites can provide the merchant with desired visitor volume, and there is no doubt that they have given the affiliate space an important boost, they should not be solely relied up by affiliate managers and networks to deliver a well-rounded affiliate campaign.

In a similar manner to the way in which  ‘brand’ and ‘generic’ terms are split in PPC reports,  we anticipate that merchants will start to request the splite between ‘cashback’ and ‘content” on affiliate reports, potentially exposing the reliability on incentive site to sustain the volume of sales.

We know that content sites cannot reach the same volumes as the aggregators or cashback sites, but we can work with them to help them deliver better figures. We must also educate the affiliate that content will not only help their search ranking and that other tools such as video content can provide that much needed traffic. Reviews, critiques, articles, opinions, comparison tables, blogs and so on all add up to create content that makes the affiliate stronger.

It is important, however, not only to encourage the affiliate to push advertiser engagement, but to also educate the advertiser that content in any form is extremely useful, and that it should be constant and fluid.

As affiliate managers we should also be working closely with the SEO teams to cross reference contacts through a hybrid of affiliate activity and SEO value contributors.

Cashback and voucher sites have become a big part of the affiliate industry; nevertheless 2011 should be the year of re nurturing the content affiliate and increase results across the board.

Jorge Anastasiu

Steak Affiliate Executive

WhiteCloud Digital Solutions Ltd (WCDS) has signed Steak as the first commercial partner to use their WhiteCloud affiliate management interface. Steak will be using the serving, tracking and reporting platform to manage affiliate campaigns on behalf of its clients.
 

WhiteCloud comes from a strong heritage of ongoing development in the online marketing sector, and is based on technology and infrastructure also used by affiliate network, dealgroupmedia. The platform manages over a billion global transactions a month and is considered to be the most robust system of its kind in the marketplace.

“The shape of the media sector is changing as digital becomes an ever more important factor in the agency market” says Dan Cohen, WCDS Managing Director. “That agencies are investigating affiliate management technologies is a logical next step in their evolution. We are thrilled that Steak appreciated the technological advantages of our WhiteCloud platform and we are confident that they will benefit from the investment and expertise that has gone into it.”

Mark Joseph, Steak’s Affiliate Director, commented “Steak selected WhiteCloud as our affiliate technology provider after in depth research and review in our quest to find a robust, feature-rich and flexible affiliate tracking solution. We’re happy to say that the network setup of White Cloud was surprisingly quick and seamless. It is also satisfying to know that there is a full time development team at White Cloud, constantly working to evolve tools and technology within the affiliate channel, through which our clients’ programmes will benefit.”

About WhiteCloud Digital Solutions Ltd

WhiteCloud Digital Solutions Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of dealgroupmedia UK Ltd specialising in the development of innovative technological solutions for online marketing. 

dealgroupmedia UK Ltd also trades as dgm, dgmAffiliates and dgmSearchlab, providing a range of products and services to the online marketplace in the UK and overseas.

www.thewhitecloud.co.uk