At the recent IAB Affiliate Marketing Council, the IAB released the findings of an AMC and PWC ‘Online Performance Marketing’ (OPM) Study. The study was commissioned to outline the growth and size of the affiliate marketing industry (lead generation is included in the Online Performance Marketing umbrella).
The main headline was the scale of the market, it generated £9bn of transactions in 2012 in the UK. Of the £9bn, £8bn was accounted for by Affiliate Marketing. Advertisers in the arena spent £814m on OPM in the same period. This accounts for £1 spent for every £11 made.
The study found that there were between 3,000-4,000 advertisers working with 10,000 publisher websites. This resulted in 100 million transactions and 70 million leads generated. What is also promising for the market is that since 2008, there has been a 12% growth every year.
Looking at the OPM in the context of digital marketing, it is estimated to be worth 7-9% of the UK digital marketing spend. When you look at the numbers, the channel is perhaps worth a bit of your time if you already have a programme, and certainly worth considering if not.
For some companies such as Sky, they have made affiliate marketing an important channel and report that it is worth 14% of their online sales.
There are a number of affiliates with different promotional methods you can work with. The more affiliates you work with, the more touch points for potential customers. What is becoming clearer in digital marketing is that all customers will shop in different ways. Making sure that you are where they prefer to research or decide will increase your chances of winning that customer.
By Graham Jenner
Graham Jenner is Head of Partnerships at TopCashback. Graham manages TopCashback’s Partnerships department, the team that helps to understand and achieve client’s objectives. His role involves developing relationships with key merchants and networks and consulting on strategy. Graham has been involved in the campaigns that have won the ‘Advertiser Innovation’ award for the past two years at the Performance Marketing Awards. Prior to joining TopCashBack Graham worked at Digital Window looking after key brands such as T-Mobile and Game. You can follow him on Twitter or connect via LinkedIn.
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