Performance marketing valued at £14bn in the UK showing the continued contribution of affiliate marketing

The IAB recently released their annual survey into the size of the Online Performance Marketing Channel. The industry, which includes Affiliate Marketing and Lead Generation, saw £1bn spent by advertisers in 2013 (an increase of 15% compared to 2012). Some of the interesting top level numbers  I picked from the report include: UK consumers made 150 million purchases via affiliate websites (this works out at almost 3 for every British adult), Advertisers saw a return of £14 for every £1 spent, 39% of the UK population visited a comparison site 35% visited a voucher site 21% visited a cashback site, Online Performance Marketing can now claim to account for 10% of UK e-commerce retail sales, Up to 20% of OPM advertiser spend comes via mobile and tablet devices. The return of investment from Affiliate Marketing is impressive, with £14 returned for every £1 spent based…

Affiliate experts share their frustrations from 2013 and expectations for 2014

Affiliate Marketing had a big year in 2013 with the industry now estimated to be worth a staggering £9bn. With that in mind I asked some thought leaders in the Affiliate Marketing industry for some of their thoughts on 2013 and what they think will change in 2014. A big thanks to Kevin Edwards, Strategy Director at Affiliate Window, Helen Southgate, UK MD Affilinet and Owen Hewitson, Associate Director Acquisition from Starcom MediaVest Group.

2014 is fast approaching. Where do you think we will see the biggest changes over the next 12 months?

Helen Southgate (HS): I’m not sure we’ll see any big changes as such, more a development and progression of the current channel. There will be some regulation areas to look out for though. The RMR comes into effect from 1st Jan…

Maximise your affiliate recruitment by thinking like your potential affiliate partners

In my last post I talked about the need for affiliate recruitment and why it was important to always be looking at how to grow your affiliate programme, keeping an eye out for new and emerging affiliates. That is all well and good, but how do you find these affiliates and attract them to your programme? I tend to think of affiliate recruitment as having 4 key areas.

1. Differentiation and programme benefits

One of the most important areas for recruitment in my eyes is the need to know why affiliates should promote you. There are many affiliates out there and you might unearth some gems, but if you cannot give them a good reason to promote you over your competitors, why would they?

Think about what sets you apart from your competitors. Do you pay a higher commission? Can you give…

Growing audience and sales using new types of affiliate partners

With any marketing activity you are always looking for more. More sales, more revenue, more traffic, more, more, more! It’s no doubt the same for your affiliate programme. You might have been running your programme for a while, or might have just launched it. Regardless, affiliate recruitment is an on-going process. It should be something that you never stop doing as there will always be new and exciting affiliates emerging, or potential partnerships that you have yet to explore. I tend to summarise the reasons for affiliate recruitment into four main areas. The first thing you need to be sure of is that you have the biggest volume drivers on your programme. While these affiliates may only account for 20% of the programme they might contribute 80% of the sales, so make sure you…

Daily Mail embraces affiliate marketing

Mail Online, the world's most visited newspaper website is embracing affiliate marketing to help convert the 8m daily visits into a new revenue stream for the publisher. According to Experian Hitwise, Mail Online leads the way in terms of market share when compared to Guardian, Telegraph and Sun Online. Although a very different target market and editorial content to the Daily Mail newspaper, Mail Online has deliberately focused on the showbiz, celebrity culture fine-tuning its content tailored to this online audience eager to return for more on a daily basis. With the appetite for celebrity gossip - it provides a perfect digital content marketing plan geared around a global publishing brand.

Migrating to an online channel

There has been mounting speculation as to how the traditional newspaper sector can embrace and can create a viable business model in sustaining healthy revenues through a digital platform. The dramatic…

Exploring the opportunities and obstacles of targeting mobile users via the affiliate channel

Mobile is an area that is finally beginning to thrive and produce interesting outputs that can aid the understanding of consumer behaviour in an offline environment. To shed light on the intersection between mobile and affiliate marketing, I asked Angie Goodchild ( Twitter and LinkedIn) Mobile and Product Manager for TopCashback, to give me some of her views on mobile, the challenges that brands have faced and examples of new innovations.

1. A lot of clients within the affiliate industry have seen a massive spike over the last few years in sales via a mobile device – are you seeing similar trends on a publisher front?

We’re currently seeing about 20% of our traffic to the site via a mobile device. iPad is dominant (which can be expected for a site such as ours)…

Affiliate Marketing can be so rewarding, but you need to avoid these common mistakes

Having worked with lots of programmes during my time in affiliate marketing, I thought I would outline some of the common mistakes I see and how they can be corrected. In the new Smart Insights Affiliate Marketing strategy guide I go into the details of how to get these key communications factors right.

1. You don’t communicate with your affiliates

I start with communication, because it's obvious, important, but often not done well. Communicate effectively with your affiliate base doesn’t mean just sending an email now and again, but actually asking for feedback from them as well. Communication should be a two way street where you encourage feedback and ideas from your affiliate base. Take the time to find out what they need from you and the…

How to identify rogue affiliates using advanced segments

This post will explain a technique that online retailers can use to save some badly spent money. It will also be of interest to affiliates, to website owners, and may spark a couple of ideas for anyone looking to get more usable information out of Google Analytics. The post covers 4 things: Rogue "Brand bidders" - what they are, why they cause a problem, and how they waste money. A few tactics rogue brand bidders may use to sneakily make thousands of pounds. How to spot the problem using Google Analytics. A couple of bonus tips on how you could extend & automate this. (more…)…

Ensure you have the right #smalldata foundations in place before you begin looking for answers in #bigdata

You can't have failed to have noticed the interest in Big Data. Of course, there have been people debating whether this is actually a worthwhile term. After all, “big data” is just data… but bigger... Once the concept becomes more widely applied, it will probably go back to being just data, but the increase in the amount of data available made it necessary for some to make the distinction. Like most marketing technology terms it is useful good to have a word to show the value of the concept.

Applying Big Data principles to affiliate marketing

Simply put, I think that the more data you have, and the better you become at analysing it, the better it is for you and your business. After all, a decision…

Every £1 said to generate £11 returns for online performance marketers

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…