ad:tech San Francisco: Performance Marketing – Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollar in a Tough Economy
Session Description: How can marketers get the most from their budgets in a difficult economic climate? We’ll explore how to attain more from a smaller budget via performance marketing with practical, tactical solutions. We’ll look at the pros and cons of allocating dollars to performance marketing and we’ll discuss what technological innovations are coming to the performance marketing space that will maximize budgets and minimize challenges.
This session took place Wednesday, April 22, 2009. The speakers:
- Neil Strother, Analyst, Forrester Research (Moderator)
- Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
- Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO, Vertive
- Jarvis Mak, Senior VP, Global Research and Insights Director, Havas Digital
- Kelly Powers, Senior Manager, Customer Acquisition, Zazzle
This session was definitely geared towards those marketing and advertising professionals that are not already in the performance marketing game. It was very insightful to watch from that point of view in mind.
Bullet Point Review!
- Neil asks “What is performance marketing?”
- Paying only for results, whether those results are leads, referrals, a percentage of the sale. Advertisers get to determine how much they pay.
- You can leverage your affiliates to assist with your paid search efforts.
- You need to have good landing pages.
- What’s the real value of the actions being driven?
- What you’re paying for is marketing.
- Affiliates have more incentive to drive more qualified traffic and customers.
- Affiliates drive higher conversions, average orders.
- There’s three types of advertising, CPM, CPC, and CPA.
- Merchants only want to pay one touch point for the sale.
- There’s a mentality that affiliates are frowned upon; CEOs will be wary of the methods but CFOs will be excited about the value and efficiency of the channel.
- AM is very data driven – more money is shifted towards traceable marketing.
- Executives need to understand affiliate marketing; the whole industry is misunderstood.
- Industry is starting to get the data out and break through the black box and lack of transparency.
- Peter briefly explained what’s going on with the #advertisingtax to the crowd.
- A couple of states have been able to stop the #advertisingtax but it’s moving fast.
- Fraud has grown exponentially, especially in lead gen.
- Paying for leads welcomes fraud in som,e industries, ask yourself if you can pay for a different action.
- A major player will soon announce a ranking system (Peter couldn’t divulge who).
Points brought up during the Q&A
Is there a metric to show brand safety? No. It’d be nice to take the focus off the brand.- Yes you need brand awareness, but that’s not going to drive a sale. The best offer is.
- It’s not infinitely scalable; you can always throw more money at search, etc. but throwing more money at affiliate marketing doesn’t work because the core is the relationships.
- Amazing how much more some merchants pay on other marketing methods and channels over affiliate marketing.
- Advertisers need to do a better job at attribution to track the sales to the correct channels.
- Feel free to launch new products with affiliate marketing; it has worked in the past when done right.
- What are some practical takeaways?
- Continue to optimized
- Work on attribution
- Look at marketing channels as a holistic portfolio.
- Focus on better, fewer networks and don’t spread your program too think.
The Q&A portion wasn’t so much a traditional Q&A as it was a case study like discussion. The panel really wanted to help with real examples, and only one gentleman in consumer finance was willing to ask for assistance.
Read MoreCommission Junction University Registration Open
That’s right, registration is now open for 2009’s Commission Junction University, September 15-17 in Santa Barbara, CA. This network-hosted event is a prime opportunity to meet your colleagues in the affiliate marketing space and to network with affiliate managers and affiliates. I attended last year’s CJU and had a great time meeting some great people.
Early bird registration is open through June 30th, giving you $100 off the $995 price tag. In this economy, saving anything is better than nothing so book early! Once again, CJ will be hosting the event at the beautiful Fess Parker’s Double Tree, right there on the ocean. The view is simply stunning, I have to admit. And while staying at the Fess Parker might not be in your reasonable budget, be sure to stay nearby and don’t make the mistake I did last year. I figured staying at a lower cost motel just 7 miles away would be okay, and in terms of the motel it was fine, but the cab ride to the Fess Parker was a painful $25. So staying nearby will definitely help your sanity and pocket book!
I believe I’ll be in attendance, though I don’t want to make any plans just yet. After last year’s plane issues (flying from OAK to LAX to SBA, then from SBA to PHX to OAK) I think I might take the opportunity to drive down this time. Hope to see you there!
Read MoreMy ad:tech San Francisco Experience
So ad:tech has come and gone, and for my first experience at ad:tech is was pretty good. The first day I spent most of my time connecting with some industry friends in the very cool Affiliate Summit sponsored Beer Garden. I was surprised how much it looked like the conceptual drawing that Shawn Collins had posted on his blog when he first announced the beer garden.
For those faithful listeners of Affiliate Thing, you’ll be happy to know that there were no snuggies involved. Unfortunately that first day I didn’t make it to any sessions, but I did take a quick glance at the exhibit hall. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen two floors of exhibit hall. Can you tell I’m not an old hat at ad:tech?
That evening I joined some affiliate marketing folks at AT&T Park for a Giants vs. Padres game. Shawn was quite perturbed that he could not get a signal on his AT&T serviced cell phone at AT&T Park. I can’t say that I blame him. There were some great moments in the game, including the closest I’ve ever seen two runners together when rounding the bases. The Giants won and our seats were pretty good. Luckily it was a nice balmy night and I didn’t need a jacket, but I did get blisters on my feet walking from Moscone Center to the park in bad dress shoes. Nonetheless, I have to send a big thanks to Shawn for the game invite!
The second day I was able to attend some sessions, notes from which will appear here next week. They were hit and miss… I got a lot out of some of them and almost nothing from others, except for some entertainment value.
That evening I had a nice dinner with the folks from eBay, Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, Shawn Collins from Affiliate Summit, Peter Bordes of Media Trust, and a couple folks from Red Anchor Media. We had a nice discussion on quality in Affiliate Marketing. I was honored to be invited and had a terrific time. Any fellow creme brulee fans will be pleased to hear about the lovely Butterscotch variation at Anchor & Hope on Minna in San Francisco!
I didn’t make it over for the 3rd day of ad:tech, but overall it was a good experience and I’m looking forward to attending more in the future and getting some more done once I’m more firmly established with my new clients and with Paulson Management Group.
Read MoreIAB Revising Interactive Ad Units
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that it has held its first meeting of the Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force, comprised of top online publishers, media agencies and, for the first time, creative officers from the nation’s leading advertising agencies. Their purpose is to examine the current standards and update them, taking into consideration the evolution of online advertising.
“We believe we can make interactive advertising far more hospitable to the craft and practice of persuasion by putting creativity front and center in the development of advertising standards,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “By bringing creative agency leaders into the discussion of the standards, we highlight our industry-wide mission to showcase brands and engaging consumers in meaningful ways.”
The IAB first established a set of standards for interactive advertising in 2002. These standards have become the golden rule in online advertising, be it traditional CPM or affiliate advertising. The board includes players from heavy hitters like Cars.com, Disney Interactive Media Group, Google, Platform-A, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo, and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Also coming out of the IAB today is their Impression Exchange Solution. This document sheds light on impression data and makes it easy to convert to a single standard that all publishers will recognize.
The document identifies the key functional requirements necessary for the automated exchange of impression data between publishers and third-party ad servers, which will allow publishers and agencies to detect and address discrepancies in near real-time.
Their goal is to minimize discrepancies in online data. Good luck to the IAB!
Breathe Easier, California Affiliates!
I had the pleasure and pain of driving up to Sacramento yesterday to sit in on the hearing for AB 178, which I’ve talked about before putting California affiliates in jeopardy. Lisa Picarille and I hopped into my car and made the drive up, and about 10 minutes away from our destination, we get the news that the hearing had been postponed. The bill has been changed to a two year bill. What does this mean, exactly?
Believe it or not, I couldn’t find a sufficient actual definition for what a two year bill is online, so I can only pass on what I was told in basic layman’s terms, which may be better anyway. Basically what this means is that the hearing has been postponed until January, when it will be up again to be heard in hearings. We were told by several seasoned lobbyists that if it’s not heard in January, this bill in this current incarnation will be dead. However, the issue won’t necessarily go away. We will need to keep an eye out for other bills to make sure language isn’t shoehorned into other bills that could affect affiliate livelihood and tax nexus, and we also have to pay attention in June when budgeting starts to make sure no strange budget items that could affect nexus show up.
This is a small victory and California affiliates can certainly breath easier for awhile, but it’s not over yet. We’ve won the battle but the war rages on. Of course, there’s a lot of blog coverage on the happenings of yesterday, so check out their points of view as well:
- Mr. Lewis Goes to Sacramento – David Lewis
- Calif. AB 178 on Hold for Now – Lisa Picarille
- California Hearing Postponed – that’s a good thing! – Rebecca Madigan
- No Hearing for California AB 178 – Shawn Collins
- Commission Junction’s Internet Retail Tax News
How I Got a New Job in Less Than a Week
- Get laid off from your current employer.
- Email everyone you know within your industry. Let them know that you’re on the market and ask that if they see any opportunities, to pass them along.
- Don’t wait for answers; reach out to everyone and look at other jobs in the meantime.
- Don’t change your routine too much to stay upbeat.
- One of those connections pays off in the form of a new job.
- Start new job.
So, yeah. I make it sound easy. To be honest, it kind of was. So, this serves as a semi-official announcement via my blog here that I’m now an Affiliate Manager for Paulson Management Group, one of the most recognized and respectable outsourced program management firms in the Affiliate Marketing industry. I’m excited to join Heather Paulson and the team and keep on truckin’ doing what I do best!
I’m also going to step up onto a soap box for a moment and remind everyone how important it is to network within your industry! If I hadn’t made a fairly decent name for myself within the affiliate world, I’d probably still be waiting for a call back from some entry level marketing job here in the Bay Area. It helps to introduce yourself to people. Don’t forget that at the next industry event you attend; it doesn’t matter what your industry is, it’s important to network. Okay, end soap box.
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