ad:tech San Francisco: The New Power Brokers – Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter & Beyond
Session Description: Whether you’re launching a company, marketing a product or just keeping your head above water, it’s likely that you’re increasingly forced to plot your strategy around today’s new power brokers—Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter. Does the relative hegemony and power of these companies create a stable, predictable environment for the rest of us, or are we continually guessing what the next chess move will do to our plans? In this highly interactive and thought-provoking segment, Upstream Group CEO Doug Weaver brings together experts from the capital markets, industry journalism and agency leadership to explore the impact of these companies on M&A, marketing and advertising. Are these players permanent fixtures, or are there new power brokers waiting in the wings? And what do you need to know to make the very best decisions in the months ahead?
This session took place Tuesday, April 12, 2011. The speakers:
- Doug Weaver, Founder & CEO, Upstream Group (Moderator)
- Shawn Carolan, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures
- Scott Symonds, General Manager Media, AKQA
- Molly Wood, Executive Editor, CNET.com
I enjoyed the discussion, though I wish there had been more actionable items.
Bullet Point Review!
- Only 10% of Twitter accounts follow more than 50 people.
- What is a tweet worth as opposed to a Facebook news update?
- This curve is pretty similar to any participatory medium.
- 1 in 4 twitter users are African-American, which is sort of the mirrored opposite of Facebook.
- Does Amazon belong on this list instead?
- Already selling more digital books than printed books.
- Many start-ups use their services for storage, hosting, etc.
- $36 billion in ecommerce in 2010
- Who is empowered? They’re more about empowering themselves, not other sellers or users.
- They’ve all built really nice walled gardens. Does that make the web less relevant & by association, Google less relevant?
- When you solve problems, you grow the market.
- You still find all these walled gardens through Google.
- Google is tying bonuses to social media strategy (up to 25%).
- The personal recommendation is the absolute social currency of web 3.0.
- Google should let Groupon and Facebook have their games & get really good at search.
- Is the web less relevant with Facebook around?
- “Control, distribution, & delivery of content is the next battleground.” – Molly Wood
- Clients are more willing to go where good content & readers are instead of the more traditional media outlets.
- NBC/Comcast is just one example of vertical integration where one party own a both the content & the pipe.
- Kinect has reinvigorated some new life into Microsoft.
- Yahoo might have some life left in them.
- AOL? Made some good hires and good acquisitions & trying hard, especially with local & patch, but it remains to be seen.
- Who may end up being a power broker in 5-10 years? Apple may not be as people go towards open source, Facebook & Google may be, but ones aggregating content will be ones to watch. Lots of potential with foursquare. Blogging may overturn.
ad:tech San Francisco: Social Gaming – Today’s Fad or Tomorrow’s Killer Strategy?
Session Description: Social Gaming represents half of all Facebook users and one of every two visits to Social Networks on average. Fad or vital to any marketer’s strategy going forward? You decide. To help, we’ll look at Social Gaming by the numbers in the US and around the world. An expert line-up of speakers will share insights about social gaming dynamics, success stories and best practices. A special focus on global market development from regions where mobile is the dominant platform will give a hint at the future of Social Gaming in the US. Check into this session to participate in the gamification of your marketing strategy.
This session took place Tuesday, April 12, 2011. The speakers:
- Mark Silva, Senior VP, Emerging Platforms Real Branding / Anthem Worldwide (Moderator)
- Jimmy Kim, Founder and CEO, NexoNova Studio
- Kim Kyaw, Senior Media Strategist, Toyota Motor Sales
- Tim Chang, Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
I was a bit disappointed about this session. I expected more actionable items, or at least a US slant. The panel took more of a “what’s happening in Asia” angle, so in truth, I ended up leaving a few minutes early.
Bullet Point Review!
- It’s got the reach of television and the engagement of games.
- Over half of Facebook users play social games.
- It’s bigger than the population of England.
- It’s bigger than the number of users of email.
- Zynga is by far the largest social gaming company.
- Playdom was acquired by Disney.
- Social gaming is a “Rich get Richer” phenomenon that grows aggressively.
- Zynga launched CityVille and got 100 million users in under 8 weeks.
- Social game advertising is not for amateurs.
- Advertising is less than 10% of revenues & social games monetize only 1-5% of users.
- Seek fit & utility, not just reach & demographics.
- Social gaming is more about getting together with friends than the game itself.
- There are various levels of commitment to advertising in games:
- Branded virtual goods.
- Branded game mechanics.
- New branded game mechanics.
- Multiple channel integrated campaign.
- When 7-11 did the tie-ins of their generic products with the Zynga games, they saw an incredible increase in business, repeat customers, frequency of current customers coming in, etc.
- There are many cultural factors for social gaming growth.
- In-game advertising hasn’t worked in the past because it wasn’t adding any value to users.
- When considering branding virtual goods, consider decorative vs. ability.
- Mobile is the new hope for social gaming.
- Fighting for distribution power, talent, and new revenue streams.
- CPE is cost per engagement. Some companies can track this. The user watches the ad, answers a question, and earns a new item from the game.
- “If content is king, then distribution power is god almighty” – @Timechange
- Cross promote games to other game users.
Performance Marketing Leadership Summit 2011 Recap
Once again, on the eve of ad:tech SF, OfferVault put on another afternoon Performance Marketing Leadership Summit. Last year’s topic was compliance, whereas this year’s summit focused on growth, transparency, and improving CPA networks everywhere. The 2011 summit was graciously sponsored by CPA Detective, LashBack, LinkTrust, EFFECTUS, & HasOffers.
While I didn’t explicitly learn much myself from this summit as it was definitely geared towards CPA networks, there was a lot of good information for those folks I’d like to share with you. Here are some highlights of information I took from the afternoon’s speakers:
Darin Namken
Founder & President of Bulldog Media Group, Inc.
- Why Diversify?
- Create value & enhance margins.
- Stability & structural positioning.
- Do you have the resources?
- Management.
- Technology (in house, other).
- Cash Flow.
- Infrastructure.
- You have to do something special in the market.
- You may need to diversify just to survive.
- Where to diversify?
- Verticals/products.
- Do you own your own products?
- Do you have your own technology?
- Internal development.
- Partnership.
- Strategic alliances.
- Joint ventures.
- Verticals/products.
- You’ve got to have a good database, not just emails but information about these people. That’s where the real value is.
- You’ve got to be able to work well with others.
- Reciprocating traffic works well.
- Pay day loans have higher traffic, as do prepaid cards and rewards programs.
- You must have a stable strategy to survive.
- What direction to diversify?
- Analyze, evaluate, and plan strategy.
- Future areas of diversification:
- Major players of influence (Google, Facebook, Apple, Groupon, others).
- What’s the next generation?
- What are the trends? (Chase them or plan for them).
- The economy has created more reasons to look farther into true performance. Who’s checking out your backside?
- Who’s aiming for what current teens will be looking for?
- Spending marketing dollars doesn’t mean a lot of you don’t know what the ROI on that money is.
Panel 1: Diversification Strategies
Darin Namken (Bulldog Media Group, Inc.), Chad French (PeerFly), James Murphy (BurstDirect), Bob Regular (Kitara Media), & Curtis Fullmer (AdKnowledge)
- Is it enough to just be a network?
- There’s not much barrier of entry.
- The relationships are what set the networks apart from each other.
- It’s more about conversion & yield than the type of offers. it starts with the offer but it can’t overcome traffic sources.
- It’ll be tough if you don’t have the right mix of affiliates and offers (e.g. Gaming affiliates but pet product offers).
- Understand where the publishers are getting their traffic from.
- Most networks don’t have a good handle of where the traffic is coming from. Which leads to the bigger question – as long as you’re not dealing with risque sites, does it even matter?
- Go with what you know. There’s no one path. Go from there and then expand.
- What are you solving? Are you solving anything? If you want to grow, you need to ask “What are you solving?” or are you just opportunistic? If you’re not solving something the relationship can’t last very long. It’s all a supporting mechanism to fixing the problem.
- Remember that you don’t have to be all things to all people. Build your identity and have a solid foundation to build it upon.
- Where is a bad idea to diversify into? Chasing trends too heavily is dangerous, like with re-bills. Focusing on a trend too much means you’ll go down when the trends go down. Don’t act like an affiliate. Haves multiple eggs in multiple baskets. Facebook fan page marketing is tricky these days, hard incentives tricky,
- What traffic is ok? All traffic is fine. You want everything in between. All traffic has a value, but it needs to be transparent. Understand the transparency of where your offers are running. If you know that, then you can calibrate your offer to suit the traffic being driven. Take those factors into consideration & you’ll get better yield. Bad traffic isn’t necessarily fraud, just mismatched traffic to the offer. There’s a place for incentives, but it takes focus, time and understanding. What you ultimately have is a user with no intent & no interest in your end offer. If you don’t understand how to create the intent, stay far far away.
- What do you need for resources & focus to pull a true diversification off? Make sure your core competency is solid to support the side stuff.
- How do you measure if something is worth getting into? In our industry you don’t have to be 1st, there’s still a lot of room. How does it fit into your core strategy? Evaluate what’s the dollar value you could potentially build that business or division to? I there a growing market there? If the answer to any of those things is no, consider moving on. Don’t chase, identify if it’ll help what you do. If you can’t do it very well & be superior at it, run away. Know when to cut your losses. (i.e. affilicert, affiliate certification that OfferVault was attempting to do). Be mature as a company & don’t look at it as a monetary thing.
- How do you diversify the traffic flow to different kinds of offers in one network? Make sure to understand the performance metrics, it becomes an education thing, be transparent, educate the affiliates on the performance of other offers. Just ask if they have traffic for those kinds of offers. How many times can you tell your publishers to “trust me!”? If they had an answer, they’d probably not share it lol. Get them to believe in the offer & why it’ll work for them. Look at the whole marketing funnel. Don’t kill your credibility by pushing something you’re not sure will work. Educate them that it’s in their best interest as well for them to diversify because advertisers can back out on offers in the blink of an eye for various reasons.
- Should you be a network without an in-house media team? It helps. The easiest way to get knowledge on traffic and performance is it do it yourself.
- Do you consider who your ultimate client is? Advertiser or publisher? Does that come into play on how you diversify? Consider the end user, if they don’t want to participate in these offers, the advertisers wont have the money to write the checks. There needs to be a balance. If you work direct with the merchants, you can look at things as more of a partnership with affiliates.
- Do you have issues where an advertiser is asking for full transparency (double verify) and how do you work with that? You give it to them. if they demand a certain quality and you want to work with them, you have to give it to them & meet that quality or the alarm bells start ringing. The money flows downhill. The increase in transparency is coming to more verticals and more industries. It goes back to relationships, if you build these good relationships then transparency is second nature. Why hide? It’s a two way street.
- Do many publishers say they won’t run 3rd party ad tags & want to hard code everything? If they’re that resistant, you have to ask yourself if they’re worth the time to work with or career to.
- International a great way to diversify? Is it? It’s key to future growth, but you’ve got to be prepared for the challenges of fraud, compliance, policy issues. Canada & UK fairly easy to get into, but do it in a very stepped, focused way. Consider your offers if they appropriate for international traffic as is, are there any TOAs that prohibit the international traffic, etc. Do you have the resources for that kind of expansion.
- What industry trend or issue keeps you up at night? There’s a constant battle with shady publishers & compliance. Regulation from the government. How are government departments interpreting the regulations. The government of Google & Facebook & their control over the Internet & their policy changes. The inability to integrate technologies & lack of standards.
Ryan Pamplin
CEO, Ryactive
- Patented technology, open sources, propriety
- Apparently affiliate marketing is patented (Patent# US 6804660) filed in 2001, granted in 2004. Probably without merit, companies getting sued. Mid level networks (ShareASale, Blue Phoenix).
- Going to trial 4/17/2012.
- ShareASale has filed a counter suit against essociates trying to invalidate the patent.
- In house, proprietary tracking solution instead of licensing direct track or LinkTrust or another vendor. All the networks mostly with propriety tech have much higher network revenue (i.e. Neverblue) They all started with their own solutions.
- Benefits of in house platform:
- Less reliance upon third party tech products.
- Increased value for investors and shareholders.
- Ability to quickly adapt to changes in the industry.
- Data portability and security.
- More control over your user experience.
- Differentiates your network from the thousands of other networks all using identical software.
- Benefits of an outsourced platform:
- Quick time to market with lower up front costs.
- Software that continues to be developed and improved on their dime.
- Predictable start-up and operating costs.
- Is Open Source the future?
- Tracking202/Prosper202 is open source, and became the industry standard tracking software for affiliates.
- WordPress is open sources and 13% of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.
- Stop reinventing the wheel!
- Every network is reinventing or licensing the wheel.
- Instead, a group of networks could sponsor the creation of open source software.
- A network is more than software, it’s about people, offers, and relationships.
- Imagine if the resources going into development of the dozens of proprietary networks and the monthly fees for licensing were allocated to building a single universal platform.
- Noteworthy tech solutions:
- If you can reduce the size of your landing pages, offers and/or redirects you will make more money.
- Cloud is virtually infinite scalability.
- No need to overbuild gory intransigent with cloud.
- Software required to automatically scale.
- Pay just for what you use.
- Increases your risk of downturn, not necessarily so with applications that don’t need scalability.
- Dedicated, fine grain control over hardware.
- Dedicated server is likely to be more reliable.
- Model is proven and relied upon but 90% of Fortune 500 companies have it.
- Wouldn’t put whole business on cloud.
- ServerBeach (offshoot of rack space).
- Backup your servers everyday.
- Create scripts to automatically upload from your servers backups to your local FTP email you files, and/or another website.
- Your data is the core of your business, and if you’re not already you need to take measures to ensure you keep it safe.
- Auto backup with Tivoli.
- WordPress is free and open sources, with tens of thousands of templates available. It’s secured and trusted by millions with extreme flexibility. Websites can be developed in hours not weeks.
- Joomla powers 1 in 37 websites on the internet, not many of which are blogs. It’s slightly more complicated to learn, but great for split testing with thousands of themes available.
- Drupal powers millions of sites, including MTV, Lifetime Television, Yahoo, and more higher volume sites. It’s considered the best framework but is most complicated to learn of the open source CMS out there.
- Braintree is a great eCommerce solution that powers sites like LivingSocial, Bright Cove, 37 Signals, Open Table, and more. It’s easy to integrate.
- Visual website optimizer is $49 per month but worth it; it’s like Google Website Optimizer on steroids.
- Be sure to include trust symbols on your website – 100% satisfaction guaranteed logo, privacy seal, SSL certificate, Verisign, McAfee, etc. Avoid less trustworthy things, like GoDaddy right now.
Panel 2: Technology Insights
Ryan Pamplin (Ryactive), Matt Frary (SmarterChaos.com). Lucas Brown (HasOffers), Beto Paredes (Offered Launch Media, LLC), & Jay Moore (BigDeal.com)
- HasOffers goal is more people in the industry. They’re doing a lot to increase data redundancy.
- If you can build something better than anyone else, go for it, but if not, don’t bother. It’s not about if you do it in house or outsource it, it’s do I have go do it in house?
- How can you innovate on a closed platform if you can’t integrate a new technology? Open API is the suggested way.
- HasOffers rather on the spot.
- Innovation is driven by need.
- Cookies vs. Server side calls? You’ve got to make sure you don’t violate Apples rules. Cookies are becoming outdated. It’s inevitable that cookies will be going away. There’s also an element of educating people on the new tracking methods.
- Larger networks are also looking at the tracking solutions with the working group.
- The banks are guilty of screwing the whole merchant services thing up. A lot are just white label stuff.
- By removing inefficiencies, within the existing infrastructures, you’re going go make more money.
- You may find more of the advertisers having moe control on their programs mandated by the networks.
- Make sure your advertisers know how to do things, like tracking a sub ID. What’s lacking is a true integration. The education for the advertisers on the technology that’s available is also lacking.
- It’s not about the technology sometimes, it’s about the willingness to apply it.
- Its not unreasonable to want to know who you’re doing business with. The way things are with affiliates being in the dark is not going go persist. People are going to be changing the way things are done in favor of transparency.
- All industry panels lead to transparency. We all talk about it, but who does it? Advertisers do it, and unfortunately they’re going around the networks and collapsing the value chain. They’re the ones on the hook with the government.
- If the networks used their tech for good, instead of just protecting their own interests, then there’s more money for everyone.
- It’s the business ethics behind the technology that’s going go drive the industry.
- Any tech you’re excited about or think it’s a game changer? Blue Cava (allows you to ID a user all over the net without cookies or server side tracking, browser fingerprinting with ip). Any tech tracking people across devices or without cookies, across platforms, etc. Excited about online to offline to online tracking like pay per call. Anything that’s going go move towards a more sustainable affiliate marketing industry.
- Privacy is dead, if you’re putting all your info out there on Facebook & whatnot, FTC requires everyone offer a way to opt out. Overall it’s going to improve the consumer experience. Theres a lot of opportunities to give people a chance to opt in. The more important privacy issues surrounding ID theft are being addressed.
- Full transparency isn’t necessarily the way, but we want to know who the affiliate is generally speaking & have a way to contact them.
Chango Expands Search Retargeting
April 12th, 2011 (San Francisco @ Ad:Tech). Having successfully delivered fully managed search retargeting campaigns at scale for agencies and brands, Chango is now providing direct access to its technology for self-serve marketers and partners. As of May 2nd, clients will be able to harness the power of Chango’s Intent Marketing Platform to launch and optimize campaigns with the same level of control as they have with a SEM campaign. Clients already on board with Chango’s solutions include iCrossing, Booyah, AKQA and Clickable.
“While we continue to expand Chango’s fully managed solutions, the direct access we are providing to our Intent Marketing Platform satisfies a demand from marketers who are looking to get more hands-on, particularly search marketers. Using our dashboard, these marketers can now target in-market shoppers and keyword searchers right down to the keyword level” said Chris Sukornyk, founder and CEO of Chango.
Chris Wallace, SVP Media, iCrossing said “we are excited about the results we are seeing with Chango’s search retargeting offering and are looking towards a more enhanced integration. Search retargeting is positioned at the crossroads between search and display, using the best of both mediums. The use of search data as a measurement of consumer intent has already been proven in SEM and can be applied to display through this solution; enabling campaigns to successfully achieve both acquisition and brand messaging goals for clients.”
Whilst Chango’s first offering on the platform has been search retargeting, a highly targeted solution that finds those individuals who are expressing the intent to take an action in the form of a search action, other types of intent marketing include site retargeting that talks specifically to previous site visitors. The combination of both search + site retargeting in one platform makes for an intuitive and powerful combination.
Troy Lerner, President of agency Booyah commented on the performance they have been seeing for a variety of their clients. “Our clients expect us to bring them the newest and most effective methods for meeting ROI goals – Chango has been a top performer across all of our media options for the past several quarters.”
In addition to today’s announcement of self-serve access, partners can also connect directly into Chango’s platform through an API. Programmatic access allows search management platforms and other ad platforms to seamlessly launch and optimize hundreds of campaigns that use RTB (Real Time Bidding), including site and search retargeting.
“Search retargeting is not only a smart strategy on its own, it’s a great way to expand the ROI of your hard-earned and highly qualified paid traffic,” said Peter Chun, Senior Director of Solutions at Clickable. “We look forward to working with Chango to expand our retargeting solutions to search and social advertisers across our platform.”
Mazdak Rezvani (VP Engineering) elaborates. “Unlike most ad companies that rely on third party demand side platforms, our platform is directly connected to all major ad exchanges via our own proprietary RTB system and has the ability to bid on billions of ads today. This direct connection allows us to optimize media buying down to each individual, thereby efficiently optimizing campaigns. Customers of our Intent Marketing Platform can now access this power under their own terms.”
Customers interested in our self-serve dashboard should pre-register at: http://www.chango.com/.
New Liqwid Ad Unit Redefines Interactive Advertising
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, April 5, 2011 — LeftsnRights, Inc. today announced that it will debut its new liqwid ad unit at ad:tech San Francisco, April 12-13, 2011. Liqwid ads (http://www.liqwid.com/) are the first ad units to monetize today’s unused web real estate, increasing revenue opportunities for publishers, advertisers and agencies while improving the visitor experience.
Liqwid ads dynamically fill the empty space between webpages and the viewer’s browser or screen, ensuring ads are always viewed when rendered without popping up, floating or blocking website content in any way. For the first time, advertisers will pay only for ads viewed for a minimum time.
Unlike today’s online ads, liqwid ads apply the media buying model traditionally used in TV and print advertising to the Internet. The liqwid technology that powers the ad units provides sophisticated delivery, monitoring and reporting capabilities that make it possible for advertisers to specify true reach and frequency by controlling the number of viewers who see each ad and the number of times they see it.
“Who isn’t tired of pop-up ads? Even my favorite sites have succumbed to blocking valuable content in return for cash,” says Eric Kavanagh, CEO and co-founder of The Bloor Group, a new-media analyst firm. “That trade-off drives down traffic and irritates the customer. What Liqwid offers is a viable solution that honors the separation of concerns that viewers want: content in the middle, ads on the outside.”
LeftsnRights co-founders, Jim Rowan and Nikolai Mentchoukov, decided it was time to redefine the interactive advertising experience with the development of liqwid ads in 2010. Rowan has an extensive financial and technology background, while Mentchoukov is one of the leading experts worldwide in rich media content and online advertising technologies. Due to their backgrounds, both founders have an especially in-depth understanding of the challenges facing today’s online publishers and advertisers and have found a way to solve these issues using their proprietary new liqwid technology.
“With liqwid ads, we’re creating a paradigm shift in the online advertising industry. Liqwid ads enable publishers to preserve the integrity of their websites while generating incremental revenue,” says Mentchoukov, LeftsnRights CEO. “And advertisers can gain complete control over their ad spend to accurately calculate and increase ROI of their online investments.”
The liqwid ad unit was recently chosen as a finalist for the Utah Innovation Awards in the category of Enterprise Software and Web-enabled B-2-B Solutions. The Selection Committee, comprised of seventy professionals from Utah’s business, technology and academic communities, made their selections after a month-long evaluation process. Winners will be announced on May 3, 2011.
Liqwid Ad Feature Highlights:
- Minimum size guarantees up to three times larger than banner ads
- Content can include any type of creative or application including games, rich media, video and social media
- Viewer-directed placement enables advertisers to choose number of specific viewers who see each ad and the number of times they see it
- Virtual board technology positions ads outside of web pages, guaranteeing ads are seen whenever rendered without disrupting content
- Minimum Viewing Time tracking ensures visitors view an ad for five seconds (MVT:5) before charges are incurred
Performance Marketing Leadership Summit
On April 19th, the day before ad:tech SF 2010, OfferVault presented their Performance Marketing Leadership Summit, a half-day event featuring discussions on compliance, fraud, and transparency. This was one in a series of events presented by OfferVault focusing on improving the performance marketing industry. Big thanks to Jim Lilig and the folks at OfferValut for putting this event on for free, allowing anyone interested in joining the discussion to attend. This event was also co-sponsored by AffCon, OfferMobi, and DirectTrack.
I headed over to the city to go, and I’m glad I did. The afternoon was divided between two singular speakers and two panel discussions, end capped by lunch to start, drinks to end, and a break in the middle. Here are some highlights of information I took from the day’s thought leaders:
E.J Hilbert
President of Online Intelligence, Epic Advertising
- Compliance is a dirty word, some people think it always equals loss. Truth is, there is no true definition.
- Compliant traffic is actually a 15% increase in profit in the long run.
- Margins decrease initially because of the bad traffic.
- Whether or not we see what we do as spam, the rest of the world does – it’s due to a lack of understanding.
- Remember, to the general public, we’re guilty by association.
- Compliance seems to be a catch-all, referring to legal, network, advertiser, corporate, affiliates, etc. Perhaps it should just be legal and corporate and we can call everything else fraud.
- More traffic = more money.
- The most profitable cybercrime is spam.
- We can’t because they don’t – there’s not enough enforcement in the industry. We need to crack down.
- Many top media outlets are developing their own advertising platforms they can trust instead of utilizing the existing platforms we use.
- Partner with the advertisers, that’s where the money is, not with super affiliate A or B.
- There are 4 ways to deal with fraud: accept it, insure against it, mitigate against it, not accept it at all. We should not accept it at all.
- Top advertisers are the ones calling the shots, because they have the money.
- Watchdog groups are paying attention. If we don’t do something soon, others will. We don’t want that.
- Online advertising is mainstream.
- Sometimes the way we have to go isn’t the popular way, but it’s the right way.
Panel 1: What We Need To Do to Combat Fraud
Jason Spievak (RingRevenue), Brandon McDonald (Product2Web), Chris Graham (Atrinsic), Tom Cohn (Venable), & Carrie Birkner (Lashback)
- How often does a company do something when one of these outside agencies tells them about a problem? Fairly often, actually. They gets lots of flack from publishers if they don’t take action.
- A lot of the responsibility in combating fraud comes from the technologies, the networks.
- Many networks and managers are now taking the stance that if an affiliate isn’t going to be forthright about their methods, they’re out.
- In the industry, we don’t trust each other.
- Product2Web stops fraud at the cart level. Networks should force their advertisers to utilize this kind of tool.
- Longevity planning should be the new term for compliance.
- Most affiliates live in this world of cloak & dagger, so where’s the incentive to be transparent? They incentive should be in taking the high road.
- Part of a network or merchants positioning & branding should be that they watch things & enforce their guidelines.
- Affiliates are black hat or gray hat because it works. They’re looking at the short term money makers, not long term business planning.
Peter Borders
Founder & CEO, MediaTrust
- We have the chance to seize a tremendous long-term opportunity.
- Affiliate marketing harnesses the best of the best, and we continue to harness new channels.
- Direct response television (infomercial) industry is trying to get into affiliate marketing.
- Evolution from Mass Media to Me Media. The consumer used to be at the bottom of the funnel, and now they’re at the top.
- Consumer is king, and we need to empower them. The market should be driven by quality and lifetime value.
- Right now there is little innovation, minimal brand presence, and an “all for me, more for me” mentality. We need to evolve.
- What do we need to do? Share information and data, innovate, move up-market, and collaborate.
- We have to think holistically for the sake of the industry.
- We should help each other to set standards.
- We have to be an industry of problem solvers.
- If the whole industry goes up-market, we ALL win.
- It’s time to build collaboration and trust, and support agents of change.
Panel 2: The Road to Tier 1 Advertisers
Rebecca Madigan (Performance Marketing Association), Todd Crawford (Impact Radius), Theresa Farmer (UnsubCentral), Peter Klein (MediaWhiz), & Liz Wasserman (Mate 1)
- Big advertising agencies still don’t understand affiliate marketing.
- What do we need to do for tier 1? Educate – be transparent.
- Big brands, this should be sales. Agencies can’t guarantee the spend of budget in terms of performance marketing.
- It’s a much longer sales cycle with large agencies.
- People want stability and consistency, which is tricky with performance marketing.
- Is it possible, technologically’? There’s efficiencies when you automate that always allow you to make more money.
- Big brands don’t understand that with “performance” you’re getting branding for free.
- Brand reputation is a concern for big brands, so performance seems scary. But it goes both ways, you can also build a brand using performance marketing like Mate 1 did.
- We need to do a better job explaining the metrics to agencies. They need to understand that there’s two types of advertising – performance and branding. And often there is some overlap.
- There’s a kind of lethal nihilism. Outside impressions of the industry is that we’re “a little shady & quasi criminal” and people don’t want to get involved (great quote by Liz there!)
- This gets perpetuated by smaller, CPA type folks that are looking for short term gains and give the rest of us a bad rap.
- Self-regulating isn’t going to work because there’s always a few folks willing to break the rules for a quick buck.
- Advertisers worry about negative brand impact and are worried about consumer respect.
- We don’t bring the consumer into the equation enough.
- Merchants need to focus on moving up-stream.
- It should be a goal to really be able to understand the lifetime value of a customer.
