Part One:What Does an affiliate Manager do all Day

[jess1]

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source:http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/ne...icle&ID=198711


What does an affiliate manager do all day?
January 01, 2004 Caspar van Vark

More companies are appointing in-house affiliate managers to drive sales. Caspar van Vark asks what skills they need

Scroll to the bottom of an e-commerce site and you're likely to find the link 'become an affiliate'. Almost everyone is in on the act, which isn't surprising as affiliate marketing can really be that rare beast: a win-win situation. In a nutshell, an e-tailer appoints affiliate sites to carry links to its site, and they earn commission from the e-tailer each time someone clicks through and makes a purchase. Terms can vary: often it's a percentage, say five-to-eight per cent, or a flat fee. Many affiliates and e-tailers join networks like TradeDoubler, Be Free or Commission Junction, which act as matchmakers but may offer management services too. It's this issue of management that online businesses are waking up to. When affiliate marketing first emerged, many viewed it as the goose that laid the golden egg - costs are minimal (a sign-up fee with a network, say), and you only pay for results, unlike traditional advertising which needs upfront spend based on forecast results. "Clients thought 'I just plug it in and I can expect enormous numbers of visitors at a very cost-effective price'," comments Will Cooper, chief marketing officer at affiliate network TradeDoubler. "But, of course, life doesn't work like that. You have to go out and optimise your network." That's why more online businesses are appointing a dedicated manager. The affiliate-marketing research organisation Affstat estimates that one-third of online businesses have an affiliate manager. Typically, their job involves recruiting affiliates, negotiating deals, managing the design of creatives and ensuring affiliates get paid. These are all things that networks can do, too. TradeDoubler started offering consultancy services at the end of 2000 when there was a downturn in the market and many businesses lacked the resources for in-house management. Commission Junction offers a similar service called C J Vantage. "In the UK,we now have in the region of 40 clients who take our consultancy services and 60 or 70 that take our account management services, which is basically a diluted version of the consultancy," says Cooper. In other words, there are degrees of outsourcing the running of an affiliate scheme. Cooper says it's not always a clear-cut situation where a client either outsources to a network and uses their consultants or has someone in-house. Often, they'll have both. As firms realise the value of their affiliate-marketing schemes, they're also waking up to the value of having someone in-house to complement, if not replace, a network arrangement. "People are prepared to put the resources behind it internally as well because of the results it drives," explains Cooper. "It's not uncommon for us to generate more than 20 per cent in online sales, so they can justify putting extra resources into their affiliate programme." Alison Guise, technology sales director at affiliate network Be Free, agrees, saying that firms are much more aware of the power of affiliate marketing and are acting accordingly. "Previously, they might have fluffed around a bit or given it to someone who didn't make it a priority," she says. "You would have seen that a lot a couple of years ago." Bookseller Blackwell's appointed a full-time affiliate manager in a newly created role just over a year ago when it found that 40 per cent of its online sales were originating from that route. "Prior to my starting, it was part of the direct-marketing executive's role across the business," says affiliate manager Susie Organ. "It was just tacked on to her role and it never really had ownership in terms of taking the initiative to increase the role of affiliate marketing. It was also to reflect the amount of business that affiliate marketing was bringing to the site." Unusually, Blackwell's doesn't use a network. Organ has to find all the affiliate partners, though she says most approach the company, and then vets their sites to make sure they're suitable. "Then we'll approve them and help them build their links if they need help," she says. "With the larger affiliates, it's more a case of looking at relationships. We have in-depth relationships with about five per cent of our affiliates." It's common for e-commerce sites to have strong relationships with a small proportion of their affiliates, which need careful management. An affiliate that drives huge volumes of traffic will expect higher commission rates and may want bespoke creatives, which are regularly updated, to push special offers. The importance of this small group led ebookers.com to hire a dedicated affiliate-marketing executive last summer. The travel firm already had a relationship with TradeDoubler, but Basil Hyman, head of marketing, says the new role was created specifically to manage day-to-day relationships with a handful of key partners out of its total of 2,500 affiliates. "We realised the importance of ongoing account management," says Hyman. "It's never going to be optimised if you don't focus on it and give it the right resources. It's pretty competitive out there in our space, and a lot of players are focusing on affilate marketing as they realise it's an easy way to get customers." This two-pronged approach to managing affiliates works well, he continues. "With the TradeDoubler approach, the network sources and manages partners, and the sites tend to be smaller, but there's a lot more of them. The others are more direct, which we source and manage ourselves, and we focus on them a lot more on a daily basis." The affiliates deliver a significant part of ebookers.com's sales - "it's under 30 per cent" says Hyman - but the brand association is also important. "Our biggest affiliate partner is Yahoo! Travel and that brand alignment is key to our business and brand strategy," he adds. Be Free's Alison Guise feels that focusing on the big fish in-house is a sensible approach. It means that each party is focusing on what it does best: the online business knows its key affiliates well and the affiliates value having a dedicated contact. And the networks can catch the smaller fish, delivering value on a large scale. "There is no doubt that networks can bring economies of scale to the equation," she says. "They have a good position with the affiliates in terms of bargaining power and they have a very good understanding of the rewards." E That's all very well if you're an 'ebookers.com', but there are thousands of tiny businesses online as well. In many cases it will not be in their interest to hire an affiliate manager as the volume of traffic and sales wouldn't be enough to justify it, and they are more likely to outsource the management of their programme to a network or make it part of the marketing manager's job. It also depends on the importance of online marketing to the business in general: a small or medium-sized business with a strong offline presence might not be as bothered, but for a large pureplay like lastminute.com it will be vital. "We always felt this was a very important area," comments Stephanie Gay, head of online marketing at lastminute.com. "It is essentially tapping into the potential of the internet, where individuals can set up niche web sites and build traffic by establishing a strong community." Smaller businesses will need to look at the potential that affiliates hold for them, says Guise. "If it's a niche offering, where perhaps they're never going to drive an enormous amount through the relationships, and they've got maybe half a dozen of them, they can manage them internally." Managing half-a-dozen partners wouldn't be a full-time job, but just because an online business is small doesn't mean it can't have a lot of affiliates, and it might need to take a hands-on approach to their management. Online DVD-rental service Video Island set up an affiliate programme several months ago and uses bespoke in-house affiliate-management software as well as an external network. "We felt it was very important to have our own affiliate management software as well as working with someone else," says chief executive Saul Klein. "A network brings you reach, but there's nothing better than having people who can come to your site, and use tools and services that have been specially designed to integrate into your wider network." The key benefit is that Video Island can track customers itself. "Our own software allows us to track post-click," explains Klein. "Networks are great at delivering people to your front door, but you need to understand what they're doing afterwards so that you can understand the true value of the lead." E Monitoring and learning from your customers beyond that front-door delivery is vital if affiliate marketing is to deliver its full potential. If a business can feed what it learns from its affiliate programme into its wider marketing strategy, its value is so much greater. And that's where a dedicated affiliate manager can be worthwhile. Blackwell's Organ says that she aims to learn from affiliate sales so that she can encourage repeat sales to come direct from the customer, rather than through the affiliates, so saving on commission payments. Her role as affiliate manager therefore has to encompass other forms of marketing. "In terms of a long-term strategy, we would like to use affiliate marketing to direct traffic to our web site, but we actually want people to come back directly next time," she says. "So, we're using the affiliates as one marketing tool." As affiliate management is still new, there is no prescribed career path. In most cases, managers come from the marketing pool as many of the skills are marketing and management-related. "An affiliate programme is part of our wider partnership strategy and requires the same skills as partnership-building and management - good communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills, people and account management skills, and good business sense," points out lastminute.com's Gay. TradeDoubler's Cooper feels there is also a big creative angle to the job: "You need to be analytical and able to crunch data, but you also need to identify the creatives that work best, or not so well, and be able to develop the programme creatively." While it doesn't need to be a full-time job in every case, an affiliate programme will only deliver what is put into it. Guise says the optimum scenario would be for companies to have someone in-house who manages the key strategic relationships and use networks to widen the net, but the most important thing is to give it the attention it needs and have clear objectives. "When they have clear objectives, and know they need to communicate with and manage their affiliates, and be creative, then online companies will see success," she says. MAJESTIC OUTSOURCES TO NETWORK Wine retailer Majestic (www.majestic.co.uk) has about 100 UK stores and turnover of around £100m. Many online retailers of that size would have an in-house affiliate manager, but Majestic mostly leaves the running of the scheme to TradeDoubler, which it has been using for a year, with in-house responsibility under the remit of e-commerce director Jeremy Palmer. TradeDoubler finds potential affiliates and generally checks that they are appropriate. Palmer says Majestic lacks the time and resources to manage it all in-house. He says: "I spend just a few hours a month working on the affiliate scheme. We have a very small team and one of the key things is that we keep costs right down." The affiliate scheme is important to Majestic. The retailer doesn't specifically work to integrate it into the wider marketing strategy, but that happens anyway because online customers become customers of an actual store for the delivery. "If our customers wish to be marketed to by that store then they will be," explains Palmer. "We are not pushing it in an active way, but it's natural that they become part of the customer base." CODE OF CONDUCT FOR WEB PUBLISHERS IN THE UK In March 2003, three affiliate networks - Performics, Be Free and Commission Junction - announced a joint campaign to set up a web publisher Code of Conduct in Europe. The code, already set up in the US, is a set of ethical guidelines, which aim to stamp out unethical behaviour by affiliates. Previously, there were no standard guidelines, which raised concern that publishers might use technologies improperly for their own gain. The UK terms of the code are exactly the same as those in the US, and are divided into three main subjects. The first issue concerns 'interference with referrals', which prohibits web publishers from tampering with referral mechanisms such as links, which could cut the commission paid to someone else. They cannot use technologies that would replace tracking identifiers, or intercept or redirect a user from being referred by another publisher. The second subject, of 'altering another publisher's site', says publishers cannot change the appearance to an end-user of another publisher's web site or use their content to obtain a referral, or obstruct access to another publisher's site, regardless of whether it has permission from the user. The third subject regards software installation and uninstallation. It says publishers cannot bundle downloadable shopping software with other applications in a way that makes installation and uninstallation unclear. Such applications must be clearly presented and accepted by users, and easy to uninstall. Elizabeth Cholawsky, senior vice-president for marketing and product development at Commission Junction, says the response from the industry has been favourable. "Both in the US and UK, the reception has been positive," she says. "Publishers look to us as the trusted third-party. Developing and supporting guidelines such as this code underscores the fact that we actively perform that role." The terms of the code do sound a bit obvious, however. Presumably, everyone knows that tampering with the web pages of someone else is not a good thing to do, so why is the code necessary? "Because a multiplicity of business models are being used to promote advertisers on the web," explains Cholawsky. "Some are not appropriate to be used in a network-based model. The development of the code sets out what is appropriate and what isn't. It protects the integrity of the business models in a pay-for-performance model. It assures that the publisher who has actually done the work will get rewarded for driving the traffic," she says. The three networks that created the code continue to promote it, adds Cholawsky.
ctd next post...

[Marc Gear]

More importantly, they are keeping an eye on their clients across the network to ensure it is being followed. "We actively monitor publishers in the UK, as well as in the US, for compliance and take action when we find issues," says Cholawsky. "We have also recently involved the IAB in the US - a neutral third-party that would take the code forward." KEY SKILLS FOR AFFILIATE MANAGERS Communication Affiliates need to be kept informed of special offers and new creatives, so they can promote them more effectively. Top affiliates may need this daily. Negotiation Commission rates require negotiation - not all affiliates are equal. If one partner drives a huge chunk of traffic, they'll want greater rewards. Creativity They may not need to design every banner, but they need to ensure the creatives are fresh. Some sites use competitions to motivate affiliates. Organisation Many sites have thousands of affiliates and they all expect to be paid on time, although networks may relieve some of that burden. Analysis Where are your buyers coming from? Do they return the same way? Analysing your traffic is essential. PREZZYBOX.COM USES NETWORKS AND IN-HOUSE MANAGER Gift site prezzybox.com is unusual. Despite having only 10 staff, it has a full-time affiliates manager, Zak Edwards, besides using two networks, Affiliate Window and Paid On Results. The web site launched at the end of 2000 and the affiliate marketing scheme got off the ground at the beginning of 2002. "Initially, running the affiliate programme was by default," admits Edwards. "We went with a network that didn't have a management service. But now it's our preferred route because we have more autonomy and control, and we can be more responsive and more individual. "We can tailor things specifically to our affiliates and do it fairly rapidly," he adds. "We're fortunate that we can offer requirements direct to affiliates." Although prezzybox.com is quite small, it has a lot of in-house expertise. There are designers and technical staff who can do things like design creatives. The site makes 20-30 per cent of its sales through affiliates, so Edwards is kept busy. "You need to treat your affiliates like a salesforce," he says. "You communicate with them, make sure they've got everything they require, and notify them of new products, new creative, any competitions and incentives." Edwards also spends time building up the network of partners - they choose prezzybox.com or it finds them. That could be by doing a simple search on Google for potential partners. "The affiliate scheme is one of the most important things we do, definitely," says Edwards. "We're not a huge company, but we do tend to be fairly forward-thinking in our strategy. And we value our affiliates. They do well for us."

[Marc Gear]

wanted to read the whole article in one thread

[Malcolm Cowley]

Hi Jess

Is there any way you can find the rest of that piece ( the aff marketing bit was about 10 pages long) online as we have a hard copy here but I wanted to show someone at home and I cant find it online?

Although they used a bit of artistic license with some of our stuff we came out looking quite well and so if you know where it is can you point me in the right direction please

[bazza99]

Thanks to you both for posting that - a very interesting article

[ianm]

Is this the one you're after Malcolm -

http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/ne...icle&ID=198710

[monkeyman]

Christ, that hurt my eyes reading that.

Was their 'Return' button broke or summat?

[Malcolm Cowley]

Ta Ian - knew if we kept banging on someone somewhere would have to put it in print lol

[DanielCoe]

Part 1 - A bit easier to read!

The purchase of affiliate-marketing specialist Commission Junction by online ad specialist ValueClick confirms the increasing regard for this online technique. Nasdaq-listed Value-Click paid out $58m (£39m) in cash and stock for Commission Junction, giving it roughly half the US market and a significant slice in the UK. Like other pay-by-performance methods, such as search marketing, affiliate marketing is coming to the fore as online advertisers seek more accountable marketing.

In 2002, ValueClick paid out $128m (£74.6m) for another affiliate network, Be Free, in a drive to become a one-stop shop. As well as the core business of online advertising, Value-Click has invested in search marketing by buying Search123.com. It also offers email marketing. Commission Junction has built a profitable business by driving traffic to merchant sites. It works for online businesses such as Marks & Spencer, Expedia and Marbles.

Affiliate marketing builds networks of web sites (called ‘affiliates’ or ‘publishers’), which carry ads for retailers and are paid according to the amount of business they deliver. Previously, the focus was on traffic, but now it’s on delivering sales and registrations. “Affiliate marketing used to be seen as the lowest of the low,” says Susan Kingston, business development director at Commission Junction. “It was where you put any money you had left after you’d covered everything else. However, over the years we’ve driven such good results that people have had to take notice. We’ve moved from being small and cheap to something companies are putting resources behind.”

Contextual advertising, where ads are served next to relevant content, can only boost affiliate marketing, she adds, and smarter management tools let retailers tailor commission rates to the products.

The deal is a stamp of approval for many of Commission Junction’s blue-chip clients, says Kingston. “Our clients see a public limited company taking us over as positive as there will be investment for the business and a better infrastructure. And ValueClick can provide other services.” That is certainly Value-Click’s aim. With a background in online ad-serving, the firm has sought to reposition itself as a more broad-based supplier of online media tools.

European managing director Carl White says more clients want integrated online campaigns, which are planned and controlled through one player. He thinks the new purchase gives ValueClick a full digital house: ad buying, search marketing, email marketing and affiliate marketing all in one. “We aim to maximise our intellectual knowledge of digital marketing to the benefit of our clients. It is attractive for an advertiser to come to us and talk about all their requirements.” The purchase of Commission Junction sits well with Be Free as the two products offer different approaches, he says.

Be Free is a software solution enabling clients to set up and manage their own affiliate marketing links. Clients include BA, Ask Jeeves, lastminute.com and Accor Hotels.

Commission Junction has its own ready-made network of publishers, which retailers can use to help drive business. The two approaches are not incompatible, says White, adding that some customers use both. “We believe Be Free products will be appropriate for advertisers who want to build private-label networks and have an in-house affiliate-marketing team. If you want broader exposure to a larger number of top European publishers, you can opt for Commission Junction. They don’t overlap that much.” Although statistical evidence is hard to come by, affiliate players are in a buoyant mood.

Will Cooper, chief marketing officer at TradeDoubler, which has had a presence in the UK since 1999, sees the sector undergoing a revolution. “When we first started, people didn’t believe we could drive business from sites outside of the top five portals. However, we’ve been able to show that we can.” He claims TradeDoubler has 6.5 per cent of the UK online-marketing sector and likens the growth of affiliate marketing to search marketing, believing that savvy marketers are making the two work together.

By using contextual links, deep links and product feeds, affiliate marketing can drive higher conversion than other forms of marketing. “We are driving £41.7 million a month in sales. It is the most cost-effective method of marketing, including search,” adds Cooper. White won’t be drawn on how much of ValueClick’s business is driven by affiliate marketing, but says it is significant and growing. In July 2003, the firm reported a $1.3m (£0.75m) profit for the second quarter of 2003 against a loss of $2.8m (£1.62m) the previous year, citing Be Free as a positive influence. At the time of the 2002 takeover, Be Free claimed revenues of $23.5m (£13.59m). As a private company, Commission Junction hasn’t revealed its turnover, but claims to be profitable.
The UK is its fastest-growing market and it doubled staff from four to eight this year.

The firm has also been working on multi-currency and multi-lingual versions of its system, which it hopes to roll out in France and Germany in 2004. White says the plan is to expand the business and he doesn’t anticipate any redundancies.

However, the existence of two networks poses questions. Be Free has yet to make a big splash in the UK sector where Commission Junction is the bigger name. The situation is reversed in the US where Be Free has an impressive client list of around 200, including Travelocity, Best Buy and Staples.

At the time of writing, the Commission Junction deal had yet to be finalised and White was reticent to spell out what it means for the market.

For now, he stresses it’s business as usual, with both brands operating, serving separate but complementary customer bases. But can the two co-exist in the longer term? “At the moment the two brands aren’t going to be merged and neither is the technology,” says White. “The plan is for them to co-exist as parts of the ValueClick group. We will look for synergies by getting them in the same office, but that will be over time.” Both firms operate different platforms and the possibility of merging one into the other has been mooted by industry observers. “It will be interesting to see if they can combine two very different technologies. I think it will be difficult,” says Cooper. “They might lose a bit of speed in the process.” But White says any decision will be taken in conjunction with users: “We have talked to customers and advertisers, and we are keen to get their input on this. Feedback has been very positive.” ValueClick’s critical mass will enable it to attract the biggest clients and best campaigns for affiliates, says White. Terms and conditions and links won’t be affected for now. “We are focused on getting the basics right.

Things like paying the publishers on time are important. We’ll work on better solutions for them.” Such customer service basics matter to affiliates and are at the heart of successful networks. Timely payment and access to campaigns they can use to drive business are essential. Publishers will only carry a deal as long as it makes them money. White sees consolidation in the sector being accompanied by a desire for retailers to work with one network, which will ultimately benefit affiliates, but not everyone sees it that way. A relative newcomer to the sector,

Perfiliate Technologies started supplying sites for the charity sector and has built up a network that consists largely of not-for-profit organisations. Scale is not important in this sector, says affiliate manager Malcolm Cowley, who also runs an affiliate site of his own. “Probably only 250 publishers do significant business, so these massive networks don’t mean much. We’re very proactive and try to talk to publishers on a regular basis, rather than sending an email.”

Perfiliate has focused on developing close relations with affiliates, so it can understand their strengths and serve clients better. Key to this is the ability to move fast, which is less easy for the big players, claims Cowley.

Perfiliate operates its own affiliate engine and offers short links with its buy.at brand. Affiliate partners can drive users to their own site, such as www.buy.at/ Norwichcity, from which they link to the retailers.

Perfiliate sales and marketing manager Chris Tradgett says the short link wins favour with affiliates as it’s easy to use and seems less suspicious to consumers. “It makes the affiliate links a piece of cake and looks like a call to action - buy this there.” Tradgett claims this makes buy.at affiliates outperform those on other networks by up to seven times. “A lot of affiliates don’t deliver business and just clog up the retailer’s network. We only work with the top affiliates that deliver business.” While Perfiliate is aiming for the personal touch, others see mass as critical.

Deal Group Media (DGM) which runs the UK Affiliates brand, also sells online media space via its DGM Premium brand and bought search-agency Webgravity in September, giving it a similar one-stop-shop approach to ValueClick. “We’ve moved to a more consolidated offer as clients look for a single channel to deliver their objectives,” says Adam Black, group brand and communications director at DGM. “In the past, affiliate marketing was seen as the poor cousin of online media, but it supplies a good deal of customer acquisition and needs to be taken seriously, which is why we’re rebranding affiliate marketing.” DGM now refers to it as ‘performance networks’ and has split its network in two; DGM Affinity represents top-performing sites and DGM Performance the rest. “Our affinity partners have valuable media space and we’re developing products with them. They deliver more than they could a few years ago. Some do six-figure business a month,” says Black.

DGM hasn’t ruled out further growth by acquisition, he adds. Some agencies see this move into other areas by larger affiliate marketing brands as ceding space to specialists. Edward Cowell, technical director at agency Neutralize, feels consolidation goes against the rising specialisation of businesses. “What you are seeing with ValueClick and the DGM/Webgravity E deal is established, specialised companies consolidating in order to form larger full-service internet-marketing agencies. Only time will tell if this is sustainable and whether they can continue to provide high levels of focused, technical expertise.”

TradeDoubler’s Cooper says consolidation in the market confirms its own strategy and shows the importance of the affiliate market. “The implications for advertisers, publishers and agencies are that they have a smaller choice of networks,” he says. “We can cater for the requirements of leading global advertisers who want to work with one provider across various markets in Europe. Clients used to be promiscuous, but many are settling for one network now. They found the rises in business negligible while paying more than one set of fees.

Argos started with Commission Junction and added TradeDoubler, but only gained 10 per cent sales, so went back to Commission Junction.” Others have started with TradeDoubler, added other networks, seen no sales hike and gone back to just TradeDoubler. Cooper sees no need to follow the one-stop-shop route of other players. “We’ve developed technology allowing publishers to monitor keywords on Google and Overture. This lets them optimise their efforts. We have tracking technology that lets publishers identify the product that has sold, so they can optimise their site. Any retailer that isn’t using affiliate marketing is probably planning to do so,” he adds.

One long-time convert is Firebox, which has run a network through DGM since 2000. Managing director Christian Robinson says affiliate marketing is one of its main marketing tools and has a conversion rate of five-to-six per cent. “We have large portal partnerships, managed in-house, and thousands of deals with smaller web sites through DGM.” In the past nine months, the network has become more important as some portals have reined in their shopping sites. Firebox provides product links for affiliates’ sites, a customised newsletter they can send to customers, and content such as the Firebox Top 10. “It’s a fantastic revenue-driver for us. There’s practically zero risk as it’s all done on a revenue-share basis,” adds Robinson.

According to Andrew Pike, chief executive and chairman of newcomer Netklix, affiliate marketing will steal budget from offline. “Many traditional marketing activities have seen budgets cut back, while proposed expenditure on internet marketing has expanded to outstrip other sectors, with budget rises of 13.5 per cent,” he says. “There are various models, such as paid-search, cost-per-click and cost-per-lead, but the appeal of affiliate marketing remains that it is low-risk with good ROI.” ValueClick’s White adds: “If we can take some of the jargon out of the business and explain the benefits to large advertisers, that’s better than competing.”

[DanielCoe]

Part 2

WHO’S WHO IN AFFILIATE MARKETING? Commission Junction Headquartered in Santa Barbara, with offices in San Francisco, New York and London. The London office is the only surviving part of a planned European rollout several years ago. However, it sees Europe as a maturing market and plans to re-test the French and German markets in 2004. The automated system has built up a network of 12,000 publishers in the UK. The firm has 110 UK advertisers, including eBay, Expedia, Marbles, Marks & Spencer, MFI, and Argos Additions. Now owned by ValueClick.
Be Free A software solution enabling retailers to build and manage affiliate networks. In the US, it has some 240 clients, such as Gap, Best Buy and shop.microsoft.com. In the UK, its 35 advertisers include BA, lastminute.com and Accor. Revenues were $23.5m (£13.59m) when sold to ValueClick in 2002 for $128m (£74.06m).

UK Affiliates The UK-owned network is one of the country’s oldest. It is run by Deal Group Media, which is on the acquisition trail and broadening its service base. The firm has 65-staff and £9.2m turnover, 12,000 affiliates and some 150 advertisers, including the AA, RAC, William Hill and Carphone Warehouse TradeDoubler Swedish firm, launched in the UK in 1999. It has since rolled out a 10 offices in Europe. Its ability to offer a pan-European network is its main USP. TradeDoubler gives access to 450,000 sites in Europe and 60,000 in the UK. Clients include Dell, Apple, Sony and eBay.

Perfiliate Perfiliate is an energetic newcomer to the market. After starting out building web sites for charities, the company migrated into affiliate marketing. It claims its network of several thousand not-for-profit organisations offers a distinct alternative to other networks and says its short links, based on its buy.at brand, make the process easier for affiliates. It works with about 80 retailers, including Sky, Egg, RAC, Lloyds and Comet.

Netklix.com Having launched its affiliate network publicly only recently, the company is working to develop a full range of advertisers and publishers. It charges a low, fixed fee, rather than the industry norm of a percentage of the publisher fee. The biggest private revenue-share partnership that has been tracked by Netklix.com is for Datingdirect.com’s white-label service. Netklix.com acts for the dating site and partners such as GMTV, Channel 4, Handbag.com and iVillage.co.uk.

[PitBoss]

My only criticism is that it may be too long to read and digest for anyone who's never heard of Aff Marketing before.

[pistol101]

It's also very fluffy marketing speak. Seems to be a battle of we've got brand x, y,z.

[jess1]

Any PR on affiliate marketing is good.

But my personal feelings on this article is unprintable and would offend many!

[tobyt]

Very interesting thread and article.

Must say I especially took note of the piece about "CODE OF CONDUCT FOR WEB PUBLISHERS IN THE UK In March 2003, three affiliate networks - Performics, Be Free and Commission Junction - announced a joint campaign to set up a web publisher Code of Conduct in Europe."

Was wondering if those same 3 groups are putting as much effort into a CODE OF CONDUCT FOR MERCHANT USING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS IN THE UK ?

[Supercod]

If you ask me a code of conduct for the UK that has none of the UK networks as part of it, is a total waste of time.

And besides the code of conduct says Adware programs are ok, so I wouldn't agree to it anyway.