Travelodge go to 0% commission again. I need a hotel alternative.

[pintofmilk]

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SevenHills, the success of my business is a serious issue. Are you trying to be helpful or antagonistic?

[Bordering]

Sorry to come in late here, but I have opinions on this issue.

Travelodge did this last year too. Most affiliates were knocked down to zero, and a few (I was one of the lucky ones) were reduced to 1% from, if I recall correctly, 2.4% which isn't exactly generous. I continued running them, and eventually they increased it so it was worthwhile again.

The cut to zero this time marks the last time I will run Travelodge - unless they'd like to pay me fully for the messing about which involved in removing their inventory from my systems and then putting it all back. I was generating bookings worth 10s of thousands per month. Is that really not worth 1%? If my business had margins so tight that 1% represented the difference between viability and not I'd be looking for some other avenues!

Anyway, the best and most direct swap for this product is Premier Inn via Booking.com. It sells well, and the chain is much bigger than Travelodge and is growing faster too.

BTW, re Sletoh, pintofmilk has taken this from just a rather obscure domain name to a site which I guess chucks come cash into the bank, and that's what this business is all about. So well done pintofmilk, I hope it's going well.

[ChrisSaid]

Hi,

I am the Account Manager for Premier Inn on buy.at. If you would like to go directly with the merchant and receive the latest top offers on a frequent basis including the latest batches of £29 rooms then please contact me on the below email:

christopher.said@buy.at

Please let me know if you have applied to the network or the programme and I will make sure you are approved immediately and can get started.

[alandvc]

I have been sending travelodge quite a bit of traffic over the last few months, with good sales, and have been trying to get onto their affiliate programme for a couple of months, but i looks like i'm wasting my time if this is they way the treat affiliates.

Needless to say they will be off from this afternoon............

I'll drop you an email chrisSaid and hopefully I can divert that traffic to Premier Inn.

[Iskander]

Guys, it's not Travelodge.

Travelodge is a company doing whatever it can to maximise its margins. You wouldn't expect anything less. It doesn't mean however, that the network has to roll over like a pussycat.

Why are networks running scared of the merchants at the expense of publishers?

Networks: We [Publishers] outsource our merchant/agency negotiations to you - and pay you for it! - because we think you can do a better job of ongoing negotiation in the time you have available to you than we could do in the time we have available to us.

That's mainly because negotiating with merchants/agencies is already a large part of what you do. Whereas a large part of what we do is research, write, interview, code, design, interact with our readership etc.

But... if you're not going to do a better negotiating job than we can do ourselves... remind me again, what are you for?

[adamski]

Guys, it's not Travelodge.

Travelodge is a company doing whatever it can to maximise its margins. You wouldn't expect anything less. It doesn't mean however, that the network has to roll over like a pussycat.

Why are networks running scared of the merchants at the expense of publishers?

Networks: We [Publishers] outsource our merchant/agency negotiations to you - and pay you for it! - because we think you can do a better job of ongoing negotiation in the time you have available to you than we could do in the time we have available to us.

That's mainly because negotiating with merchants/agencies is already a large part of what you do. Whereas a large part of what we do is research, write, interview, code, design, interact with our readership etc.

But... if you're not going to do a better negotiating job than we can do ourselves... remind me again, what are you for?

Hi Iskander

I don't want to appear rude and appreciate this isn't an ideal situation but you put forward an exceptionally simplistic argument. Our objectives (network and affiliate) are intrinsically linked. If you're not making any money then neither are we so if you think we "roll over like a pussycat" when it comes to these discussions you are sorely mistaken.

What affiliates often fail to realise is that most merchant affiliate programmes operate under a strict budget. Whilst we would love them all to be cost of sale, the reality is this isn't practical for traditional businesses.

Affiliate marketing is unique but is often put in the same bucket as the rest of advertising and is therefore budget limited. We can shout from the rooftops about how crazy it is to cut off an ongoing source of business but if money runs out, it runs out.

Naturally, we have very little influence over how the budget is allocated and it's usually quite a fluid thing based on the needs of the business at any given time.

We make the modus operandi for the TL programme quite clear to affiliates when they join. Please take a look at their Darwin Profile. Some affiliates have been communicated with directly concerning this, others by email but the important point is that we recognise the difficulty for affiliates in operating this way and are always conscious of being transparent from the outset.

If you choose not to participate, that's perfectly understandable but many affiliates have long standing, successful relationships with TL. When budget is available, the programme performs well. If you feel negotiating directly with TL will somehow make vast sums of affiliate marketing budgets appear from nowhere, then be my guest. You might be able to sack off affiliate marketing and become a magician.

Adam

[Iskander]

Thank you Adam for your response.

What affiliates often fail to realise is that most merchant affiliate programmes operate under a strict budget. Whilst we would love them all to be cost of sale, the reality is this isn't practical for traditional businesses.

Okay. Well, for those businesses who are so traditional that paying cost-per-action isn't practical, can you please ask them to pay cost-per-impression or - at the very least - cost-per-click, instead?

Otherwise what we have is a business model where the merchant pays for the following:

1) Brand awareness - Free
2) Ad Impressions - Free
3) Ad Click-throughs - Free
4) Converting leads - x% paid for... and the rest are... Free

For goodness sake, tell merchants to bite the bullet and treat cost-per-action as cost-per-action. They're not stupid. They're perfectly capable of doing it. They play the "we're too traditional" card in order that they may have their cake and eat it - you know that as well as we do.

With CPA, all the risk is on the publisher's shoulders and none of it is on the merchant's shoulders. When even that is not good enough for the merchant, maybe CPA isn't for them and they should return to CPC or CPM or something "more traditional" instead?

[Mogga]

What affiliates often fail to realise is that most merchant affiliate programmes operate under a strict budget. Whilst we would love them all to be cost of sale, the reality is this isn't practical for traditional businesses.

Affiliate marketing is unique but is often put in the same bucket as the rest of advertising and is therefore budget limited. We can shout from the rooftops about how crazy it is to cut off an ongoing source of business but if money runs out, it runs out.

Naturally, we have very little influence over how the budget is allocated and it's usually quite a fluid thing based on the needs of the business at any given time.

If the cost of aquiring the sale is built into the actual sale then it doesn't cost them anything for the sale UNTIL they have a sale.

I spose networks don't just work on a % fee of sales though?

[pintofmilk]

When Travelodge or any other merchant move to 0% they did so knowing what the reaction of affiliates would be. They expected affiliates to stop promoting. I am surprised that so many still do at zero percent and I am sure Travelodge are happy too

Why not just promote someone else?

[Iskander]

Why not just promote someone else?

As an immediate, practical measure, there's nothing else to be done, I agree with you, pintofmilk.

But it is unprincipled, don't you agree, for the merchant to say to the publisher: "You'll only ever get paid when your publishing activities generate a sale. As much as you discuss us, refer to us, report about us, research us, interview us... as much as you work on development, coding, usability, marketing, promotion, you'll only ever get paid when your activities generate a sale. You'll never get paid for the time you put in, you'll never get paid for your volume of output.

Oh... but, of course, don't imagine you'll always get paid when your activities generate a sale. Sometimes we'll just renege on our previous agreement. And then, despite the fact that you've spent months if not years writing about us and that you have lots of well-optimised articles and features in the organic SERPS which all drive highly-qualified traffic to us... well, that's just ours now. And we won't pay you anything for that. Haha, what a sucker you are!"

To my mind - and perhaps I'm mistaken in this - the network is the publisher's ally and guarantor that the merchant won't chew the publisher up and then spit them out in this manner. That's why, since it's the publishers who generate the income of the networks (this needs to be underlined over and over again), the networks should be standing over the merchant/agencies telling them what is what, how CPA works, what is an acceptable conduct and what is not and generally cracking the whip.

Here's what I think: Travelodge knows right now that it will have many more proactive room bookings at the moment for the Christmas/New Year period even without paying for advertising in magazines, newspapers, television, billboards etc. So it wants to reduce its promotional budget. Fine, if the promotional activity the merchant relies upon is seasonal, then state it clearly in advance.

Say that, (regardless of the time of year when a booking is made):

1) Commission on bookings made for December to January will be £1
2) Commission on bookings made for June to August will be £2
3) Commission on bookings made for May will be £3
4) Commission on bookings made for any other time of year will be £4

The above is just a simplistic example and it doesn't incorporate considerations like comission tiers for volume of converting traffic... but what I'm angling for is something that enables publishers to work alongside merchants as proper long-term, reliable business partners, so that publishers, themselves, can generate quarterly earnings forecasts and make hiring decisions based on those forecasts.

The question to networks is: do you want your publishers to grow into serious, competent companies? How is that ever going to happen if you allow Merchants to spring changes on Publishers with little warning, including withdrawing revenue entirely?

[adamski]

As an immediate, practical measure, there's nothing else to be done, I agree with you, pintofmilk.

But it is unprincipled, don't you agree, for the merchant to say to the publisher: "You'll only ever get paid when your publishing activities generate a sale. As much as you discuss us, refer to us, report about us, research us, interview us... as much as you work on development, coding, usability, marketing, promotion, you'll only ever get paid when your activities generate a sale. You'll never get paid for the time you put in, you'll never get paid for your volume of output.

Oh... but, of course, don't imagine you'll always get paid when your activities generate a sale. Sometimes we'll just renege on our previous agreement. And then, despite the fact that you've spent months if not years writing about us and that you have lots of well-optimised articles and features in the organic SERPS which all drive highly-qualified traffic to us... well, that's just ours now. And we won't pay you anything for that. Haha, what a sucker you are!"

To my mind - and perhaps I'm mistaken in this - the network is the publisher's ally and guarantor that the merchant won't chew the publisher up and then spit them out in this manner. That's why, since it's the publishers who generate the income of the networks (this needs to be underlined over and over again), the networks should be standing over the merchant/agencies telling them what is what, how CPA works, what is an acceptable conduct and what is not and generally cracking the whip.

Here's what I think: Travelodge knows right now that it will have many more proactive room bookings at the moment for the Christmas/New Year period even without paying for advertising in magazines, newspapers, television, billboards etc. So it wants to reduce its promotional budget. Fine, if the promotional activity the merchant relies upon is seasonal, then state it clearly in advance.

Say that, (regardless of the time of year when a booking is made):

1) Commission on bookings made for December to January will be £1
2) Commission on bookings made for June to August will be £2
3) Commission on bookings made for May will be £3
4) Commission on bookings made for any other time of year will be £4

The above is just a simplistic example and it doesn't incorporate considerations like comission tiers for volume of converting traffic... but what I'm angling for is something that enables publishers to work alongside merchants as proper long-term, reliable business partners, so that publishers, themselves, can generate quarterly earnings forecasts and make hiring decisions based on those forecasts.

The question to networks is: do you want your publishers to grow into serious, competent companies? How is that ever going to happen if you allow Merchants to spring changes on Publishers with little warning, including withdrawing revenue entirely?

Hi Iskander

You make some valid points and I can't say I wholly support how the Travelodge programme is run but we operate within the confines of what the merchant is currently able to do and as I stated before, TL do have lots of long standing relationships with publishers where the budgetary issues are discussed upfront and understood.

Perhaps we should operate a hidden programme for just those partners but there are downsides to that. When the programme is functioning properly, a wider group of publishers do very well and by hiding it we'd be completely removing that opportunity.

We will continue to be upfront about the way this programme is run from the moment publishers join and they should make a choice whether or not to engage at that point. I want to assure you that we work hard to make improvements but it's not as simple as you'd think however logical the arguments for change seem to us. Your suggestion to move to CPC or CPM doesn't solve the budgetary problems. This is not a case of them not understanding how CPA works, it's marketing money being moved away from the affiliate channel to other areas. Travelodge currently place greater value on those other areas and we are not in a position to challenge them without a deeper insight into how their business runs.

I think it's unfair to suggest allowing this to happen indicates we don't want our publishers to grow into serious, competent companies. I'd accept that criticism if this was a widespread problem but it absolutely is not; this is one of over 1500 live advertisers on the network. We spend considerable time educating advertisers on best practice and are one of the only networks to fully implement the IAB's Ethical Merchant Charter into our interface. I also refute your suggestion this was without warning. The terms are clear on the merchant's profile and have been from the start.

To conclude, I want this programme to run like any other and I think we'd all be more successful if it did. We will always strive for that and we don't simply roll over and accept every advertiser instruction but there are complexities and behind the scenes discussions to which publishers aren't privy. I can see how this looks from the outside though which is why I've taken the time to address your points on here. I hope that makes sense.

Adam

[Iskander]

Thanks for taking the time, Adam.

Your suggestion to move to CPC or CPM doesn't solve the budgetary problems. This is not a case of them not understanding how CPA works, it's marketing money being moved away from the affiliate channel to other areas. Travelodge currently place greater value on those other areas and we are not in a position to challenge them without a deeper insight into how their business runs.

If the merchant doesn't pay for television, they don't get.
If they don't pay for magazine or billboard, they don't get.
If they don't pay for CPM or CPC (for which they have to provide the budget upfront), they don't get.

If, however, they don't pay for CPA... they get all the benefit of all the links and all the coverage anyway - and it's all for free.

That might have something to do with why "Travelodge currently place greater value on [...] other areas."

Is there anyway that something in the order of what I outlined above (ie. seasonally adjusted commissions) might be proposed by Affiliate Window to Travelodge's digital marketing arm as a way of smoothing out their quarterly CPA budget, such that it makes things both easier for them and for you and for us?

Thanks again for your consideration.

[nataliemor]

What about Booking.com? Offers very good commissions.

[Iskander]

I have been meaning to come back to this thread for ages.

I just wanted to say a big thank you to whichever team it was at Digital Window who brought Travelodge back in from the cold and successfully communicated to them that if they wanted to operate a performance-based sales channel, it was only reasonable that they should pay for that channel on an ongoing basis rather than taking it for granted - not least when some publishers' have put in a tremendous amount of work and their livelihoods are at stake here.

I wonder if I'll ever see it (I remain optimistic) but, after more than a decade of doing this, I really want to see more Affiliate Networks cracking the whip and reprimanding merchants in a no-nonsense manner, when merchants try to pull a fast one on publishers like this. I am not (yet!) embittered, but it seems, much more often than I was formerly conscious of, that many merchants are not disinclined to operate in a psychotically partisan manner for short-term gain and actually couldn't care less if the Digital Performance Marketing sector doesn't survive long-term.

Well it doesn't have to be like that. From the perspective of a merchant, Performance Marketing is a luxuriously rational method of marketing. It is a luxury. Personally I'd LOVE to pay only for that advertising which (100% guaranteed!) leads to income, with no attendant costs for branding, impressions, clicks, word-of-mouth etc.

Arguably, from the merchant's perspective, Performance marketing is THE premium digital marketing solution.

So it should be discussed, regarded and treated as such by all parties involved.

It would also send a message out to grab-it-and-run merchants if the networks collectively pulled up a huge list of unreliable merchants and said:

Your commission structure is ridiculous (eg. jetBlue doesn't pay commission on flights... it's an airline for heaven's sake!!) - you're fired.
You consistently pay late - you're fired.
Your support with regard to creatives is consistently abysmal - you're fired.

It would be greatly encouraging to see all affiliate networks stand up for themselves and unambiguously explain to merchant-clients who try to take advantage that: "No, the customer is not always right. You've fallen short of the bar and you've forfeited your right to access pay-per-sale, the most economically rational form of marketing that exists. You've blown it. Now sling your hook."

What we currently have - after a decade and a half - is a widely-varying-in-quality "Android app store" of pay-per-sale programmes.

Ideally, I think what we want is a guidelines-based- consistently-high-quality "iTunes store" of pay-per-sale programmes.