Sky not taking online orders?

[evanzo]

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Again! Sheesh

[Malcolm Cowley]

Hi

Yes we have noticed that one - ourselves and I-level who look after Sky have been talking with them to iron out any issues but it does take time . Anyone who has worked for a company like them will know how difficult it is to get any tech time for anything but we are trying and the people we deal with at Sky wish the magic wand could be waved as well.

I'm sorry its causing you wasted traffic and I hope one day conversations like this don't happen as its smooth sailing all year .... heres hoping. In the meantime the conversion overall is up and the CPA's are huge so they are trying to make up for the intermittent connection to the online channel are compensated in other ways. This goes to show that the marketing guys are behind the program just a bit hand tied when it comes to overhauling the site.

Thanks for bearing with them

Mal

[evanzo]

No problem for me as such, I was just poking around their site and noticed it was not working so I figured I would just warn people.

[Azam.net]

Still down and we wouldn't have know about it unless I'd decided to surf A4U at 1am instead of sleeping Understand your position, Malcolm, and know it's not your fault but Sky are guilty. They are enjoying free advertising on countless sites 'cos of this.

[evanzo]

I'm suprised more people are not bothered about this as it seems that Sky have done this a few times in the past, this must cost some of their top affiliates a lot of money.

[Malcolm Cowley]

Yes but bear in mind that Sky used to pay £20 for a customer and now pay £60 - this goes some way to eases the ebbs and flows of the site and is why the business still remains profitable for their top affiliates to promote.

As said they are fully aware as are we and the guys who promote them as it has been covered numerous times in email and the forum and by phone.

The bottom line is when looking at programs that have intermittent issues like Sky you give them a try and if the business comes out with the margin you can work with great if it doesnt you drop it till its fixed.

Mal

[a4uforummember]

slightly off topic...

I dont understand why sky tv... probably one of the only authentic monopolies, actualy operates an affiliate programme in the first place, I certainly dont understand why they should be offering 60 quid and I definately do not understand why they allow affiliates to bid upon the sky tv brand name.

They are just throwing money at these affiliates for no reason what so ever.

[Azam.net]

You have a point, but there is a reason for Sky spending money on marketing. You have to convince people to part with £300+ a year to subscribe to your channels.

Their marketing does work: people are happy to pay hundreds of quid a year to watch channels with adverts every 15 minutes, yet these same people complain about the BBC's £110 a year for several ad-free tv and radio stations plus masses of other stuff such as free concerts and events. Plus, there is increasing competition from Freeview, Freesat plus cable, so Sky need to advertise heavily to ensure they don't lose lucrative subscribers.

From here: "Digital terrestrial service Freeview has accounted for 60% of the growth in the digital TV market since launching last autumn. Almost 20% of digital households are now free-to-air."

[a4uforummember]

yes, of course sky should continue to market itself, but really, people do not get sky by accident, it is not an impulse purchase like perhaps a dvd player may be. I just think that sky is getting carried away in giving affiliates 60 quid for signups, particularly where these affiliates are brand bidding. I do not believe that any affiliate can bring in extra value signups for sky via ppc unless they are brand bidding.

The sky situation is very different from many other affiliate merchants because of the monopoly situation. People will tend to get alternatives to sky for just a couple of reasons, one of them is affordability, another would be location for satellite dish planning regulations etc. and in these cases the alternatives ie. telewest would not be so popular if sky channels were not available upon these platforms.

The sky brand has a massive online presence, with viral campaigns running all over the place all of the time. So to whose benefit is finding, www.sky-offers.co.uk, www.sky-offers.tv, www.sky-interactive.co.uk, www.sky.todaysoffers.co.uk in the search results for 'sky tv' upon google. Its certainly not to skys own benefit especially when not one of these sites is offering anything extra and several of them direct straight to the merchant themselves.

I think that at 60 quid a go it is a pointless and unnecessary waste of money for sky.

[drivetowin]

I think there are a couple of issues here:

1. Sky acknowledge and affiliates promoting them know that the site does not accept online orders for some of the time, so although £60 as a headline rate looks attractive the true rate is probably nearer £30-£40 when downtime is taken into account.

2. By allowing affiliates to bid on ppc sky have no ppc cost themselves.

3. Sky are nothing if not business savvy so you can be sure that the £60 represents good business value to them - dont forget that by having the affiliate programme they are getting brand exposure across a multitude of websites and compared to other marketing mediums £60 cost per customer is probably still great value for money (it costs a lot of money to run 30 second prime time ads on ITV) and they also do every house mail drops which probably have something like a maximum 0.1% take up rate.

[christh]

Also, Sky don't allow you to bid on their brand names. I'm not sure why you've gone off on one here either. If you think Sky are wasting their money then there's your perfect opportunity to stick one to The Man. Never heard of someone complaining on forums that commissions are too high!

[evanzo]

I'd say it marketing genius. Sky has not been taking online orders for about 5 days now, so all signups generated by affiliates in that time have cost them nothing. By offering a seemingly generous £60 per signup, affiliates promoting Sky seem prepared to tolerate frequent periods when Sky will not take online orders.

Take the last 30 days as an example. If you promote Sky heavily, workout your average daily signup rate, now times that by the days of downtime this month. The signup bountry is fairly irrelevent if the programme is down frequently.

[christh]

Fair point Evanzo. Down the links go!

[Malcolm Cowley]

Sky has been doing serious amounts of orders everyday guys lets make that clear at this point. Intermittant is a long way from down.

The online booking area can be tempromental but this is more than offset by the commission value as has been discussed before - if it wasnt I would hope that most affiliates who work with us would know we would either be looking to allocate compensation or suspend the program in the interim.

Bear in mind also it costs Sky on average £200 to acquire a new customer through other channels so even at £60 the word bargain may be mentioned.

In terms of Sky branded bidding the ROI for this goes on increased coverage for Sky in other areas and is through a select group of affiliates across both buy.at and DGM.

I would always look to epc and margin before dismissing a program with some problems as you may be missing out to knee jerk on assumption.

Thanks

Mal

[a4uforummember]

Thanks mal

the confirmation of a closed PPC group brand bidding is always useful.