Netimperative: Affiliate Marketing Roundtable
Last week Netimperative held an Affiliate Marketing Roundtable. Great, here’s the description of the event from the website:
“The UK affiliate marketing sector is booming, but a lack of standards and unethical practices among rogue individuals still blight the industry. This week, key members of the sector gathered to discuss the burning issues in affiliate marketing, and look at the trends that could shape its future.”
Did anything stand out from that statement?
“but a lack of standards and unethical practices among rogue individuals still blight the industry”
Let me address these points.
Lack of Standards: OK well why not do something about this? As we speak some key figures in affiliate marketing are working on an Affiliate Association. Let me point out that this is been driven by affiliates. The aim will be to set up a framework for all parties in affiliate marketing to work within. Have the affiliate networks made any effort to do something similar? No. With the exception of maybe Tradedoubler who have asked some of their top ppc affiliates to sign a code of conduct. Sadly none of the other affiliate networks have expressed an interest in setting up any type of industry standards.
Unethical Practices: Let’s get this straight, like all areas of industry there are “rogues” and people who will bend the rules or just break them outright. But what disappoints me is that it is this small percentage of affiliates who give Affiliate Marketing a bad name. As highlighted in the tabloid like headline above. It’s very disappointing that all of the great partnerships that affiliates have with merchants aren’t publicised more widely.
But what saddens me most of all is that this roundtable event on Affiliate Marketing was comprised of 20 “key” people in the Affiliate Marketing industry. Can you guess how many Affiliates were invited? That’s right, none.
Netimperative, how on earth can you expect to have a balanced debate on Affiliate Marketing without affiliates? Without affiliates there is no affiliate marketing. Really, it is that simple.
Sure I appreciate that the point of the roundtable was to discuss issues surrounding the industry but that just isn’t possible when affiliates aren’t represented. In fact when listening to the audio recording of the event one member of the roundtable even said:
“Has anybody else in the room been an affiliate or run any affiliate sites? Its a different experience from what I’m hearing so far”
Doesn’t that just say it all?
Just like the recent article in Marketing Week where Affiliate Marketing was likened to the “Old Wild West”, this recent trend sensationalising the 1 or 2 bad apples in this business could be damaging. Given that a lot of merchants and agencies don’t actually have any contact with real affiliates, we are in a real danger that this ridiculous propaganda can do long term damage and result in yet more over-zealous program terms for affiliate programs. Or worse, some brand conscious companies won’t even launch an affiliate program as they are scared of their brand being damaged.
So please Netimperative, if you really want to help the Affiliate marketing industry and highlight it as a viable route to market could you please include some affiliates at your next event? Maybe Advertising.com could have given up 1 or 2 of their 7 places (7 places! I know they sponsored the event but come on) at the event to affiliates?
Full audio from the event can be downloaded from the link above.
What I’m listening to right now: Terri Walker - “I am Terri Walker”
Affiliate Marketing - Netimperative
Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Screw them then, it will just mean that owners who understand how powerful affiliate marketing will be will make a ton while the cautious companies will be left out of the party.
June 6th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Hey Kieron,
Just surfed onto your blog from Site Point. I am just starting out in the wonderful (and hopefully rewarding) world of affiliate marketing. Looking at the number of posts in here I have quite a bit of reading ahead of me! Anyway nice content and thanks for the great tips I have found already.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Hi Kieron,
As I was at the event, I thought I’d post a couple of comments.
First off, while I get constantly confused which hat I’m wearing, I was there from the viewpoint of both an affiliate and a merchant. Whilst ipoints isn’t the biggest of the bunch, we do six figure sums every month through a combination of the UK networks and various direct deals. David King and Paul Wright also have affiliate interests. I wouldn’t and couldn’t argue that the event wasn’t massively weighted to the networks though, and I think some big merchant interest would have been appreciated also.
The event was open to all, not an invite only, but netimperative is probably not on the reading list of as many affiliates as agencies & networks. I’d agree that Advertising.com could have taken a better lead in inviting some of their own affiliates along though.
PPC bashing is clearly hot news at the moment, as our trade media is increasingly following the national media’s lead in running stories that make good headlines ahead of good business. This is not a good line to be taken by publications that are supposed to inform the country’s marketing decision makers.
I made comments that the networks themselves don’t do enough to promote the measures they take against the rogues and to promote the responsible businesses like yours and ours that in reality create the bulk of the valuable business that AM generates. Tradedoubler have invited us to a similar code of conduct session with others in our sector that the PPC affiliates have already been through, clearly a step in the right direction.
Altogether I came away from the event pleased that I’d seen so many networks in the room together, and that the message about industry self-promotion seems to be getting through, albeit slower than I’d like.
When I started in a direct marketing career over 15 years ago the press was full of stories of junk mails and dodgy timeshare schemes. The DMA has successfully managed to self-regulate and promote the industry since those days. I’d certainly put our weight behind similar effforts for the affiliate marketing sector.
Where do I sign up?
Stephen Pratley
Marketing Manager
ipoints.co.uk
June 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Stephen, many thanks for your comments.
Whilst I appreciate iPoints is an affiliate of sorts I was rather hoping to see some of the more traditional affiliates represented. And I know Paul and David have affiliate interests, but I don’t believe they were in attendance wearing their affiliate “hats”.
I would have really liked to have seen Netimperative and Ad.com announcing the roundtable event on the A4U forum and asking for some participation from affiliates. Maybe next time.
Cheers!