UKNM: affiliate networks / page impressions

[Ian Tester]

Leslie wrote:


"So why should someone entrust an affiliate programme and not do it

themselves? - that is the question!"


Affiliate programmes give you 2 things, hopefully


1. Access to a large pool of interested consumers with traffic on their own

sites. Essentially they're doing what we all do in one shape or form -

selling access to a valuable community. Verifying the quality of this pool

is pretty hard to do in any kind of quantitative way, so you're back to a

combination of guesswork and a number of people in the company's particular

pool. Be very inquisitive about the way the punters were signed up, and also

think about the "freshness" of the signups and their recent activity (were

they signed up quickly, and since have done nothing? / what is the churn?).

. . also think long and hard about the synergies between the sites offered

and yours.


2. A package of conveniently packaged software with which to manage these

people. Essentially 2 things -  a monitoring & reporting tool, to track

referrals and their actions on site (very easy to build in-house), and a

communications toolbox to make sure you can communicate with them (email,

and site to upload new graphics etc)


If you think you can do both of these things better in-house, and don't want

the risk of relying on somebody else's systems, then I guess do it in-house.

But only if you really think you know what you're doing - it's very tricky

to manage.


That said, getting access to a pool of small site owners is a massive pain -

the same dilemna as in the offline world.


Also remember that although affiliate programmes are huge in the US, there

is very little "punter knowledge" of them over here although this is

increasing. When we were starting one in Germany last year, we realised that

there was almost no knowledge of them whatsoever. We also reckoned we were

only the third site of any size to launch them over there. France marginally

better, rest of Europe. . . .ahem!


Nick asked:


"Does anyone know where to get information on the numbers of sites with

particular numbers of impressions ? For instance, how many sites are there

with over a 1m impressions a month, how many with 500,000 etc. ?"


You wish! Not possible to measure except by gathering info from the sites

themselves - in the UK, nobody does this properly. And quite often the sites

don't know (looking at the Revolution 100 a few weeks ago, I reckoned that

only about 40% of the sites were reasonably audited) The closest you'll get

is panel-based thingies such as mediametrix, which are staggeringly

inaccurate. Basically, believe them slightly less than the viewing figures

for TV (and then imagine all the data from TVs was only picked up in

people's living rooms, and no other rooms in the house).


ta-ta!


i


Ian Tester, Business Accelerator, EMAP Digital

http://www.emap.com - building the most exciting media company in the world

Exmouth House, Pine Street, London EC1V 0JL, UK

T 020 7868 7574 F 020 7868 7514 M 07880 557692 E

ian [dot] testeremapdigital [dot] com

AIM iantester



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