What Will Affiliate Marketing Be Like In 5 Years?

What will the affiliate landscape be like in five years?

1) Specialisation
Well the first feature we'll see is the continuation of specialisation. In the five years I've been in the industry I've seen the gradual specialisation of affiliates.

With the massive increase in affiliate programmes due to the realisation that it is the most cost-effective marketing strategy there will be so many affiliate programmes that we'll have to specialise in two or three areas to allow ourselves to keep on top of the changing offers and messages from the merchants

2) A greater threat from behavioural marketing
At the moment affiliates use their nous and knowledge to work out which offers are most likely to be appropriate and hence make the most money. Companies like FetchBack will become more mainstream but still may be out of the reach to most merchants. FetchBack works by re-targeting adverts to people that have been exposed to an offer in the past.

With servers doing the matching in a far better way than humans (however experienced they are) there will be a greater move by media owners to monetise their properties. At the moment Google makes shed loads from the lack of knowledge of advertisers, they make a bundle from a lack of efficiency in the markets. Will advertisers choose to spend their money where they choose a demographic set to place their message to? Will Google learn more about users and add demographics in to their AdWords system?

3) An even greater value placed on content
If you think about it, content owners with great degrees of natural traffic based on referrals (peer recommendations) could well dominate under the increased automation from PPC adverting. Having a database of ready and willing users will become even more important.

4) A changing nature of the UK
We're all used to the stereotype of Britain being afternoon tea and ramblers. But the country is changing. With 6 million immigrants living in the country and this figure growing by 500,000 a year our target audience is changing. Will we have to learn different languages to be able to promote to the same proportion of the population? Will we have to learn new cultural etiquette's?

5) Boundaries will continue to fall
At the moment most affiliates would be happy with say £5k, £10k a month. With a possible 10 million people gaining internet access next year will they start knocking up affiliate sites and ppc in their native lands where the average earnings and the availability of affiliate programmes remain behind their own knowledge and capability? In the shorter term we'll experience more affiliate competition here - before the affiliate market expands in their own countries. This is why affiliates should focus on their USP's - work out what yours are now.

6) Social Media won't be something affiliates ignore
We'll all have Facebook apps (mine are being developed now). We'll all be looking at user behaviour and game theory - well successful ones will. Remember the cash back toolbars? Aren't they social media tools?

7) Networks will retreat into sector niches
It's my view that there will be so many affiliate programmes that merchants will demand sector experience. Networks that can say they're expert in, and have fantastic relationships with certain sectors will gain the hand with a type of uber-merchant as well as keen new merchants.

8) Networks and Merchants would have finally learned to communicate properly
We won't be getting millions of emails anymore from merchants and networks. They will be following my recommendations made to Webgains when I mentioned they should have sector specific rss feeds regarding their merchant announcements.

9) Affiliates won't be putting up any old crap
Google et al would have cleared out the MFA-type sites. The algo will move to place more weight on social bookmarking which I theorised over a week ago.

10) There will be a bigger gap between successful affiliates and average ones
Successful affiliates would have plowed back in their earnings and invested and learned from the market. They would have been thinking "what will affiliate marketing be like in five years" and doing something about it!

What do you think affiliate marketing will be like in five years?