Affiliate Marketing Blog: Last Click Commissions - Still Relevant in 2007 / 2008?

Saturday, 24 November 2007

Last Click Commissions - Still Relevant in 2007 / 2008?

I was out and about this week talking to a network and some merchants and it got me thinking about whether having the "last click" being the one that determines who gets the affiliate sale.

Is it still relevant today when you consider there are many marketing channels that merchants typically engage.

Consider this scenario:

User reads in press about product XYZ

User searches in Google for "product XYZ"

User finds an affiliate blog entry giving details of the pro's and con's of that product with a nice little video and a list of merchants that offer the "cheapest deals for product XYZ".

User clicks on the affiliate link for Merchant "ABC"

User doesn't buy straight away but signs up for merchant's newsletter

Next day they get an email from Merchant ABC with "Best Christmas Deals for XYZ-type products".

User clicks on link and refines the exact product they want

User doesn't buy straight away as they want to have a think

User decides now is the type to buy

User searches in Google for "Merchant ABC"

Merchant ABC uses Dart tracking to do their inhouse ppc.

User buys 2 Product XYZ

Who should get the "sale"?

Is it the affiliate that first introduced the user to the merchant?

Is it the merchant's email marketing team that gets a conversion for their stats?

Is it the merchant's SEM agency that get's the conversion?

Should the merchant cost that sale to the affiliate/email/SEM channel?

Should the merchant de-dupe the affiliate sale because they actually got the sale themselves?

If the brand bidding was actually conducted by an affiliate should there be a way of compensating both affiliates - the one that educated and introduced the user to the merchant or the last click affiliate that was there at the right time?

Also do you think more and more merchants will start de-duping across the various marketing channels and what impact do you think that will have on the affiliate industry?

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4 Comments:

At 24 November 2007 at 15:39 , Anonymous said...: channel deduping - my nightmare. I was having a heated argument a few days ago about this - my opinion is that it only comes to surface when the merchant realises they can get away with not paying certain channels (most frequently, affiliates). Can they NOT pay their cpc channels? No, of course not. Can they NOT pay their email marketing team? No, of course not. Can they NOT pay affiliates? Yes, of course.

Comparing apples and pears, that's what this is. Pay them all on the same model and then do all the deduping you want.

Rather than talk about deduping, merchants should be talking about effectively tracking the full customer path, see the patterns that arise and evaluate marketing budgets based on that. Are affiliates a necessary part to convince the customer? When does paid search come in? Is email marketing important at all? What paths are necessary to obtain market share and boost growth?

Why is no merchant even thinking of these questions, but deduping is first in their agenda? Why is it that the tables have turned now and if you object to this new trend you are viewed as conservative & narrow-minded?
At 25 November 2007 at 19:09 , Anonymous said...: Yes and No! The reality is that customers do need multiple channels of advertising and that by paying all channels the merchant will go bust.

The merchant really needs to a step back and think why didn't my customer buy first time, as this is the cause of excess marketing expense.

Affiliate programmes with last click commission do tend to be the most ineffective programmes, mainly because people think it's solved their issues.

Hero your a little misleading that the merchant has to pay their cpc, or email channels, yes they will pay the first time, however they will soon stop it if that channel isn't the last click.
At 26 November 2007 at 11:46 , Anonymous said...: The raw facts are that if de-duping doesn't take place, then merchants are losing too much of their marginality in order to remain profitable. In an ideal world, merchants would have the opportunity to reward appropriately across the mix, with multi-touchpoint tracking. But until then, de-duping can be(and often is) the difference between a program existing, or not. We're taking the step with our merchants of introducing de-duplication but ony tagging generic or specific ads, essentially leaving the brand terms untagged. This allows value add publishers cookies to remain intact if a user is returning via a brand search (except of course, if another affiliate is on the brand - but thats another story)
At 27 November 2007 at 10:43 , Huddo said...: I'm with Duncan on this one...