As advertising networks are increasingly used in domestic and cross-border campaigns, the industry is experiencing a multifaceted transformation. Alexander Bachmann, CEO and founder of international ad network admitad, identifies the current and upcoming challenges and opportunities for market players in this field.
1. Mobile traffic: Seeking a deeper and more efficient integration
Mobile is among the fastest growing sales sources for advertisers. Mobile apps installed in users’ devices are an instrument of choice, since they allow marketers to get closer to the customer. The brand’s icon on the screen is permanently exposed to user attention, while push notifications are far more efficient that emailings (38 times on average) to trigger action.
However, many advertisers cannot trace the real source of their sales correctly because their app and their mobile affiliate program are not integrated. They miss a part of the picture when it comes to attribute sales to webmasters.
2. Turning influencers into affiliates
Influence marketing offers a range of opportunities to advertisers. The audience which influencers manage to drive to their offers can be massive.
Working with influencers, however, is not always easy. Some popular Youtubers do not even understand the fact that they can earn on affiliate programs using their channel. Next year will see advertisers fine tune their understanding of these opportunities, and learn to better work with influencers.
3. Tracing the customer’s journey
How efficient was the last contact point of your customers before they landed on your site? In which channels did they previously appear? Answering these and other questions is key to optimize your campaign and the related affiliation mechanisms.
New instruments are needed to trace the customer’s journey: we will see the emergence of “user maps” that identify and analyze the channels (webmasters, traffic sources) the user interacted with before he made a purchase. Not only may such tools help marketers improve their campaign, they will also be useful to create or fine tune relevant payment models to remunerate affiliation chains.
4. Cross-device tracking
People use increasingly different devices – and new technologies allow marketers expose them to targeted messages seamlessly. Advanced affiliate networks are already working on integrating “lightweight” instruments to track sales of users across different devices.
5. Coping with ad blockers?
The CPA industry loses considerable amounts of money because of ad blockers. Affiliate networks should intervene in the creation of the lists of blocked domains, since mistakes in these lists make it difficult to track users’ actions correctly.
6. Globalizing affiliation
As cross-border e-commerce increases year after year, the boundaries between domestic and foreign markets tend to erode. Thus Chinese companies are moving to the West (Europe and Russia, America) while Western companies seek to expand their sales throughout Asia.
International affiliate networks must follow the trend: those with a truly global approach will be in a position to manage integrated campaigns to reach customers in several geographies simultaneously.
Alexander Bachmann has more than 10 years of experience and expertise in the affiliate industry, in particular in the German- and Russian speaking markets. In 2009 he founded admitad, which since then has asserted itself as a leading ad network on several continents. Mr Bachmann also invests in new projects in the field of CPA marketing.
This post is part of a special series on CPA advertising in partnership with admitad.
