[Chuck Hamrick]

Well written position piece that all affiliate marketers need to memorize. There are some networks working on analytics to show the incremental steps that multiple affiliates contribute to the final sale. This is the significant statement:

One aspect of affiliate marketing which is under-appreciated is that advertisers actually get much more than just the final sale for their investment. All of the other components of that sale process – exposure on high-traffic sites, banner space, exposure on generic search terms, coverage in newsletters – are effectively free advertising that through other channels would be paid for upfront. Through affiliates, advertisers are able to market to a greater proportion of the web and, as experts in micro-niche targeting, affiliates can master areas beyond advertisers’ reach.

Once we get to the next generation of tracking it will be interesting to see how much affiliates contribute to an ecoms total online sales.

There is a tipping point where publisher sites become big enough that they stop being affiliates and start selling ad space.

[Convergence]

It is apparent there are many merchants and their AMs/OPMs that should realize the portion you quoted:

One aspect of affiliate marketing which is under-appreciated is that advertisers actually get much more than just the final sale for their investment. All of the other components of that sale process – exposure on high-traffic sites, banner space, exposure on generic search terms, coverage in newsletters – are effectively free advertising that through other channels would be paid for upfront. Through affiliates, advertisers are able to market to a greater proportion of the web and, as experts in micro-niche targeting, affiliates can master areas beyond advertisers’ reach.

Perhaps they wouldn't be so quick to drop some of their underachieving, smaller affiliates...

[Chuck Hamrick]

I regularly point out the impressions served by affiliates and relate it to branding. AvantLink is the only network I know with a pixel container for merging multiple channels. Haven't gotten it implemented for a merchant yet.

In 2007 I was at a Google conference for their affiliate network. There were three presentations by Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. All were showing the incremental increase between display, paid and organic. I asked if anyone was able to tie those channels together into one analytic panel. You could have heard a pin drop. I believe that was the same year that Google added affiliate tags to their analytics. I have yet to hear anyone talk about looking at all online channels together, they always talk about them separately. Like there is no cross over or bleed!