Advertisers with affiliate tracking in place on their mobile sites

[KevinEdwards]

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Hi there,

We thought it was about time we updated the list of advertisers on the network with m.commerce sites as well as affiliate tracking in place.

We've written a short blog post complete with the full list of clients. If you're an advertiser of ours and feel you should be included please drop me an email.

Thanks,
Kevin

[KevinEdwards]

Hi there,

We're updating the list daily and about half a dozen additional advertisers including Hotels.com, Evans Cycles and Groupon have been added since my initial post. There's also a handful of affiliate comments people might find interesting.

Do let us know if you're one of our advertisers with a mobile site with tracking in place and you're not on the list.

In March nearly 10% of Affiliate Window's traffic came via tablets and handsets so it's imperative affiliates and advertisers clue themselves up about the ramifications of not fully tracking the whole range of affiliate activity.

[Alistair_Tapjoy]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the list it's really useful, other networks please take note =).

Is it possible for you to also include a list of your merchants who HAVE mobile enabled sites but do NOT currently have tracking in place. As all of Tapjoy's traffic comes from smart phones or tablet devices we lose out when the mobile site is automatically loaded and there is no tracking.

Cheers!

[KevinEdwards]

Hi there,

The list has been updated again and we're now approaching 50 advertisers with tracking on their mobile sites.

Incidentally last week we recorded 11.2% of all traffic and 7.3% of sales through mobile. The clear discrepancy between the two can be partly attributed to poorer conversion rates (partly as a result of unoptimised mobile sites) but also the 'lost' sales from advertisers who don't have affiliate tracking in place on their mobile sites.

If you'd like to receive our regular mobile updates and insight please drop us an email and sign up for our monthly Strategy newsletter (this is separate from the usual weekly affiliate and monthly advertiser newsletters) and is available for everyone to subscribe to regardless of whether you work with the network.

Thanks,

[atoone]

This has actually surprised me. Purely be the fact that so many advertisers do not include tracking on their mobile site, which includes just about all of the merchants we deal with. This means that when a user is automatically transferred to the mobile site of any of our merchants all tracking stops and therefore we get nothing.

This is much much worse than the age old argument of users being encouraged to telephone in to place an order, therefore cutting out the affiliate, as this is an automatic redirect to the mobile version whenever the user visits on a mobile device. In my eyes this should not be allowed if the visit is through an affiliate link and there is no tracking on the mobile site.

I had naturally assumed that tracking would be on the mobile sites and am actually quite angry to have found this out. Feel like once again the affiliate is not being taken seriously and that the wool has been pulled over our eyes again.

[edwyn123]

Hi atoone,

It's worth highlighting that the majority of retailer's don't yet have mobile optimised sites and therefore tracking is working as per usual.

The only scenario in which you refer unmonetised traffic is when the retailer has a mobile optimised site but has not put affiliate tracking in place (often as the site are developed without consultation with all relevant departments). We are naturally working closely with these retailers to get our tracking set up as a matter of priority.

Hopefully this offers you some assurances that affiliates aren't being intentionally mislead!

Cheers

Edwyn

[Jon]

Is the list still being updated? If not, what progress has been made since March, please?

This issue is critically important. In fact, I was very surprised to see that updates about mobile strategy were only being offered to people who subscribe to a separate, non-standard AW email list.

[KevinEdwards]

Hi,

The list is updated as and when advertisers add tracking to their m-commerce sites. The most recent update was last week and there are now nearly 90 retailers on the list. A member of each account management team is responsible for checking the accounts that sit in their team and flagging to us so we can amend the post.

Additionally all advertisers who have tracking in place should have a flag on their account to say so when you look at their network profile page. This provides additional transparency.

The monthly strategy newsletter is something my team puts together for anyone to subscribe to, regardless of whether they work with us. It usually contains mobile insights alongside other information or research we've done from across the industry. It's not a substitute for vital mobile tracking updates that we will always distribute using a variety of methods including the weekly affiliate newsletter.

[Jon]

Hi Kevin

Thanks for your (very fast) reply. If I do a quick search on all UK advertisers on AW, it says there are over 1,000 merchants (I shan't ask you to reveal the exact number, as I appreciate it's confidential).

Do you know / can you share how many of your merchants currently have mobile-optimised websites? I'm interested to know what percentages of those who do have mobile versions of their websites have / haven't also added affiliate tracking.

And thanks for the extra info and reassurance regarding the mobile tracking updates

[KevinEdwards]

Hi Jon,

I don't know off the top of my head but I believe Matt who works in my team has this information. The majority of our advertisers being SMEs means the majority of them probably do not have m-commerce sites. I'll see if I can get some definitive data for you tomorrow.

We have an internal target we're working towards by year end and rest assured it's one of the network's key priorities for the remainder of 2012 and into 2013. We're anticipating mobile traffic through handsets and tablets could hit 20% by year end so the importance of tracking increases all the time.

[KevinEdwards]

Hi,

Apologies, I didn't get hold of this data today but will try and give a sense of the scale tomorrow. The data obviously goes out of date pretty quickly as companies launch mobile sites and add tracking on an almost daily basis.

As an aside, every new contract stipulates that tracking must be added to m-commerce sites.

[KevinEdwards]

Hi there,

I don't have a definitive figure as the latest list is a few weeks out of date but roughly one third of our advertisers with m-commerce site have tracking in place.

What I should add is that we've deliberately targeted larger advertisers so whilst one-third of advertisers are tracking affiliate sales through dedicated mobile platforms we believe the percentage of sales being tracked is much higher. We have also set tight deadlines for a number of additional retailers as we estimate sales through handsets alone during Christmas peak could hit 6-8%.

Thanks,
Kevin

[atoone]

Hi Kevin,

It looks like this list hasn't been updated since September? I'm particularly interested in whether the below have mobile tracking in place:

Carphone Warehouse
Dial-a-phone
Mobiles.co.uk
e2save

Can you let me know what the state fo play is with these?

[AffiliateWindow]

Hi atoone,

We have recently released an updated list of all of our advertisers and whether they will track through mobile devices.

Essentially an advertiser will be able to track through mobile devices in one of three ways:

- Optimised mobile site complete with affiliate tracking
- Optimised mobile site running off and tracking through the same domain
- No optimised mobile site, so sales track through a standard desktop site

The full post complete with a link to the status of each advertiser can be found here.

As for the ones that you mention Carphone Warehouse, Mobiles.co.uk and e2save will all track through the same domain on mobile devices, while Dial a Phone has a non transactional mobile site.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Many thanks,

Affiliate Window

[XtremeUK]

Hi, is there an automated way to retrieve this data. It's all very well keeping a list, but it would be far more useful to us if we could determine if a retailer tracks mobile clicks automatically. i.e. I would not show results for that retailer if they are browsing one of my sites via mobile.