Senior vice president of media services at performance marketing company MediaWhiz, Peter Klein, explains why the company has rebranded its affiliate network and what he thinks that portends for the future of performance and affiliate marketing…..
The New Look of Performance Marketing
The affiliate marketing industry is an incredibly innovative ecosystem. Ideas bubble up constantly and are accepted or rejected as publishers’ site monetization challenges evolve and become ever-more challenging in the digital age.
Change is necessary for any business to survive and thrive in affiliate marketing.
But change can also breed fear and confusion among affiliates and advertisers. Fear that the affiliate network they are working with won’t be around next week. Or that one of the thousands of smaller affiliate networks will go rogue and represent an advertisers’ brand in a completely unbecoming light.
This fear and confusion is destructive to the long-term prospects of the industry’s growth and sustainability. A better solution is needed, one in which a few select full-service players and a few niche networks lead the charge for a more professional and accountable industry.
Industry & Business Evolution
It’s with these great upheavals in mind that last week we announced a significant change to MonetizeIt, the MediaWhiz affiliate network: we have merged it within MediaWhiz’s full suite of performance marketing and SEO services and rebranded it as the MediaWhiz affiliate network.
As reported in PerformanceIN, we have also rebranded TLA, our SEO ingredient service, as MediaWhiz SEO, and folded our email product; White Delivery, into the MediaWhiz brand.
The change in branding reflects MediaWhiz’s expansion and evolution as a full-service global performance marketing and SEO solution for advertisers and affiliates. Whereas in the past we operated separate business units focused on distinct aspects of performance and affiliate marketing, now we are going to market as one holistic global solution for brands’ customer acquisition and lead generation needs.
The change also reflects our broader views about the future of performance and affiliate marketing.
Operating an affiliate network separately, we believe, is not a sustainable business model if the network hopes to offer anything beyond purely transactional affiliate services. In order to provide a true customer acquisition service, it’s necessary to tie an affiliate network into other performance marketing capabilities. We are doing just that through the rebrand and integration of MonetizeIt as the MediaWhiz affiliate network.
Our convictions about the future of performance marketing run deeper than the branding of our affiliate network.
We believe that clients – especially top-tier advertisers and publishers – want to work with one company that can provide a full spectrum of online marketing, SEO and customer acquisition solutions. Having multiple points of contact across multiple agencies or divisions isn’t efficient. This is especially true in an age in which a brand’s online marketing challenges are greater than ever.
Brands are increasingly coming to the realization that working with a single experienced performance marketing network/company is critical. Equally important is the acquisition of action-taking consumers across all online marketing and advertising, not just via affiliate marketing.
The days of silo-based online marketing are, thankfully, over. Clients now expect their performance marketing partners to provide a full breadth of customer acquisition and lead generation solutions.
Reposition was Necessary
MonetizeIt has existed for more than a decade. Consistently rated as one of the top affiliate networks in the world, the network thrived throughout the last decade. We deliberately kept it relatively small and private, preferring to work with a select group of higher-end affiliates that we felt best complemented MediaWhiz’s base of major brand advertisers.
Following the January 2013 acquisition of MediaWhiz by Matomy Media Group, a global performance marketing company, we made a number of enhancements to our affiliate network, including launching mobile campaigns and expanding into new international and domestic offers, such as game and app downloads, music and entertainment.
As we continued our integration with Matomy, it became clear that in order to harness the full power of the two companies’ affiliate networks, it was necessary to reposition MonetizeIt as an integral part of the MediaWhiz brand – one and the same. Where MediaWhiz goes as a performance marketing company, so will its affiliate network.
Just like change is necessary for the evolution and continued growth of affiliate marketing, change is also necessary for any network operating in this space. By expanding MonetizeIt into a full-service affiliate network and repositioning it within the MediaWhiz brand, we’re confident that we’re adapting to the industry’s continual change in a proactive and strategic manner.
It’s a change we believe is reflective of the future of affiliate marketing.