In what’s been an ongoing and industry-wide initiative away from a last-click reward basis, affiliate network TradeTracker has launched a new solution to enable advertisers to better understand publisher influence throughout the conversion path.
The Conversion Path Tracking Tool enables publishers to benchmark their position and influence on the customer journey beyond driving the final conversion, and in turn receive more “adequate” remuneration by advertisers.
The announcement comes in light of Tradetracker reporting that 95% of all affiliate transactions involve more than one affiliate promoting a campaign.
“Publishers have the possibility to review their position and analyse their results against other publishers competing for their piece of the commission-pie,” Tradetracker stated.
“Being able to review other site types and channels their visitors are involved with, allows publishers to invest in those activities which result in satisfying the advertisers’ needs best.”
Cementing relationships
As a result of the new capability, TradeTracker’s clients are now able to cement long-tail publisher relationships and involvement with those playing an ample role in driving awareness and traffic, while less so in their ability to push final sales over the line.
The network’s tracking tool has already received praise from travel group TUI for its ability to optimise its publisher channel based on differing roles played in the customer journey.
The update provides a further boon to publishers on the network in the form of analytics, with them now able to gain a barometer of their own position in the purchase journey against competitors.
The solution can be used in “private” or “public” mode; publishers can share their details and get access to the information provided by others using the latter, while navigating in “private,” they will only have access to site type information broadly categorising other publishers as, for instance, ‘blog’ or ‘comparison site.’
While last click, or cost per acquisition, has long been a core and effective metric for success in affiliate marketing, in many respects the model has become restrictive as the affiliate market expands towards publishers such as content sites and blogs.
Tradetracker’s announcement is the most recent signal that the industry at large is making substantial efforts to evolve core, defining facets, in order to continue proving that budget spent on the channel is money well spent.