A survey by Tradedoubler found that the biggest barriers among of advertisers and publishers when it comes to succeeding in performance marketing are the lack of actionable data-driven insights available (34%) and data visibility (34%).
The research was carried out on PerformanceIN readers with the majority of the respondents UK-based advertisers and publishers.
The measurement of incrementality, or the ability to measure advertising effectiveness was the second biggest barrier for 32% of respondents, followed by lack of visibility of the entire online customer journey (29%).
Meanwhile, 24% of advertisers and publishers surveyed said that restricted budgets prevented them from succeeding in performance marketing while 18% agreed that the lack of transparency in the industry prevented them from moving forward.
16% said a lack of commercial flexibility to try out new things was holding them back from succeeding in the performance marketing channel while 11% said they had poor buy-in or trust in the channel internally. Lastly, 11% said that networks preferred to work with voucher and cashback sites.
“It’s clear that data blindness and the lack of actionable data-driven insights is a real challenge for advertisers today,” said Matthias Stadelmeyer, CEO of Tradedoubler.
Meanwhile, Tradedoubler’s product director Nick Morris stated that one of the biggest challenges within digital marketing is the “sheer amount of data” generated by such activity.
“More than one third of our respondents defined the ability to measure advertising effectiveness and the lack of visibility of the whole online customer journey as being the biggest barriers when it comes to succeeding in performance marketing,” he said; “Performance marketing generates vast quantities of data, but the big question is how people then act on that data?”
In response to the findings, Morris highlighted that Tradedoubler’s Business Intelligence platform enables advertisers to visualise data insights and analyse their campaigns in real time, with full transparency, offering large real-time reports reflecting every possible requirement.
In addition, the platform’s User Journey Reporting gives full reporting of entire online customer journeys from affiliate data to the full spectrum of advertisers’ digital marketing activity, so that advertisers can see which channels and sites are involved in delivering their KPIs, and ultimately optimise digital advertising spend across different channels and publisher business models.
“Using this data to drive marketing decisions is more important than ever, and there is a huge amount of value to be unlocked within the affiliate marketing channel,” said Morris.
Tracking beyond affiliate
To date Tradedoubler remains the only company to offer both a public network and white-label tracking technology solution, allowing advertisers and agencies to track activity beyond affiliate, whether that’s digital channels such as search, display, email or individual traffic sources or affiliate partners, with only one pixel.
According to the digital marketing company, single tracking technology across all activities guarantees automated deduplication and sales attribution between affiliate activities in the private network, public Tradedoubler network and other channels – meaning advertisers and publishers can go above and beyond affiliation and through actionable insights understand the role that all their digital channels play in delivering ROI.