Throughout the last two decades, the affiliate marketing industry has undergone a tremendous number of changes but common ground issues such as fraud, tracking accuracy, lack of transparency, payment delays and steep network fees remain some of the most prevalent pain points in the affiliate marketing industry, undermining its use and effectiveness.
Founded in 2017 by a group of publishers and advertisers, Attrace is taking an innovative approach by creating a decentralised open network with blockchain tech. The Attrace solution is based on the principle that the pain points surrounding affiliate marketing are predominantly caused by the central regulating middleman between the publishers and advertisers in the traditional affiliate marketing model.
By bringing a completely in-house developed solution which leverages blockchain technology at the heart of affiliate marketing, handling many of its core functions, Attrace has the potential to revolutionise the way publishers and merchants interact by providing a cost-effective, fully transparent and safe ecosystem for its end users.
The underlying benefits of Attrace blockchain solution
Blockchain tech is inherently a trust-less model as it has no central authority with all transacting parties operating on the same hierarchy. The tech enables anybody to start an agreement with a counterparty in a secure way without a central regulating authority in between. The advantages of this tech for the affiliate marketing industry seem obvious:
No more trust and transparency issues
Fraud and tracking are two of the biggest frustrations for most advertisers and publishers. If existing centralised solutions are already guaranteeing features such as transparency, fraud prevention and more, it’s not unusual for many achieved referrals to never be allocated correctly. These are mostly due to imperfect tracking solutions and numerous technical issues that traditional affiliates networks always seem to be dealing with. Publishers are often faced with the uncertainty that numbers are real or manipulated and advertisers are doubtful about the ROI of some partners.
The Attrace blockchain is powerful and can register every individual click generated. Registering all website traffic at individual click level – on a blockchain – guaranteeing the truth at all times. Technically Attrace cannot fail to allocate traffic generated to the right publisher and it therefore eliminates all concerns about fairness from either side of a partnership. By using the open blockchain ledger, there are no more discrepancies and publishers concerned that they aren’t being fairly compensated for their efforts would be able to confirm the delivery of any subsequent activity.
Substantial reduction in fees
Similarly, to other industries that blockchain is enhancing, the affiliate marketing channel is largely dependable on third-party providers. Doing what it does best, blockchain is able to eradicate third-party solution providers by linking publishers and advertisers directly in a transparent ecosystem, in that way removing the mandatory (and often unreasonably) high network fees.
Since Attrace uses blockchain to handle many of its functions, it can incorporate far lower fees than traditional third-party providers, in the basics as much as 95% lower than the industry average, resulting in on average of 25% more value available for publishers.
This will likely lead to higher payouts and creating a huge opportunity for a whole new group of advertisers and publishers to redefine and drive the affiliate marketing industry forward.
And in the event that an end user requires account management to oversee the day-to-day operations and strategy of a program, the option remains available through the Attrace ecosystem for an advertiser to select a third party of its choice. Moreover, due to Attrace substantial reduction in operating fees, this “hybrid” approach will keep the overall cost-structure relatively lower than current industry standards. The Attrace vision being that the core account management fees imposed by networks should be an option for advertisers and never mandatory.
Decrease of entry barriers
Likewise, on the contrary to traditional affiliate networks, Attrace can afford to operate without imposing high monthly administration-fees or size threshold to qualify for merchants, ultimately decreasing barriers to entry for smaller merchants.
And due to the inherent benefits of blockchain, since you can set up a guaranteed secure agreement in minutes without a regulation middleman, it is possible for anybody to on-board and participate within minutes, instead of hours and in most cases days.
Immediate commission payouts
In addition to saving fees and lowering entry barriers, by using the latest blockchain payment solutions, affiliates will be pleased to hear that all commission payments could be issued automatically and instantly on the Attrace platform, eliminating the long-standing cash-flow and slow payments issues intrinsic to traditional affiliate networks. It is perfect for smaller affiliates that need a more regular cash flow to scale and test.
No more data privacy issues
The Attrace ecosystem has implemented irreversible unidentifiable verification hashes for registration of all clicks and sales on the public chain. This means zero GDPR Data will be processed or saved on the public chain, ever, as it is simply not necessary. This makes Attrace neither a GDPR Data owner nor GDPR Data processor. Attrace is a superior proposition in terms of data privacy.
Latest developments and what’s next
Over the last quarter, Attrace has completed various significant technical milestones and Attrace MVP is now live with sufficient features to satisfy early adopters. Both publisher and advertiser UI / UX design has been completed as well as the Attrace wallet, payment in FIAT, and explorer functionalities.
The Attrace WordPress plugin has also been released, enabling easy and automated embedding of affiliate links for WordPress websites and its expected that the platform will continually be expanding its already broad UI features based on user requirements.
If you are interested in the underlying Attrace tech and how this fundamentally differs from existing networks, please get in touch with the team.