We have over 3,000 responses to our BLUE BOOK survey so far, with more coming every day. The data provides many insights but what I’m personally finding fascinating is the movement from last year.

Already we can see that several networks that were hot a year ago have lost their appeal. We can see smaller networks moving upwards faster than we have seen before. And we can see one or two huge networks that appear to have lost their way and are just stalling in this difficult economic environment.

If you haven’t yet taken the BLUE BOOK survey please take it now.

Interestingly though, the views of publishers and advertisers don’t always move in the same direction. One or two networks that were extremely popular with affiliates in our 2011 survey are this year attracting negative comments about slow payments and poor affiliate interfaces, while at the same time they are getting stellar reviews from certain advertisers and merchants. Strange.

What is clear though is that the networks that are doing well and finding support from both the publisher and the advertiser communities are those that are doing one or all of the following things:

  • Differentiating themselves from all the other networks that area round. This is rule #1 of branding, of  course.
  • Investing in new technology so that their interfaces are simple but efficient and their tracking reliable.
  • Training their affiliate managers and other partner-facing staff to provide great service, and to care especially for high-performers.
  • Making efforts to grow their own organic business, rather than simply relying upon brokering offers.

These are the kinds of network activities that seem obvious once they written down, but as the BLUE BOOK survey is illustrating quite clearly this year, too many networks still believe that doing the same thing as everyone else is going to keep them afloat.

It won’t.

If a network is quick on its feet and good at finding new opportunities in mobile or in buying cheap traffic it can survive for a while, but the industry is maturing, advertisers are getting smarter and the FTC is more attentive than ever. The next two years are likely to be a tipping point, with many networks hitting the wall and the well-managed growing faster than ever before. This is a good thing.

If you haven’t yet taken the BLUE BOOK survey please take it now.

And if you run a network and want to maximize your chances of a fair hearing from your publishers and advertisers, send them the link today: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NNVVMX3