2020 may just have been the most challenging year for business in the last 100 years. For the performance marketing industry, the challenges were mixed with some blessings. As workplaces and retail stores were shuttered and consumers were forced to stay home, in many cases working from home and online for longer hours each day, e-commerce boomed. Amidst the changes and chaos, … [Read more...]
How ClickDealer Grew To Be The Best CPA Network In Europe – An Interview with Taras Kiseliuk
ClickDealer is ranked as the best CPA network based in Europe in the Blue Book's first European Top 20 table. We chatted with CEO Taras Kiseliuk this week to find out what he thinks they are doing right and where they are going from here. Blue Book: Congratulations on being rated the best CPA network in Europe. Why do you think so many advertisers and publishers chose … [Read more...]
Alexandra Forsch of Awin & ShareASale Talks Opportunities, Technology & How Affiliate Marketing Will Take A Bigger Share Of Ad Budgets
Alexandra Forsch is the President of Awin US, including ShareASale to form the Awin Group. With 15+ years of experience, she is one of the industry’s big thinkers, and we were lucky to be able to chat with her last week about how Awin and ShareASale fit together, self-service networks vs client services, and the future of the industry. Blue Book: Awin has grown very … [Read more...]
CAKE’s Parent Company Buys TUNE
CAKE's parent company, Constellation Software, is acquiring TUNE. The announcement yesterday means that two of the biggest network and partner tracking platforms will be under the same ownership. This is a continuation of Constellation's strategy of rolling up SaaS companies under their Perseus Operating Group, with specific focus on performance marketing. In a blog post, … [Read more...]
What Advertisers & Publishers Should Be Doing Now
We are now six weeks into the coronavirus crisis. The dust is settling a little and it is beginning to be possible to see the contours of what lies ahead for the economy and the affiliate marketing industry. Let's review what we know and what looks likely, and what it means for your business. What Is Working? In talking to people around the industry I'm impressed with how … [Read more...]
Performance Marketing Provides Stability & Measurable Returns In A Crisis
When discussing how the ongoing pandemic could influence performance marketing, I think it’s important to first recognize the potential complexity of that influence. By that I mean consumers, affiliates, advertisers, and networks are all likely to be impacted differently and to varying degrees. The way they’re individually affected also inherently impacts their relationship … [Read more...]
In Performance Marketing, Relationships And People Are At The Core Of All That We Do
During a crisis, leaders should lead from the front, and during the good times, leaders should lead from behind. We are working at SmarterChaos to "lead from the front" as we pivot towards affiliate marketing offers that help humanity like Tele Medicine Offers, Hand Sanitizers, and we are working on sourcing masks for hospitals to protect our doctors and nurses. Our offers like … [Read more...]
Now Is The Moment For Performance Marketing To Shine
At the end of this tunnel, there is light. Depending on where you are, the light may be closer or further away, there’s now enough of it that we can begin to ask what the world will look like once we emerge. Three thoughts: People with jobs will have pent-up demand so we can expect consumer spending to jump as the lockdown eases. However, there are a lot of people newly … [Read more...]
Where Now for Affiliate Marketing?
At a time where so much is in flux, we’re incredibly fortunate to be in an industry that not only has the ability to continue to operate seamlessly, but has the chance to really soar. Though it’s impossible to anticipate every possible change and outcome that could occur in the coming months, we see the environment created by COVID-19 as one of great opportunity for performance … [Read more...]
How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Click-Tracking Better For Everyone
An interview with Peter Varga, managing director of ThriveTracker A click-tracking application needs to be a part of every performance marketer's toolkit, allowing multiple campaigns and media buys to be analyzed in one place using independent data. There are a few good click-trackers in common usage, and one of the most interesting is ThriveTracker, designed from the ground … [Read more...]
Performance Advertisers Are Still Being Ripped Off
Fraud was once the weak link of the performance marketing industry but has since become a major selling point. After all, why should advertisers be worried about fraud when they only pay when they get a confirmed sale or app install? It is a great sales pitch for networks, but is under threat by continuing app install, attribution and click fraud. The problem is that bad … [Read more...]
Amazon Buys Sizmek Ad Server
Amazon's acquisition of the biggest independent ad server outside of Google's Doubleclick and Ad Manager products will allow them to provide deep attribution data showing exactly which ads drive sales on Amazon. Kolin Kleveno, svp and head of programmatic at 360i: “This Sizmek acquisition is going to really help them to attribute back everything that runs on their … [Read more...]
Direct-To-Consumer Brands Look To Performance
DTC brands are beginning to hit a wall in terms of growth. In an effort to find more scale they are moving more budgets towards performance marketing, direct mail and catalogs. As Digiday put it in a recent article: When a marketing mix is 50% Facebook, 50% Google, it’s easy to tell how money is being spent and to what effect. But eventually, those channels get tapped … [Read more...]
An Advertiser Tracking Platform For Professionals
MaxBounty’s new advertiser tracking platform is fast, scalable and ready for the enterprise MaxBounty, a leading CPA network in performance marketing, recently launched their first advertiser tracking platform. This represents a major technology investment driven by a desire to provide class-leading client services and maintain industry leadership in the face of increased … [Read more...]
Google Clamps Down On Tracking & Fingerprinting
Google has announced new privacy controls in Chrome that will aggressively restrict device fingerprinting and the utility of third-party cookies across the web. They're selling these plans as providing increased protection for end-users, but it is also clearly a way to cement Google's industry dominance while handicapping other networks. Google tracks everything through … [Read more...]