No Check, Please

Whether it is for spring to begin, for Godot or for a commission check, no one likes waiting.

The 30 to 90 days that affiliates – especially those outside the U.S. – must wait for commission checks to arrive can seem like a lifetime, and waiting in line at the bank to cash it is so 20th century.

While merchants might not be as anxious to see the money leave their accounts, replacing lost checks and answering calls about payments wastes time and money, and paper leaves an expensive trail. For recipients, being paid by check requires a trip to the bank and then waiting (there’s that word again) 24 hours or more for the check to clear.

Paper checks are also permanent – a discrepancy in the amount must be resolved by another check, or possibly returning the original draft. When merchants are issuing dozens or hundreds of checks per month, the cost of resolving disputed checks can pile up in a hurry. "Receiving a check is one of the more inconvenient payment methods," says Ron Hynes, vice president of product development of Prepaid for the Americas at MasterCard Worldwide.

Enter the electronic payment. No sitting by the window looking for a delivery person, currency exchange fees or checks that disappear into the ether. The other advantages of electronic payments – including faster processing, greater accuracy and lower transaction fees – all but guarantee that the paper check will soon become an endangered species in the online marketing space.

For the issuing party, there’s the printing (where errors occasionally happen), verifying and signing of the drafts and the stuffing of envelopes – all time-consuming tasks. Direct deposit to a recipient’s bank account is the most popular form of electronic payment, and it is increasingly being used for business-to-business transactions. B2B automated clearing house (ACH) payments grew by 10.9 percent between 2005 and 2006 to 2.3 billion transactions, according the Electronic Payments Association.

Alternative electronic payments that do not require a bank account for deposits are also on the rise, with services including PayPal and PaidByCash becoming commonly accepted methods of payment. In all, electronic payments represent more than 10 percent of online commerce transactions, and similar technology is being applied to B2B financial transactions. Adding to their attractiveness is their "green" quality, as eliminating paper checks saves trees, while fewer trips to the bank means less time behind the wheel.

Electronic payments have grown more rapidly in the consumer arena, but B2B is catching up, according to Edward Kountz, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch. "There’s more pent-up demand on the B2B side" of electronic payments, Kountz says. The lack of a unified payment standard has held back adoption, but more businesses are moving to paying electronically for the same reasons as companies accepting electronic payments – "to eliminate friction," he says.

Catching On With Networks

Performance networks are moving to electronic payments to eliminate the costs and administrative hassles of paying with paper. DoubleClick Performics began paying affiliates electronically through direct deposit in 2001, according to Ed Fleming, the company’s finance manager. DoubleClick Performics developed software that is integrated with its reporting and accounting system to streamline generating direct deposit payments. "It costs us about half the price of a stamp to process" a direct deposit payment, he says.

Currently DoubleClick Performics’ payments are split evenly between checks and electronic deposits, Fleming says. Affiliates that generate the most revenue are the most likely to participate in direct deposit. Fleming estimates that 90 percent of commission dollars are sent out electronically.

DoubleClick Performics regularly contacts affiliates to recruit more to accept being paid electronically, but some still prefer to be paid by check. Affiliates may decline to participate in direct deposit because they fear identity theft. "They don’t want to give out their banking information," Fleming says. DoubleClick Performics has had internal discussions about offering alternative electronic payment options, but there has been "no outcry or huge demand" from affiliates, according to Fleming.

Commission Junction currently offers direct deposit and is evaluating offering PayPal as an electronic payment option for affiliates, according to Dave Osman, the company’s vice president of Client Services. "There doesn’t seem to be a clear leader" in B2B electronic payments, he says. While electronic payments would save the company, "Our desire to eliminate [checks] is based on customer needs, not cost," Osman says.

LinkShare recently announced a new payment plan for publishers, which pays them weekly from the first dollar earned. By moving to a weekly payment schedule, LinkShare reduces publishers’ wait time to receive commissions and doubles the number of paydays. The new plan intends to help publishers improve their cash flow so they can invest resources in their growing businesses. LinkShare officials declined to comment for this article about its payment options.

PayPal, the eBay company that has popularized online funds transfers in the consumer realm, has developed software called MassPay for automating the processing of electronic B2B payments. MassPay can be integrated into payroll and reporting programs through a free application programming interface (API), according to Michael Oldenburg, Associate Manager of Corporate Communications for PayPal. T here are now 18 affiliate software applications that incorporate MassPay, including Affiliate Guerilla, AffiliateShop and MyAffiliateProgram.

Transaction fees for MassPay are up to 2 percent of the value of the transaction to a maximum of $1 per transaction and are paid by the issuing party, according to Oldenburg. Money can be transferred without cost from the online account to a PayPal debit card for off-line spending, he says.

Alternative Payment Options

As an alternative to direct deposit, networks are beginning to roll out debit cards that are linked to online accounts and accept electronic transfers. These cards, also known as "prepaid," "stored value," "reloadable," or "payroll" cards, do not require affiliates to provide bank account information – only a valid address is needed to initiate an account.

Prepaid cards have the same efficiencies as direct deposit without requiring a complex sign-up process, MasterCard’s Hynes says. Prepaid cards enable companies to eliminate commission checks altogether when used in combination with direct deposit, says Hynes, which works with banks and payment processing companies to distribute MasterCard-branded cards.

Payment companies Payoneer and Ecount as well as network Axill offer prepaid card services that have no start-up fees to the network, and the cards are free for the affiliates.

These cards offer the security of gift cards (if you lose the card there’s no access to a bank account) with the added benefit of third parties, such as networks being able to deposit funds electronically. Payoneer, of New York, offers MasterCard debit cards that can be used for shopping or to get cash through an ATM, according to Yuval Tal, CEO of Payoneer.

Although the cards are free to affiliates, there are fees of up to $2 for withdrawing funds through an ATM. Affiliates who are part-time workers and use commissions as discretionary income can find it advantageous to separate their earnings from their primary bank accounts.

Just as with direct deposit, the funds are available the same day of the funds transfers, Tal says. However, if a balance is kept on the card at the end of the month, Payoneer charges a fee. While paying a fee for someone to hold onto your deposit might seem counterintuitive, Tal says that the cost of tracking and administering held-over balances is more than any interest the company could make.

Electronic Payment Options

Merchants looking to accelerate their payment processing while eliminating the cost of paper and accounting hassles have several options for going electronic. Transaction fees vary to a maximum of a few dollars per transaction, but they are all superior to the cost of paper checks.

Direct Deposit It’s easy, universally understood and safe. However, it requires validating an affiliate’s bank account number. Finding international banks to participate can be costly and time-consuming.

PayPal Many affiliates already have existing accounts so they can be very comfortable in getting on board. Little to no information is required to recruit affiliates, and PayPal can pay out in 17 currencies.

Prepaid Debit Cards Ecount and Payoneer, along with many banks backed by Visa or Mastercard, offer cards linked to online accounts. With a minimal of software integration, publishers can issue payments from within their affiliate software. Affiliates can get cash through ATMs using a card with the network’s branding.

Affiliates who set up a Payoneer account can also direct funds from any network, even if Payoneer does not have a relationship with the network, according to Tal. Each Payoneer account includes a routing number that can be used for direct deposit, similar to a brick-and-mortar bank. Affiliates can also mail endorsed checks from Google, and Payoneer will deposit the funds into their debit account, Tal says.

Debit cards can be set up so that the networks pay most or all of the transaction fees. Tal says the per-transaction fee depends on the volume of funds that the network processes. Networks that use Payoneer include AmieStreet, ROI Rocket and JoeBucks. Gary McNelly, CEO of JoeBucks, a health and beauty affiliate network, chose Payoneer because the transaction fees are less expensive than implementing PayPal. Integrating Payoneer into his reporting system required just one hour of technical staff time, he says.

Ecount of Conshohocken, Pa., offers electronic payment systems that can be used by networks to compensate affiliates and for affiliates to offer rebates to consumers with minimal administrative costs. Jay Levin, senior vice president of consumer payments at Ecount, says companies can build loyalty by offering MasterCard debit cards with their branding. "Online marketers can be tough to get off-line branding," Levin says. Offering a branded card "will give them that viral feel." As an added benefit, affiliates that work with several networks are more likely to remember and positively view a network if the logo is on a debit card that they use for discretionary income.

Ecount requires a database or XML file from the network that can be submitted via FTP or email to generate electronic payments. The company creates a custom-branded website that cardholders access to check their account balances and payments.

Ecount’s debit cards can also be used as periodic rebates for signing up for a service, Levin says. Wireless phone carriers and cable companies have issued debit cards to new customers as an incentive for signing up. Part of the cost of a new phone or cable box is returned to the customer via monthly payments to a branded card, which builds consumer loyalty at a lower cost than issuing paper checks, according to Levin.

Axill, an international network located in Piscataway, N.J., has been aggressive in pursuing the expediency of electronic affiliate payouts. The company, which is a subsidiary of online marketer Northgate Technologies of India, offers same-day payouts to affiliates who sign up for the company’s Visa debit cards. However, same-day payouts are limited to affiliates that accrue a minimum of $25 in commissions. As with other debit cards, funds can be withdrawn at ATMs from the Axill-branded cards.

International Payment Options

Paying affiliates outside of the U.S. is often costly in transaction or currency exchange fees, and affiliates who are paid by check do not have immediate access to funds. Wire transfers can cost up to $50 each, and checks from U.S. banks can take up to a month to clear out of the country – if affiliates can find a local bank willing to cash them. Recipients living outside the U.S. may also be required to pay additional fees to exchange U.S. dollars for their local currency.

DoubleClick Performics’ Fleming says making payments to foreign banks "is by far the biggest issue" in using direct deposit. The fees (associated with foreign bank transfers) "are a drawback for using electronic payments" outside of the United States, he says.

PayPal’s MassPay enables publishers to issue payments in 17 currencies to 190 countries, with transaction fees of 30 cents each plus up to 2.9 percent of the balance, according to Oldenburg. A single batch of up to 250 payments can handle multiple currencies.

Since approximately 98 percent of his affiliates are outside of the U.S., JoeBucks’ McNelly says minimizing the cost and complexity of international payments was a must. Most of his new affiliates in India, Russia and Asia choose to be paid via a Payoneer account, and they like being notified by email of a funds transfer, he says. "We haven’t had many complaints [about using Payoneer], which is unusual, because [affiliates] complain about everything," he says.

Ecount can issue electronic payments to only U.S. and Canadian residents and will add three European markets in 2008.

Payment methods will continue to evolve with technology as merchants and online marketers look for ways to create efficiencies.

Eastern Promises

Japan’s had it hard. After nearly a decade of stock market doldrums and an economy on the brink of disaster – just as the rest of Asia struggled too – Japan bounced back. Growth happened. Its economy is still a tad slow, but there are many industries looking way up. Online marketing is one of them.

Of Japan’s 130 million people, about 88 million are online. That’s about 68 percent of the population, according to Internet World Stats (Asia), compared with 210 million of the U.S.’s 300 million and 137 million of China’s 1.4 billion residents. Japan’s may seem like small numbers, but the momentum of online marketing and the ever-growing popularity of affiliate marketing in Japan make it a region everyone’s talking about.

Blogging, for example, in Japan is a popular way of getting products in front of the masses. Technorati Japan says that more than 85 percent of Japan’s bloggers write about companies and their products – and that over half of these bloggers have been contacted by companies to extol their wares. Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications says that bloggers totaled about 8 million in that country, making for an in-blog ad market of about $60 million last year.

Expansion on the Way

In the 1990s, the Japanese did not use credit cards much for online purchases, as bank transfers and postal transfers made e-commerce slow and a waiting game. But by 1999, a tech-hungry culture emerged and online spending came with it. Pay-per-performance business models were not far behind.

A leader in this space is online retailer Rakuten and its affiliates – managed through LinkShare Japan, a U.S.-led affiliate company acquired by Rakuten in 2005. Rakuten is the leader in online shopping destinations in Japan, so their penetration made them a default major player. In fact, Rakuten plans to be in about 27 more markets by 2012, according to Atsushi Kunishige, a vice president at Rakuten. He says they will use LinkShare, for example, as a way to "expand our business into the international market. We want to open a full-fledged Internet mall [abroad]."

Rakuten’s 20,000-plus online stores and merchants did about $66 million in operating profit in the second quarter of 2007. With the company traded publicly on the Japanese stock market, that’s a market capitalization of more than $5 billion.

LinkShare Japan has about 68 percent of the top-selling merchants in Japan and is the leader in customer satisfaction, according to a survey by Japan’s Affiliate Marketing Association. Atsuko Umemura, director, corporate planning, of LinkShare Japan, says that their focus on per-sales kinds of merchants has helped make them a leader. "Affiliate marketing has proven to have the best ROI for us," she says.

Late Bloomers

While the U.S. affiliate industry can trace its beginnings to the mid-1990s, the first affiliate providers in Japan didn’t start up until 1999. The U.S. market has had a few years to evolve and grow, whereas the Japanese affiliate space is still considered a "juvenile." There are more than 80 affiliate networks in Japan that cover both Web and mobile platforms. Some of the more high-profile affiliate networks include Adways, Access Trade, LinkShare Japan, Fan Communications (A8), TrafficGate, ValueCommerce and Zanox Japan.

Anthony Torres, president of affiliate marketing program management company MetaFlo Marketing, which is based in Japan, points out that the key difference between the U.S. market and the Japanese market is that the "Japanese affiliate networks can service only Japanese sites. U.S. networks such as Commission Junction operate worldwide due to English being the most popular language for Web content. So, no matter how large the Japanese affiliate industry gets, it will never be as big as the English-speaking networks," Torres says.

He also notes that Japan is still behind the curve in tracking technology and commission sophistication. For example, U.S. advertisers have more choices in how they reward affiliates. Generally, U.S. affiliate networks allow merchants to pay affiliates based on subscription status of digital content and, of course, future sales even if buyer clicks go directly to a merchant store. The U.S. networks also have more payout choices. A small CPA, plus a larger percentage of future sales generated by the lead is a method that hasn’t made it to Japanese network platforms.

Torres notes that the cost of acquisition of a typical online customer is high in Japan. "When you add in customer service and all of the accumulated costs in the sale cycle, you are left with a lower margin per sale," he says. Merchants in Japan are just not used to paying high commissions or lifetime commissions on a customer, he adds. "As the industry matures here and the ability to attract online buyers becomes more challenging, we may see online merchants less reluctant to try more aggressive commission terms." Unique to the Japanese market seems to be the cross-investment of media sites and affiliate networks. In order to increase media coverage, many networks invest in or make their own in-house media sites.

Considered the real pioneer in Japanese affiliate marketing is ValueCommerce (Yahoo Japan took a sizable stake in the company in 2005), started by a New Zealander named Tim Williams. ValueCommerce has more than 50,000 websites and blogs in its network, with about 2,000 advertisers. The company has about $43 million in annual revenue and trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Goldman Sachs veteran Brian Nelson is now CEO, having come on in 2000 as COO. Nelson says that "we focused on our strengths, continued to hire great people, and launched new products and services that kept new customers, especially large brand name customers, coming in to work with us."

Consolidation is Coming

Nelson says that a large product database for shopping and their Web 2.0 applications have kept them in the No. 1 spot. It also doesn’t hurt that there is some consolidation going on in the Japan online marketing space now. "I have been telling people in the market for a long time that consolidation is coming " and it is in full swing now," Nelson says. LinkShare’s Umemura says, "It is a very saturated market right now. There is not enough room for everyone to survive."

Online marketing observers in Japan note that there are just too many networks trying to service the same advertisers. With about 1.3 million affiliates registered with the major networks and the majority of transactions driven by a group of search affiliates and "incentive media sites," there are not enough "quality" affiliates to take on all the offers out there. This means the networks are starting to look at new channels for ads.

One of those new channels is mobile, a platform that has performed very well for Japan. Because the Japanese adopted 3G standards fairly early, more than three-quarters of all cell phones in Japan have smooth Internet access. This means delivery of interactive content and ads to about 86 million cell phones (compared with 31 million in the U.S.). There are more than 48 mobile affiliate networks in Japan, with names such as Moba8, Pocket Affiliate and Smart-C. In 2005, the Japanese spent more than $3.8 billion on purchases over cell phones – 57 percent over the previous year. In addition, the CPA-based mobile affiliate provider model does much better in Japan than in the U.S., where CPC or CPM models prevail. It’s been said the culture in Japan plays a role in this since there are so many more commuters in Japan – leaving more travel time for the Japanese to experiment with their cell phones.

And with greater mobile traffic comes the opportunity to serve more Internet phone search advertising. Local search engines like Goo, Nifty and BigGlobe get a share of those eyeballs, but the leaders are Yahoo Japan (with about 63 percent of searches), Google Japan at 23 percent and about 14 percent left to split between MSN and the regional engines. Yahoo Japan is also the biggest local player in Internet auctions, Web email, mobile content and broadband.

Search Challenges

Japanese online marketing agency and search specialist Sozon sees challenges in the search marketing arena. One area in SEO that is unique to Japan culturally speaking, says Andy Radovic, VP of strategy and planning at Sozon, "is its variety in language used. Essentially, there are four methods of writing – kanji, the character system borrowed from China; hiragana, a more simplified form of kanji; katakana, the Japanese expression for foreign words; and romaji, which is the alphabet," he says. "Depending on what you intend to communicate, you may use just one or a combination of these. This greatly impacts the keyword planning stage of your SEO program. Another major difference is Japan’s reliance on Yahoo as the search engine of choice."

Radovic notes that Japanese-run companies are the leaders in services and customized solutions. "There are very few successful, market-leading international companies in the online space," he says. The international companies that operate in Japan tend to do so with a local partner. The exceptions, he says, are technology- dependent products, where some U.S. companies are in the lead, such as in search (Google) and bid management and Web analytics tools (like Omniture). "Some of the Japanese homegrown companies in the mobile, travel and insurance space are getting more sophisticated in their online marketing programs and are tracking to off-line sales," he says.

Scott Neville, COO of Sozon, says that, creatively speaking, ad messages need to really know their audience. "International ad concepts simply will not work most of the time," he says. "Text is definitely king here. More information is better and creative is often very busy with multiple propositions." He says you will need to provide as much detail as possible in your campaigns – that Japanese users will definitely read your privacy policy. He says that text email is the standard and somewhat limiting in terms of email marketing campaigns that may rely on HTML. Flash and graphic-centric sites tend not to work that well at either an advertising or a site-campaign level. He says that Flash campaigns "are not really supported by major portals for media buying and tend to be not that well received." Also, comparison campaigns are not generally used in Japan and "culturally not respectable to run."

While online ad agencies in the U.S. are slowly starting to synergize their off-line traditional ways and the brave new web of interactive display advertising, the Japanese banner ad companies are not doing too well. Two online ad agency leaders, Cyber Communications and D.A. Consortium, actually had negative growth in recent years.

The Network View

Aside from the few U.S. companies acquired or now run by Japanese companies, there are few pure U.S. players in this market and there are not likely to be more anytime soon. Observers note that U.S. networks just don’t have the Japanese-language support. While LinkShare and ValueCommerce have a bilingual platform interface, they are the only two out of dozens. One of the U.S. networks to gain a measurable foothold in Japan is DTI. They host affiliate programs for Japanese adult sites, but since most networks in Japan won’t handle porn ads, DTI has found its niche in this area. Some experts point out that one opportunity for U.S. companies would be to acquire small- to medium-sized networks and re-brand. LinkShare’s Umemura says that in Japan, U.S. companies could have come in at an earlier stage, but that "starting now from scratch would be pretty difficult whether you are a U.S. or European company. There are some smaller U.S. networks that do quite well here."

In terms of what hasn’t been popular in Japan’s affiliate programs are third-party management vendors. Currently, only a handful of the affiliate networks have management services, mainly because they are pushing their own media. However, experts say, tool and service vendors could eventually find a market in Japan. Keywords tools such as Wordtracker, recruiting tools such as Syntryx Executive Solutions and competitive keyword research tools such as the makers of KeyCompete could enter the market fairly easily.

Perhaps the best indicator that the online marketing landscape in Japan is maturing is the formation in May of 2006 of the Japan Affiliate Service Kyokai, an association that started to draw up guidelines, educate the public and monitor ethical behavior in online marketing. The six major networks in Japan founded the association when they felt that "shady affiliates" were starting to encroach on the growth of the business.

A learning curve, however, still applies. Sozon’s Radovic says that "everyone is struggling with how to market in a Web 2.0 environment. The Japanese blog and peer consumer trust are major drivers of consumer purchase. So this is an ongoing challenge." And solutions to the challenge will certainly add up to a better marketing landscape.

Going for the Gold

If asked to identify the characteristics of an ideal product to market, most would likely put at the top of the list broad appeal, the ability to evoke strong emotion, a venerable brand – and something very, very, sexy.

If this sounds a lot like the Olympic Games, then it’s easy to understand why TV advertisers line up from Beijing to Burbank with large checks in hand to get a piece of the action.

Capitalizing on the Olympic hype online isn’t nearly as competitive as buying TV spots, but not because of a lack of interest. Restrictive and complex licensing rules and requirements have kept many marketers on the sidelines. However, by marketing around the athletes and the teams instead of the Games themselves, online marketers still have a shot at bringing home some gold.

With nearly 3,000 years of history, the Olympic Games have an unparalleled tradition in sports. The images of the athletes ascending the podium clasping their medals while listening to national anthems evoke strong emotions. Sinewy athletes who push themselves to unparalleled physical achievements are the embodiment of sexy.

No wonder that every two years corporate sponsors spend billions around marketing the games, the national teams and the athletes themselves. The Beijing Olympics will bring more than $900 million in additional advertising to China in 2008, and $3 billion to the global market, according to media company ZenithOptimedia.

“We estimate that the last Olympics added about $2.5 billion to the world ad market, so [Beijing] will add about 20 percent more,” says Jonathan Barnard, the head of publications for ZenithOptimedia.

Millions of Chinese residents are also getting Internet access for the first time. In the first half of 2007, 39 million residents of China began logging on, a nearly 32 percent increase over the previous year, according to the People’s Daily Online. Marketing firm GroupM predicts that because of the Olympics, China will surpass the United States as the leading contributor to the worldwide growth in advertising in 2008.

Because the 2008 games will take place in China – a land of intrigue to Westerners and a land with a booming economy due to a new appreciation for capitalism – Beijing will translate into gold like no previous Olympics. The opportunity is also greater for this Olympiad because of the games being held in one of the world’s most populous cities (15 million people). Top-tier sponsors such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s – who pay $50 million or more every four years to be associated with the winter and summer Olympics – are hoping for greater participation in the opening of the Chinese market to international companies.

“Athens and Sydney [the locations of the prior two summer Olympic Games] were in small markets,” says Ed Hula, editor of Olympic marketing site Around the Rings. “This is the largest market with the biggest potential,” … and companies see “more potential to use the Olympics to boost their market in China,” he says.

Since Beijing is relatively unknown to the rest of the world, the Games offers a chance to connect the region to a new audience and bring cultures together, according to Carter Westfall, vice president of consulting firm Helios Partners, which has worked with cities applying to host the Olympic Games. “Every city has a story to tell,” says Westfall. Similar to Berlin during World War II, “seeing the athletes competing inside Beijing is a unique opportunity given the current political climate,” he says. Westfall says that because of the location, nontraditional Olympic sponsors such as Australian energy company BHP Billiton, which is building a dam in China, are participating.

Beijing also presents a greater opportunity than the last Olympics, not only because of the size of the country, but also because of the changes in Internet technology and marketing vehicles. The new opportunity is “hard to quantify because there have been so many advances, such as blogs, virtual reality and social networking,” notes Westfall. During the last Olympics, websites such as SecondLife, YouTube and MySpace either didn’t exist or were not useful online marketing tools. While top sponsors will continue to spend millions on TV, “the online component is the way for sports marketers to differentiate themselves,” he says.

Jimmy Vee, a marketing consultant and co-author of the book Gravitational Marketing, recommends using athletes prominently in online marketing campaigns. Advertising on enthusiast blogs, athlete’s MySpace pages and posting training videos on YouTube are inexpensive marketing methods, Vee says. “Consumers don’t connect with companies, they connect with people,” he notes.

Getting Out of the Blocks

Early 2008 is the perfect time to begin marketing around the Olympics. Most initiatives surrounding Olympic marketing begin between three to six months before the games. Around the Rings’ Hula saw very little marketing activity off-line outside of China during his travels around the globe in 2007 and also noticed few online campaigns.

Top-level Olympic sponsors including Samsung, GE and AT&T began their marketing efforts online and off-line in early- to mid- 2007, but they have yet to start their sprint to the finish. Samsung used an online promotion to recruit torch bearers for the Olympic relay through an exclusive arrangement with the BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games). GE launched a micro website with videos detailing its involvement in building power, lighting and water systems in Beijing.

The small pool of Olympic licensees with campaigns active in the fall of 2007 includes Jet Set Sports, which has exclusive rights to sell Olympic hospitality packages to Beijing, and merchandising companies XP Apparel and Roots.com.

For merchants, getting the governing Olympic Committee to approve merchandising deals can be a marathon of negotiations. James Connell, the director of e-commerce and new media for Roots.com, says merchandising Olympic apparel “… is complicated because you have people with competing interest in what the products look like and how it should be worn.” The retailer, which is based in Toronto, obtained a merchandising license from the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) instead of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and can therefore only sell apparel online to consumers within the U.S., Connell says. Recruiting for new affiliates to sell products around the Beijing Olympics will begin in early 2008, according to Connell. Consumer promotions won’t start until about 100 days before the games begin, he notes.

Roots.com is partnering with existing sports sites, and Connell recommends that publishers add content about individual athletes’ performances and their lives to increase traffic. The company does not have marketing agreements with any USA Olympic teams or athletes currently, so they can’t sell USA Gymnastics bags, for example. In the past, the company has signed marketing agreements with individual athletes such as skater Apolo Ohno.

AT&T, a sponsor of the USOC, began its marketing activities in the summer of 2006, according to Mary O’Connor, the director of Olympic marketing for The Marketing Arm, which represents the company. In addition to the marketing programs with the USOC, AT&T also indirectly markets around the Beijing Olympics by supporting two USA Teams.

Though marketers who partner with USA Teams cannot use the Olympic Rings or Beijing logos, they gain an association with teams and sports that have fans that match the attractive Olympic demographic. AT&T’s “Blue Room” website tracks the year-round exploits of the USA Diving and Gymnastics teams. The site provides results of pre-Olympic competitions and behind-the-scenes videos of the participants in training to engage the audience with the personalities, O’Connor says. The website will encourage fans of gymnastics to start talking about Team USA’s prospects for success in early 2008, in hopes that “the passion can come around Beijing,” according to O’Connor.

Amateur sports enthusiasts “have no mainstream outlet for their sports” and are hungry for content, according to Matthew Pace, a partner and chairman of the sports business at the law firm of Duval & Stachenfeld. Pace, who previously worked on Olympic marketing for General Motors at agency Eventworks, says marketing to a fan base can create an affinity. For example, if an automotive company sponsors the USA Swim Team and the fan also likes that sport or team, then he or she is more likely to buy from the company, Pace says.

Pace says sports enthusiast blogs and news sites that cover but are not affiliated with sponsored teams are a great place for “ambush marketing.” For example, automotive competitors can market to the same audience of sports fans on other sites to attempt to win over consumers.

Marketing in conjunction with USA Teams and enthusiasts sites provides access to a desirable demographic without having to pay premium Olympic sponsor dollars, according to Robert Prazmark, executive vice president of sales and marketing at the Wasserman Media Group. Prazmark, whose company markets for the USA Gymnastics, Swimming, and Track and Field teams, says that the USA Teams and their fan sites in aggregate create a larger marketing opportunity than the Games themselves.

While the Olympic TV audience has dwindled, interest in swimming and gymnastics clubs is growing, Prazmark says. An individual webcast may only draw tens of thousands of viewers, but collectively, online coverage of a team’s activities and competitions can surpass the viewers of Olympic events, he says. Prazmark notes that USA Team fans offer a desirable demographic because of higher relative incomes. “The audience is larger and deeper than a more generic Olympic audience,” he says.

So just like the journey of the Olympic athletes – persistence, preparation and training are required for marketers to take home gold.

UPDATE:

Media services company ZenithOptimedia released its forecasts for advertising expenditures in the U.S. It projects a banner year for Internet ad spend including a good year in 2008 for TV ad spend because of the Olympics – but predicts ad spend down overall.

Some of its projections include:

U.S. ad market has been downgraded to 2.5 percent growth in 2007 from the previous estimate of 3.3 percent – mostly because of the credit and housing market slump
The Olympics will lift TV’s share of the global ad market to a record 38.2 percent in 2008
Online video and local search will make for a 30 percent growth in Internet ad expenditures in 2007 – that’s nine times faster than the rest of the ad market
Between 2006 and 2009, Internet ad spend will grow 85 percent and raise its market share from 6.1 to 9.5 percent
It projects 29.9 percent growth this year in Internet ad spend – that’s up from 28.6 percent from its last forecast a quarter ago, and 85 percent growth between 2006 and 2009 (up from the previous forecast of 82 percent)
Internet advertising is expected to account for 9.5 percent of all expenditure in 2009, up from 9.4 percent last quarter

Vinny Lingham: Playing the Angles

Vinny Lingham’s career as a marketer started early. In kindergarten, he made money buying Thundercat stickers and selling the popular ones. In his early teens, he switched to cricket cards and then Magic The Gathering cards. In college, he partially financed his undergraduate studies by playing pool and managing and booking bands.

So it’s not difficult to see why the entrepreneurial aspect of online marketing appealed to him. In 2001, he caught the bug while he ran the search marketing department for a company that marketed on behalf of online casino clients, which had a large paid search budget.

Two years later he left to start his own company. Lingham is the founder and chief strategy officer of incuBeta, an online marketing company based in Cape Town, South Africa. incuBeta owns the super-affiliate Clicks2Customers.com, a paid search marketing company, incorporated in the United States, which specializes in directing targeted traffic to its clients’ sites and is one of Commission Junction’s top five performers.

With more than 50 full-time employees, incuBeta is on track to generate eight-figure commissions this year, as well as over $100 million in sales for its merchant partners. The company was a recent winner of Business Day’s Most Promising Emerging Enterprise in 2005.

Lingham started the company in 2003 with two friends and his then-fiancee, Charlene Troskie, who is now his wife and focuses on new development within the company’s campaign team.

It’s not easy working with your spouse – especially when you’ve been married just over one year, recently bought a house and make an international business trip every month. But Lingham feels that the toughest part of being employed at the same company is trying to keep shop talk from seeping into their home life.

Still, the line between his business and personal life is blurry. The self-described workaholic says he is online 24 hours per day and works 60 to 70 hours per week. He is often toiling at home into the night to keep up with clients on the west coast. Lingham estimates that 25 percent of incuBeta’s clients are in the United States, where he travels every two or three months.

Despite all the traveling, Lingham does not feel that his company’s location in South Africa is a disadvantage.

“Cape Town is considered the ‘Silicon Valley of South Africa.’ And we’re pretty close in time to London,” he says, which is where 60 to 70 percent of incuBeta’s clients are based. The only real issue is having to hop on a plane to get the interaction with clients he feels is so important. “The power of face-to-face is indefinable. But we’re a global company, so we’d have to travel wherever we were.”

Only one thing about traveling so much really bothers him. “I hate airports – taking my shoes off, waiting in queues and taking my laptop out of its case.” He’s also learned not to combine leisure travel with business trips, ever since work forced him to cancel the holiday portion of a trip last year. He did, however, manage to get away for his honeymoon, where he was “forced not to work for 10 days. I only signed on twice in all that time ” it drove me a little crazy.”

When Lingham does have spare time, he likes to spend it watching movies, including “Tsotsi,” which not only won this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was co-produced by Moviworld, a company that received investment from TEIM Ventures, the same private equity firm that provided incuBeta with crucial development capital.

Lingham is also a big reader – he’s read all of Dan Brown’s books and loves them. He’s also a big Tom Clancy fan. And his favorite book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter, reinforced his existing viewpoint that there is a huge difference in the mindset of the haves and have-nots.

Originally from East London, a city on the east coast of South Africa where his parents still live, Lingham is happy only when he’s learning. In addition to his more-than full-time job, he is also studying for his Master of Science degree, which will likely conclude with a thesis on incuBeta. He’s also interested in getting an M.B.A., but only in the U.S. His ideal school would be somewhere in the Silicon Valley, where he’s interested in spending a few years to grow the business.

Lingham was recently invited to join the Society of Industry Leaders, which provides knowledge and information to Vista Research, a Standard & Poor’s company. He also belongs to Mensa, defined on its website as “the international society that provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members.” But Lingham thinks the formula for selection is flawed. “I know my IQ but I don’t put a lot of faith in it. It’s your mental age divided by your chronological age,” he says, claiming that means the older you get, the lower your score becomes.

He considers Virgin founder Richard Branson a role model. “We’re similar in many ways, but I’m not as crazy as he is. He has a fantastic brand. Some of his companies have worked and some haven’t. But he does it because he enjoys it – for kicks. It’s a passion. It’s not about the money.” Other mentors include a former manager who inspired Lingham to study at Harvard one day, and Bono of the Irish rock group U2, “because of the work he’s done in Africa and for Africa.”

Lingham is a fourth-generation South African, whose ancestors hail from India. He does not consider himself religious, but says, “I was born Hindu, but I tend to focus more on the spiritual aspects of the religion (Karma, etc.), as opposed to the religion itself.” As for politics, he thinks he has “far too much candor to be a politician, but maybe I’ll become president of South Africa one day. Who knows?”

Proud to Be a South African

Lingham says there’s a lot of erroneous information circulating about his country in terms of drought, poverty and AIDS. “The Rand Water Board has one of the top three water supplies in the world,” he says, referring to the 100-year-old water utility that services South Africa. “Our economy is growing at 6 percent a year and all the urban and semi-urban areas, which house 70 percent of the population, can be considered ‘firstworld’ by many standards. The AIDS contraction rate is actually at a decline in South Africa, according to the latest statistics,” he says. And while the CIA World Factbook lists the poverty rate as 50 percent, Lingham says that is incorrect because “it doesn’t take into account PPP (purchasing power parity) or currency differentials.” Lingham says, “The poverty rate has dropped to around 20 percent, which is exceptionally low for a developing country, but is still obviously not ideal.”

Lingham also feels his country’s low life expectancy rate of 43 years is misleading. “The average is skewed by the number of AIDS babies that are born that die at a young age,” he explains. “It’s not an ideal number, but I guess that’s one of the things that the government is working on. Countries in Africa need relief from first-world debt in order to focus on issues like healthcare and poverty. Bono deserves his Time Person of the Year award for the work he has done in order to drive this forward.”

Lingham loves the weather, the people and the sports of his country. “I will probably spend a few years living abroad before finally settling down and having kids, but South Africa is my home and I truly enjoy living here – it’s a beautiful place.”

Lingham’s passion for his country is matched only by his passion for his business as a performance marketer. He even has a blog – VinnyLingham.com – where he discusses industry issues and events that he deems important to the online marketing community.

The Company He Keeps

In the beginning, Lingham and his associates needed a name for their new company. “We were looking for a word that embodied a start-up company looking for opportunistic ways to grow Internet businesses,” he says. Unfortunately, their first choice wasn’t available. “Someone suggested the name incubator, but obviously, the .com was taken. But incuBeta wasn’t – and seeing as technology is almost always in beta, it stuck.”

Clicks2Customers.com’s traffic comes from search engines – primarily Google and Yahoo. The company works with three affiliate networks: Commission Junction, TradeDoubler and LinkShare. Lingham’s company has had a relationship with CJ since its inception three years ago and was honored with the network’s Award for Innovation in 2004. Lingham’s site works with merchants with defined metrics (leads, sales, etc.) to generate traffic.

But don’t call him an affiliate.

“The term ‘affiliate,’ as it relates to online, was coined back in the day when Amazon and Barnes & Noble were paying commissions for clickthroughs on banners that resulted in sales for their sites. That was almost a decade ago,” Lingham says. “We’re performance marketers.”

Lingham wants incuBeta to become “the biggest performance marketing company – not just an affiliate.”

Given his fervor for the industry, that seems like a real possibility. “Nine times out of 10, we beat in-house and agency bids because our margins are better,” he says.

Lingham says he feels incuBeta is almost guaranteed to succeed, since the company has built-in motivation – it uses its own money to make clients’ projects work. The company is also growing and expanding. It’s opening an office in the United Kingdom this month, which will join the small setup in Woodland Hills, Calif., the Cape Town headquarters and the office in Johannesburg, which is considered the financial capital of South Africa.

Still, finances were once a huge challenge.

“When we started out, cash-flow management was the worst green-eyed monster,” Lingham says.

The difficulties stemmed from paying Google up front for search engine marketing costs, then waiting 60 days for a check.

“You can’t pay your debts with future profits,” he says.

The second-biggest issue was growth – the number of people working at incuBeta increased so rapidly that it became hard to create a functional business culture. But it was Lingham’s previous career ups and downs that made it all possible. “incuBeta wouldn’t have been started unless I had the experience I had. I believe if something doesn’t work, try something else. Failure is only a bad thing if you don’t learn from it.” Another challenge for incuBeta is being able to react to new developments in the search marketing field.

Flexible and Focused

“This industry is new and young, and when the rules of the games change every month, you have to be flexible,” he says.

“I think our biggest success has been in the paid search marketplace. Our focus is on the end user and delivering high-quality and targeted advertising. Whenever the search engines, especially Google, make a move to release new features or functionality, like quality scores or the affiliate policy, which relate to the user experience and relevancy, it always improves our performance because we both understand that user relevancy is the key driver in the search marketplace, and our business focuses on such,” Lingham says.

One thing that isn’t a problem at incuBeta is the dress code. Since only one of the company’s clients is based in South Africa, the office is pretty casual. “Cape Town is a beach town,” says Lingham. “Some employees are surfers and come to work after their morning run. Jeans are considered formal,” he jokes. Despite the laid-back environment, incuBeta is serious about business. Lingham has faith that his company can achieve great things and believes it is well on it way.

His definition of success includes helping South Africa lower its high unemployment rate (estimated to be 25.2 percent by the CIA World Factbook) by adding jobs to the local economy. He would also like to be a philanthropist, “investing in social community projects and education projects, and finding a cure for AIDS.” incuBeta is still a bit too new to be able to give much back to the community, but Lingham says they do participate in “charitable donations. It’s something we want to do more of going forward.”

Lingham says the Internet has made that a real possibility.

“Marketing has always been a relationship thing with no accountability. Performance marketing is different. The beauty is information for results – you can see what you’re getting for your money. If you can find things that satisfy advertisers, you can be successful. You can do it yourself. It’s the cradle of innovation on the Internet.”

Lost in Translation

Ten years ago, Jaime lived outside Managua, Nicaragua, worked in a shoe factory and took college classes. The then-35-year-old did not own a car and shared a house, a TV and a stereo with his parents, along with his brother and sister- in-law. Both Jaime and his brother helped his parents pay the rent, and the rest of Jaime’s paycheck went toward saving for a move to the United States.

Now Jaime lives in Daly City, Calif. He works as a bookkeeper in San Francisco and rents a house with his girlfriend, Aura, and her 12-year-old son, Juan. Together they share a car, own a TV, a computer, a stereo and cell phones.

They got on the Internet five years ago and Jaime spends about two hours a day online, surfing the Web and doing email. Aura has difficulty reading and does not use the computer at all, but her son spends about an hour a day playing computer games.

Jaime reads news about Nicaragua at the La Prensa website and reads U.S. national and local news in Spanish at the Univision and StarMedia sites. He also regularly reads the Latino Channel on AOL, especially for entertainment and sports news.

The La Prensa site also helps keep him up to date with his favorite baseball team, El Boer, as well as delivering news about his other hobbies – following the Brazilian soccer team and seeing what’s happening in the boxing arena. To follow news about his new local sports teams – the San Francisco Giants and the 49ers, he watches TV. He also uses the Spanish version of Western Union’s website, geared for U.S.- based Hispanics, to check exchange rates, but he goes to the physical location to send money back home.

For his past two trips to Nicaragua, Jaime bought plane tickets at Expedia.com, a site he visits often to check prices. As time passes, he says he feels more comfortable with the security of purchasing online, but he has only bought plane tickets from the Web so far because he likes the experience of shopping in a brick-and-mortar store so he can check the quality of products and walk around.

Because of the financial opportunities in the United States, many of Jaime’s relatives also now live here. Jaime feels that he is living the American dream. He does not know that he is quickly becoming a marketer’s dream. As a 45-year-old bilingual male with a combined household income of more than $50,000 – 8 percent of it disposable – Jaime and his household are part of a U.S. demographic with a purchasing power that dwarfs all other minority groups.

By 2007, the Selig Center for Economic Growth projects that disposable income in the Hispanic market will approach $1 trillion, which represents 9.4 percent of all disposable income in the United States.

Hispanics in America

Understanding the untapped opportunity of Hispanics online requires knowing more about the U.S. Hispanic population. And these days, there is no shortage of research, reports and studies examining this group.

In 2002 the U.S. Census Bureau announced that Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States with 13.4 percent of the population – or 38.8 million people. By 2020, Latinos are projected to be 21 percent of the population, and a third of them will be under age 18, which is another highly desirable segment for marketers.

But it’s not just the size of this group, it’s how much money they are making and where they are spending it. Hispanics are increasingly the major driving force behind revenue growth in consumer product and service markets, a $690 billion market that has attracted the attention of online marketers and retailers.

And while the median income for American households increased just 6 percent between 1996 and 2001, the median income of Hispanic households rose by 20 percent, from $27,977 to $33,565, during the same period. As of 2002, 31 percent of U.S. Hispanic households had an income of $50,000 or more, according to Scarborough Research and Arbitron.

So, as the Hispanic population is making more money, larger numbers of Hispanics are also getting online. Market researcher Centris found that the number of Hispanic online households in 2003 was 5.5 million.

A study by AOL/Roper reported that Hispanics go online 13.8 hours per week at work and 9.5 hours at home, compared with 8.4 hours at home for the general online population.

Hispanics Internet users tend to be younger than the overall population. Research from comScore Media Metrix shows that 60 percent of Hispanics online were 34 years old or younger, compared to 50 percent of the total Internet user population.

As Hispanics get greater Internet access, they are also starting to shop online more. According to Scarborough Research and Arbitron, 33 percent of online Hispanic adults made at least one purchase in 2002. Although that is significantly lower than the 56 percent of all Internet users who bought something online in 2002, as estimated by eMarketer, it is still increasing year-over-year. Still, according to Scarborough Research and Arbitron, only 13 percent of Hispanics purchased something online 10 or more times.

When U.S. Hispanic adults get involved in e-commerce it’s typically travel and banking, according to the AOL/Roper U.S. Hispanic Cyberstudy. Also, Hispanics tend to consume more types of entertainment, including purchasing tickets, than Internet users overall.

The study also found that Hispanics engage in online communications and other forms of communications at a high rate. A study by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy reports that substantially more Hispanic users than non-Hispanics consider the Internet an extremely important source of information – 44 percent versus 32 percent.

An Untapped Market

Considering the growing purchasing power of Hispanics, the higher-than-average amount of time they spend online and the categories that they spend in, there is a surprising lack of affiliate programs aimed at Hispanics.

Geoffrey Gonzalez, president of Ahorre Marketing, a Hispanic marketing services company, agrees. “I think it is a tremendous opportunity,” he says, but adds that the programs are “pretty much nonexistent.”

In September 2000, affiliate consultant Shawn Collins wrote about the potential of the affiliate marketing industry for Hispanics in Latin America in an article on ClickZ.com, “Brave New Affiliate World.”

Collins admits that the market has not taken off as he projected. “I thought it was about to explode five years ago, but it never happened,” Collins says. “The Hispanic market is a very under-served area for sure.”

Linda Woods, president and CEO of Partner Centric, agrees. “We have been waiting for this to happen; I think a lot of money is being left on the table,” she says.

There are many theories as to why the online marketing community has yet to seize this seemingly huge opportunity. Some believe the merchants need to lead the effort, while others claim it is the affiliate networks that need to act first to facilitate the opportunity. Still others say that the affiliates need to create demand in order for programs to take off.

Language Barrier

However, most agreed it is a language issue and that the expense and commitment associated with developing a Spanish language infrastructure is deterring the merchants and the networks from moving first.

Spanish language is very important to 67 percent of Hispanic Web users, according to the AOL/Roper U.S. Hispanic Cyberstudy, which reports that 40 percent of all Hispanics consider themselves bilingual, 40 percent consider themselves Spanish-dominant and 20 percent are English-dominant. For those who are bilingual, their preference for English or Spanish depends on if they are native- or foreign-born.

Some experts say there cannot be affiliate programs aimed at Hispanics until there are complete Spanish-language versions of major merchant websites. Many company websites, such as Target.com, offer a bit of Spanish, but pages of merchandise, site navigation and the shopping cart are in English.

“Some companies have a landing page in Spanish, and then the rest of the site is only in English,” Collins says. “What kind of ridiculous user experience is that?”

Most major e-commerce sites, such as Sears.com and Wal-Mart.com, do not even have Spanish landing pages. AOL offers channels such as news, entertainment and sports channels in Spanish, but their e-commerce channel, called Shopping, is in English only.

“A merchant company can create a great conversion engine, but when Hispanics get to the shopping cart, all of the instructions are in English and the customer support is in English,” says Matias Perel, CEO of Miami-based interactive agency Latin3. “If an affiliate brings the 20 percent [of the Spanish-dominant Hispanics] to the site, it’s going to be hard for the affiliate to see a positive return on investment.”

Brian Littleton, president of affiliate network ShareASale.com, agrees. “The merchants have to be the first people to step on board. If they determine that it is a market that is available and should be targeted, then that is the basic first step in selling. Obviously the network platform and the affiliates need to be there, but that is down the road. E-commerce came before affiliate marketing.”

Some industry watchers wonder if merchants are worried that focusing on one group will have other growing ethnic groups feeling left out. “Perhaps merchants think it is a slippery slope where if they create a site for Spanish-speaking Hispanics, they will need to create a site for many other ethnic groups and languages,” says Kathryn Finney of TheBudgetFashionista.com.

What About the Networks?

Another theory suggests it’s possible that merchants are waiting for demand from the affiliate networks and publishers before they go through the expense and commitment of building Spanish-language capabilities.

“It’s something of a chicken-and-egg thing,” Collins says. “Why go through the trouble and expense to convert everything if there is not a network to bring you down there? They need Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc., to invest there. Affiliates haven’t gone there because there are no programs to promote.”

In addition, the traditional networks, such as Commission Junction and LinkShare, are not set up to accommodate Spanish-dominant affiliates.

For example, at Commission Junction, when a publisher searches on “Hispanics” for programs to promote, the search yields several programs including Amigos.com, Date.com, FriendFinder.com, SpanishToys.com and Yahoo Personals. But like many of the shopping carts at big online retailers, the interface is in English only; Spanish-dominant affiliates cannot sign up if they can’t navigate the English-only site.

Many merchants describe their affiliate program, or “programa de afiliados,” in Spanish but switch to English once the user reaches the enrollment pages.

Ahorre.com’s Gonzalez points out, “You can’t walk a user through in Spanish until page 9 and then switch to English when it gets to page 10. It’s misleading. It’s very similar to mortgages. You can promote, market, talk, speak and write everything in Spanish for mortgages, but the bottom line is that the contract is in English, and that hasn’t been changed by our laws.”

For example, the bookseller OfertÃ³n de Libros has two complete versions of its site and two complete descriptions of its affiliate program, as well as contracts for both. However, the affiliate contract on the Spanish site is non-binding, but links to the English contract, meaning that the user needs to sign the contract in English to join.

A Spanish-language interface at the networks’ sites would facilitate the enrollment of Spanish-speaking affiliates into Spanish-language affiliate programs. But if the affiliates can’t sign up, the networks can’t know that the demand is there.

“The affiliates who can’t speak English would not know how to join,” says Linda Buquet of 5 Star Affiliate Programs. “My guess is that the networks won’t do it until they know the affiliates are there.”

To date, none of the major affiliate networks (Commission Junction, LinkShare, Performics or ShareASale.com) offer outreach in Spanish. ShareASale’s Littleton says, “These things are definitely in the plans for companies like ourselves and, I am sure, other networks as well.”

Affiliate Demand

Each group seems to be looking at the other to get the ball rolling. From the networks’ view there is also concern about whether there will be demand from affiliates to make a program successful, according to Partner Centric’s Woods.

“I think a lot has to happen before affiliates get into it,” she says.

Littleton agrees. “It is hard to put a lot of resources and work behind a product when the majority of affiliates are not ready and the majority of merchants are not ready,” he says. “All of the pieces are needed for a successful push into any market, whether it is Hispanic or European or Asian.”

Latin3’s Perel says, “The last thing you want to do is build an affiliate program directed to Hispanics and then find that you fail on the transaction part.”

A Need for Content

An affiliate program cannot work if there is not enough relevant content. So, the key to a successful affiliate program is to recruit affiliates with contextually relevant sites that have a proven track record for driving traffic, according to Buquet.

“Until they know the relevant content is there, the networks won’t do it,” she says. Page views are up 30 percent in the U.S. Hispanic market, but they’re up only 6 percent in the U.S. general market, according to comScore Media Metrix. Some point to this as proof that Hispanics are spending more time on the same sites because there is a lack of good Spanish content on the Web.

According to the AOL/Roper study, more than half of all offline Hispanics (56 percent) cite lack of Spanish content as a reason for not going online at home. About half (49 percent) also say it is because there aren’t enough sites and activities online that would interest Hispanics.

It’s in the Works

Regardless of whom you speak to – merchant, network or affiliate – there is a sense that the development will happen with time. But there is trepidation expressed as well as optimism by all parties.

“Everyone knows that Hispanics are a vast audience, but I don’t think that anyone is doing it well yet,” says John Ardis, vice president of business strategy at ValueClick. “Everyone is still scratching their head. There is no shining example to point to. There is a paralysis about when to step forward. It is not just a translation job; whole concepts have to be translated to do it right. It can affect the offline merchandise – if we build it online, do we have to have duplicative merchandise in our offline world?”

Joseph Anthony of Vital Marketing says, “In time, with the proper commitment and appropriate research, these brands will find a lot for them to target. They just can’t sit back and keep doing what they are doing.”

Mark Lopez, publisher of AOL’s Latino, agrees. “As the market develops and companies see the potential of this market and see the Internet as a really mass medium to reach these audiences, I think there’s going to be more investment in the back end to make sure the whole interactive product is in the same language.”

Targeting Hispanics

The research and the online experts say the opportunity to reach the Hispanic market is huge and the development is in the works. Meanwhile, affiliates are scratching their heads about how to tap into this market.

Language is the first concern for any potential affiliate. Other advice from experts in the field includes translating concepts, not just words; being culturally sensitive to the target audience (realize that Mexicans are different than Cubans); targeting the appropriate products with appropriate price points; and testing and retesting the market.

Some experts claim that companies may be wrongly assuming that if customers have an Internet connection and a credit card, they can understand English well enough to make a transaction. A Feedback Research study found that 79 percent of Spanish-speaking Hispanics who have used the Internet for five years or less are already highly engaged in online activities.

There is evidence that it is important to reach out in Spanish even if the user is bilingual. comScore Media Metrix found that 49 percent of the 12.6 million U.S. Hispanic Internet users prefer sites that are either in Spanish or bilingual. “While English content can and does reach large numbers of Hispanics, marketers must also provide relevant Spanish-language content to fully reach U.S. online Hispanics,” the report stated.

There are programs that do target the 20 percent Spanish-dominant U.S. Hispanic market. For example, 21st Century Insurance supplies its affiliates with creative in Spanish for car insurance deals. Partner Centric’s Dan Fink, who manages 21st Century, says the “Spanish creatives represent about 15 percent of our creative content and do bring in a good amount of quotes as well.”

Pedro Sostre of Sostre & Associates is a design consultant and an affiliate who owns several sites that provide creatives to affiliates in Spanish. Sostre’s FreeBookClubs.com promotes two Spanish-language book clubs – Mosaico and Circulo.

“The Spanish-language clubs are on par with some of the other niche clubs,” says Sostre, who also notes that his book club targeted to the African-American market does extremely well, as does the Large Print book club (aimed at the older market).

In addition, Sostre helps run the affiliate program for ServerPronto.com, which also provides its creative in Spanish. Most of the affiliates that use those creatives are targeting a South American audience. Because the company serves clients internationally, ServerPronto’s Spanish-language website and marketing are not specifically geared for U.S. Hispanics.

Be Bilingual

While there are many sites, including Mexgrocer.com and Amigos.com, that also offer some Spanish-language pages, some claim the experience does not need to be entirely in Spanish – it is sufficient to reach out with a bilingual message that leads the user to a Spanish-language page at an English-language site.

Many companies are targeting Hispanics with bilingual messages. Ahorre.com advertises its Household MasterCard credit card in English and Spanish on the same page. Target.com has banners on its Spanish landing page that mixes languages to say “Nuestra Gente – Hispanic Heritage. Discover the Cultura and Tradicion.”

Reebok used this “Spanglish” this year in its much-hyped BarrioRBK campaign, which was produced specifically for the U.S. Hispanic youth market. The site is marked with Spanish and English tag lines as well as Spanglish tags directing visitors to “Volver a Home” or “Return to the Home Page.”

Latin3’s Perel, who designed the site, explains, “We created this website in Spanglish because we realized that young Latinos are bilingual or, because they came here very early, they are English dominant. Because we want to connect with them, we give it a Spanish flavor, so the key here was to have copy writers who have a clear understanding of when to use English and when to use Spanish.”

But there are other reasons not to reach out solely in Spanish. Research firm Cultural Access Group found that Hispanic youths prefer English-language television and radio programming over Spanish-language fare by a margin of nearly two to one, and overwhelmingly prefer English-language Internet sites.

“I think a lot of younger Hispanics are more comfortable in English,” says Sostre. “I am in my 20s, and if I see a site that is completely in Spanish, I think it is targeted at my mom or my grandmother.”

He warns that you might risk insulting a potential user if you communicate with them only in Spanish. “A lot of Hispanics find it offensive if you assume that they don’t speak English.”

A Question of Culture

Affiliates may find that language is less important than culture. Lopez, the AOL Latino publisher, says “the Hispanic audience definitely has cultural dimensions that are really different than the general market.”

For example, Reebok’s BarrioRBK site features a Reggaeton dance game, a music area that includes the top 10 Latino artists, and information about famed Mexican soccer team Chivas.

Because Hispanics online skew younger, Ahorre’s Gonzalez claims affiliates might also do well to target them with lower-priced items. “The growth in Hispanics online is in the youth market, and the youth market is into music – they are into iPods and they are into CDs. Try to sell reasonable price points; if you target up to $99 you should do well.”

Not everyone agrees that low-price items are the way to go. According to Lopez, Hispanic demographics tend to be younger than the general market, but he adds that their buying power is increasing year to year. “Hispanics are becoming more sophisticated just like the general market.”

Nacho Hernandez, president of iHispanic Marketing Group, says, “U.S. Hispanics spent $5.6 billion in 2003 purchasing on the Web.” In fact, Sharper Image, which is known for its high-end electronic goods, has a Spanish-language version of its website targeted at Hispanics in the U.S. and has a “programa de afiliado.”

But some argue that the current research and demographics don’t tell the whole story. Many claim the Hispanic market is not that distinct and will become less distinct over time – much like the offline world where Hispanics become acclimated to American lifestyles and habits.

“In recent years, there has been a shift in online advertising – less of a focus on demographics and more of a focus on psychographics or behavior,” wrote Barry Parr in his MediaSavvy blog. “Demographics are usually the wrong way to target online advertising. You may believe that the most likely user for your products is a woman between the ages of 25 to 44, but what you’re really looking for is anyone who might want to use your product. ” On the Web, you can target users by context and behavior. That’s a lot more powerful than demographics. “”

Vital Marketing’s Anthony concurs. “I think that marketers may be overanalyzing the Hispanic market in terms of feeling that Hispanics are only going to go to sites that are relevant to Hispanic cultural content or contain some type of concentrated cultural information,” he says.

The debate continues about how to target this growing Hispanic group, but for now many agree that for affiliates to succeed, they need to recognize that the Hispanic segment is one with unique requirements – including differences in language, culture and spending habits. Reaching out with cultural references that appeal to Hispanics, and experimenting with Spanish, bilingual and Spanglish messages, are some of the ways to get started. Programs will have better conversion rates if they can demonstrate that they have considered the wants and needs of Hispanic shoppers.

The best way for affiliates to determine the appropriate way to drive traffic is through experimentation. “Top affiliates must be committed and continually test, measure results, make adjustments and retest the market,” Hernandez says.

ALEXANDRA WHARTON is an editor at Montgomery Research, Inc., Revenue’s parent company. During her four years at MRI, she has edited publications about CRM, supply chain, human performance and healthcare technology. Previously she worked at Internet consulting firm march FIRST (formerly USWeb/CKS).

Stand By Me

The last of the big independent affiliate and performance marketing networks was finally swallowed up by another large international conglomerate.

In early September, Japanese e-commerce portal Rakuten took its first step into the U.S. market by agreeing to acquire privately held New York-based performance marketing network LinkShare for approximately $425 million in cash.

Speculation was swirling around the online marketing community for several months that LinkShare, which has investors including Mitsui & Co. Ltd., Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A); Internet Capital Group, and Comcast Interactive Capital, an affiliate of Comcast Corp., was looking for a buyer.

Enter Rakuten. The public company, with a market capitalization of $9.7 billion (as of September 5) was looking to break into the U.S. market and wanted to establish an immediate presence. Founded in 1997, Rakuten has several divisions and is involved in e-commerce, media, travel and financial services and owns a professional baseball team in Japan (the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles).

“LinkShare’s performance-based marketing expertise across affiliate, search and email capabilities provides Rakuten with an excellent first step to launch our U.S. operations and continue our international expansion,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, chairman and CEO of Rakuten. “We can leverage LinkShare’s client relationships and technology advantages worldwide, so that LinkShare will be able to achieve significant growth in the future.”

For many big players in online marketing, pairing up with larger, more diversified companies that provide additional financial resources is nothing new.

LinkShare rival Commission Junction was bought for $58 million in cash and stock by ValueClick in October 2003; ValueClick previously purchased affiliate network BeFree in March 2002 for $128 million in stock; Performics was acquired by DoubleClick in a cash deal estimated at $58 million (plus an earn-out of up to $7 million) in May 2004; DoubleClick was acquired in July 2005 by Click Holding Corp. in a deal valued at $1.1 billion.

There are conflicting views on why LinkShare sold for so much more than its competitors.

One poster on affiliate marketing forum AbestWeb.com called the sale price “An insane amount of money!!” while another wrote, “I was actually surprised they got it for as little as $425 million. Especially considering MySpace was purchased for around $580 million and Shopzilla.com went for around $560 million. I guess the going price for big sites like these is between $400 million and $600 million I can’t believe ValueClick paid so little for CJ; they certainly got a deal there.”

Other industry watchers claim that the high selling price is a combination of a better economic climate and the growing popularity and desirability of performance marketing.

“The price – especially compared to their competitors – is startling,” says Shawn Collins, a consultant. “But the economy is in better shape than a year ago. Affiliate marketing is more respected and on firmer ground. It’s a real testament that affiliate marketing is going well.”

Haiko de Poel Jr., president of online affiliate community AbestWeb.com, says that affiliate marketing is only a little hotter than when CJ was purchased two years ago.

“Even though the climate is better and affiliate marketing is a little hotter, it’s not enough to justify $425 million. There is no way you can tell me that LinkShare is worth twice what was paid for CJ and BeFree combined. There’s just something wrong with that. In fact, there are just too many things wrong with this whole deal.”

LinkShare, which was established in 1996, has a network of more than 500 merchants including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers .com, American Express, Avon Products and Dell. It has more than 10,000 affiliates in its network and claims that for 2004, approximately 2 percent of U.S. retail e-commerce, or $1.4 billion, passed through the LinkShare network.

LinkShare’s chairman and CEO, Steve Messer, says, “By partnering with a successful portal with global aspirations, LinkShare has positioned itself to take advantage of the increasingly universal nature of the Internet and e-commerce.”

Messer goes on to say, “Our merchants and our affiliates will benefit because taking the network worldwide can only increase volume, which means growth for everyone.” Messer, along with the rest of LinkShare’s senior management team, including President and COO Heidi Messer, will remain with the company.

Affiliate Alan Townsend, marketing manager for PersonalizationMall.com, says the sale of LinkShare is bittersweet.

“I can tell you that Steve Messer is passionate about affiliate marketing and LinkShare. I don’t think this deal is just about money. I think if anyone wants LinkShare to succeed, it’s him. I’m confident that he’ll help make decisions for LinkShare that will allow them to grow well into the future,” Townsend says. “With that being said, I think it’s always bittersweet to see a great company that you love get sold. It’s much easier to buy a company than it is to build one.”

In the short term, affiliates are questioning everything. When will they be paid? How will they be paid? Who will pay them? What changes are going to be made? What improvements are going to be made? How will current issues be resolved?

Townsend notes that continued communication with affiliates will be key for LinkShare’s future success.

“I think LinkShare has to keep the affiliate community informed throughout this entire process. Affiliates deserve to know how this is going to impact their livelihoods,” Townsend says. “In the long term, affiliates are going to benefit. The new owners will want to see growth. LinkShare will be trying to expand into new markets quickly. Eventually LinkShare will have a global presence that will attract more affiliates and more merchants. As a result, LinkShare services, such as check processing, affiliate support, etc., will have to improve to meet the growing needs of these affiliates and merchants.”

Going Global

Affiliate Networks are striving to extend their reach by entering foreign markets, but local challenges threaten their chances of international stardom.

If the affiliate model is effective for selling necklaces in Nantucket, shouldn’t it also work to move wurst in Wittenberg and mobiles in Manchester?

U.S.-based affiliate networks are hopeful that taking their business models to all four corners of the globe will translate into the same kind of success that they have enjoyed in North America. The networks see nations that have lagged behind the U.S. in embracing e-commerce as fertile ground for sowing the seed of performance marketing.

Commission Junction set down roots in the U.K. and Germany, while LinkShare put out its shingle in Japan. Both companies, as well as their European counterparts, have designs on extending their global footprint sooner rather than later. Commission Junction, LinkShare and Performics are the leading U.S. affiliate networks.

Going Gangbusters Globally

"My prediction for 2005 is that this will be the year that affiliate marketing truly goes global," says Heidi Messer, president and COO of LinkShare. Messer says the company "will be aggressive in expanding into Europe" and is interested in participating in the burgeoning economies of China, Korea and Australia.

LinkShare began its global odyssey three years ago, according to Messer, when it partnered with Mitsui & Company, a leading Japanese retailer. LinkShare provided the marketing platform while Mitsui contributed the business relationships and knowledge of the local requirements. "Going it alone wasn’t a possibility," says Messer, because each country has its own buying pattern, laws and culture.

Messer says LinkShare is evaluating opening networks in European countries on an individual basis. "We are very methodical and will not enter markets where we are not 100 percent committed," she says.

The increasing willingness of Europeans to purchase goods and services online makes the region a likely destination for American marketers, according to Hellen Omwando, an analyst with Forrester Research’s consumer markets group. Omwando says that within the first year of going online, 16 percent of Europeans now buy items such as travel and clothing, whereas in years past only 2 percent would have purchased commodity items such as CDs or books online in the first 12 months.

Omwando says that affiliates’ potential audience is also growing – 55 percent of Europeans online now participate in ecommerce. "It’s all good news from a consumer perspective," she says.

The United Kingdom and Germany are driving most of the growth in Europe and account for two-thirds of all e-commerce, according to Omwando. Not surprisingly, Commission Junction launched its first two European affiliate initiatives in those two countries.

"We are up to our eyeballs in international expansion," says Elizabeth Cholawsky, vice president of marketing and product development at Commission Junction. She adds that the company will next launch in France in mid-2005, and that Spain and Italy are also priorities for expansion.

By entering new markets, the company would be able to better serve its advertisers through an international network of websites, says Cholawsky. In addition to Europe, Commission Junction has launched eBay in India and Australia, and has China on its radar.

The most difficult aspect of Commission Junction’s European launch was not technological or cultural, but bureaucratic, according to Cholawsky. She says that because European tax officials are not well-versed in the intricacies of e-commerce, the company hired auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to work with government representatives in the U.K. and Germany. The European Union’s adoption (with the exception of the U.K. and Switzerland) of the euro has simplified currency exchange.

The company hired a design firm from Germany and a language translation firm from Washington, D.C., to create a website acceptable to local affiliates, according to Cholawsky. She says launching in the U.K. first simplified establishing a presence in Germany. "Europe has more things in common than different," she says. "Culturally it’s similar all around."

European expansion has contributed to Commission Junction’s rapid growth. The company’s revenue jumped from $24 million in 2003 to an estimated $54 million in 2004, says Cholawsky.

Affiliate network Performics is unlikely to join the European fray this year, according to Chris Henger, senior vice president. He says Performics is focusing on integrating its resources with new parent company DoubleClick. "In the longer term you could see us moving in that direction, but it’s not an immediate strategy," Henger says.

Navigating the Potholes

Ashley Friedlein, CEO of London-based E-Consultancy.com, says that incumbent local companies have the upper hand over Americans in attracting retailers. "European merchants want to deal with companies who understand their markets," he says.

Citizens of each country have their own preferred methods of purchase, revenue model, topselling products and legal requirements, according to Friedlein. Europeans are much more likely to purchase products through their mobile phones, and the laws for online data protection and privacy protections vary from country to country, he says.

European e-commerce trends run about six to 10 months behind the U.S., Friedlein says. And European affiliates continue to use the pay-per-click revenue model that Americans have largely moved beyond, according to Friedlein. Search engine marketing in Europe requires local expertise, especially for American companies used to operating in a Googlecentric universe.

Europeans have their own searchengine marketing techniques, and affiliates and merchants are working out how to cooperate with search partners, according to Friedlein. He says that affiliates and retailers have been in a bidding war over getting priority for brand names in search engine rankings. "It’s a bone of contention," he says.

One similarity with American affiliate marketing is that merchants depend on a few affiliates for most of their revenues. "I reckon that 90 percent of sales come from 10 percent of affiliates," Friedlein says.

Affiliate marketing’s rapid growth in Europe has made it difficult for retailers to find in-house expertise to manage their programs, according to Friedlein. Many large retailers do not have a dedicated affiliate manager, so the responsibility is either part of the marketer’s job, or it’s outsourced.

European sales generated through affiliates during 2004 are estimated at $1.1 billion, a 100 percent increase over the previous year, Friedlein says, and he expects similar growth this year. Friedlein says 3.5 percent of all e-commerce sales in Europe are generated by affiliates.

Forrester’s Omwando warns that while affiliate marketing in Europe is in a comparatively early stage of development, Americans looking to land on the Continent in 2005 may have a hard time forging relationships. Europe already has three significant networks in place: Zanox in Germany; TradeDoubler, which has operations in 16 nations; and Commission Junction, which began its U.K. operation in 2001.

She says retailers unfamiliar with affiliate marketing are unlikely to partner with a foreign entity. "Marketing at the end of the day is very localized, and anyone participating has to understand the nuances and cultural sensitivities," Omwando says.

For example, to work with German companies, networks must first establish relationships with the local trade associations, Omwando says.

"I really don’t see what the opportunity is for American companies," she says. To have any chance at attracting European retailers, American companies must bring with them an impressive roster of international advertisers, according to Omwando.

Inevitable Intersection

The American networks’ grab for affiliates abroad will put them in direct competition with European companies that also have designs on expanding into Asia, and perhaps even in the U.S.

TradeDoubler poses a formidable challenge to foreign competitors. The company has been in operation since 1999 and has a presence in 16 European countries.

It is assessing possible expansion into Asia, and clients have frequently asked TradeDoubler to consider opening an office in the U.S., according to Will Cooper, chief marketing officer.

"Having a pan-European footprint has given us access to the world’s largest advertisers," says Cooper, who counts Dell, Apple, Sony and Reebok among his clients. TradeDoubler’s network includes more than 800 advertisers and 450,000 publishers across Europe.

Cooper says the challenge of starting networks in several European countries should not be underestimated. Each country has a unique cultural and business climate that requires networks to retool their business model, he says. "Every market is so incredibly different in terms of things such as broadband penetration, size of market and payment models," Cooper says.

While Spain and the U.K. are both large markets with populations of more than 40 million, their e-commerce demographics are quite different, according to Cooper. The U.K. has the most mature e-commerce marketplace, and the costper- action revenue model works well. But Spain has very different characteristics. "The culture is not to buy online. People prefer being able to touch the products," Cooper says, and cost-per-click is the preferred commission structure.

Heavier reliance on mobile phones provides another opportunity for networks looking to move into Europe. TradeDoubler developed a program for Swedish mobile phone users who are more comfortable with brick-and-mortar purchases. Customers can download coupons that contain an identification number for the referring affiliate to their mobile phones, which they take to the checkout counter where scanners read the coupons.

Another example of a TradeDoubler affiliate program designed for a specific country is its British lottery program. After registering online, Britains text message their Lotto picks, which takes advantage of the U.K.’s interest in mobile phone e-commerce.

Zanox, an affiliate network based in Germany that spans 22 European countries, launched the ring-tone download service Jamster in the U.S. and Australia. "You cannot compare Europe and the States," says Holger Kamin, Zanox’s executive account director.

Kamin says his company has an advantage over American networks because it has already established relationships with major retailers in Europe and provides many affiliate services, including consulting, email permission marketing programs and a transaction platform.

The cultural differences between countries that share a common language can be difficult for non-Europeans to understand. "You can’t think that because they speak the same language in Austria, Switzerland and Germany that the culture is the same," Kamin says.

To succeed in the long term, affiliate networks must have international reach, according to Kamin. "This business is global," he says. Kamin predicts that the market will consolidate to five top-tier international affiliate networks that will compete with smaller regional players.

Northern Exposure

American affiliate networks are not alone in their hemisphere in seeking a share of the international marketing dollars. Canadian affiliates are enjoying success selling products such as prescription medicine, adult content and sports books in the United States.

Nicky Senyard, CEO of Montreal-based network ShareResults.com, says merchants in her country are significantly behind their southern neighbors in understanding affiliate marketing. "Online merchants don’t know what they are or how they are to be used," Senyard says. Many Canadian affiliates are currently selling American products, but her company and others are educating Canadians on the possibilities of selling their goods in the U.S.

Just as Commission Junction and others are now operating networks in Canada, she expects that Canadian networks will increasingly do business in the U.S. "[Opportunity] flows in both directions," Senyard says.

American networks that wait until 2006 to launch European initiatives may find the window of opportunity closed. Local companies who become established with retailers now will have a definite advantage, according to Gary Stein, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. "The advantage is to the incumbent," Stein says. U.S.-based advertisers who are expanding their European online marketing programs have to weigh the factors of familiarity with American networks versus local expertise, according to Stein. "There are arguments on both sides of the equation."

JOHN GARTNER is a freelance writer in Portland, Ore. He is a former editor at Wired News and CMP. His articles regularly appear on Wired.com, AlertNet.org and in MIT’s TechnologyReview.com.

The Overstock Obsession

Every so often, there’s a company, a person or a philosophy that attracts such a rabid following it can be only be described as a phenomenon.

In music, the Beatles and Elvis come to mind. It’s hard to think of either without envisioning ecstatic throngs of screaming, teary-eyed fanatics who would do anything for a souvenir to link them forever to their idol.

In technology, Apple Computer has survived as much (or more) on the strength of its zealous customers as on more mundane considerations like operating efficiencies or distribution channels. A piece of advice: Never try to tell a Macintosh user there are any advantages to using a PC.

In dieting, the current rage is Atkins. Eat all the protein and fat you want, but lay off the bread and pasta. Want to know more? Just ask someone who’s on it. They’ll talk the pounds right off you.

Overstock is like that in the affiliate world. Although it’s a nascent company that is far from perfect by some business measures, its customers, affiliates and employees simply ooze adoration for the fast-growing e-tailer and its undeniably magnetic CEO, Patrick Byrne. It’s not just that they like the company. This is unbridled zeal. It’s the kind of blissful rapture one expects from saffron-robed monks selling flowers at the airport.

The numbers show the love. Gross merchandise sales jumped 88 percent to $96.6 million in the company’s second quarter from the year before. And more than 3 million consumers have now bought something from the site, thanks in large part to Overstock’s 35,000 evangelistic affiliates. To put that last number in perspective, Macys.com has only 2,000 affiliates, or less than one for every 16 that Overstock claims.

After only five years in business, Overstock has blossomed into the 18th largest e-tail site. It attracted 9.3 million unique visitors during July alone.

Much of that success can be attributed to Byrne, a sort of existential capitalist whose top-tier schooling (BA at Dartmouth, MA at Cambridge, PhD at Stanford) has left him with a penchant to quote philosophies ranging from the Bible to Sun Tzu to Obi-Wan Kenobi. He often speaks in adages colored by a metaphysical hue.

“If you treat people well and customers well, you’ll be rewarded,” he says describing the “virtuous circle” of the retail world. “You can’t cheat karma. The karma police will always get you.”

He’s first to admit his company’s shortcomings in a way that enhances his credibility. In the company’s last earnings report, for example, he expressed his disappointment with Overstock’s “Daily Deals” promotion. “I am not giving up,” he said, “but this has been a dud.” He also admits to worrying about “bottlenecks” and declared outright that “B2B has been a disappointment.”

“Cynics claim that my candor is but an attempt to pump my stock by drawing investors looking for someone who does not pump his stock,” Byrnes wrote in the company’s recent earnings report. “I am flattered to have attributed to me such Machiavellian subtlety!”

Byrne grew his company the hard way after “getting turned down by 55 VCs (venture capitalists)” in his quest for funding. Overstock went public in 2002, using the same Dutch auction process that Google adopted this year.

The Art Of Affiliates

He’s so dedicated to building his affiliate program that he’s given Affiliate Manager J.T. Stephens a force of 10 assistants to build it. Byrne required them all to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, which he views as the “textbook on Internet affiliate marketing.” And, although Overstock’s commissions are relatively low at 3 percent to 7 percent (many merchants pay 10 percent to 12 percent), affiliates love the company for its highly personalized support.

“It isn’t always the commission,” says Sandy Breckenridge of SlipCovers- Fabric.com. “Higher commission sites don’t come near Overstock when it comes to support and personal attention.”

Another devout affiliate, Asif Malik of Plaza101.com, strayed from the Overstock flock for a while until one of its managers came after him like a shepherd looking for a lost lamb. “For a while, I dumped them,” says Malik. “But I got a call from Adam Russo and that changed.” Now the two work closely on updates, sometimes talking several times a day to make sure Malik is doing all he can for Overstock.

“It makes a difference,” says Malik. “I email or call and they respond right away. I email or call other companies and sometimes never hear from them. Or I get a message back telling me they don’t provide tech support.” Malik scoffs. “I don’t need tech support. I have technical know-how. I am just trying to help generate revenue for them. They are fools and I drop them. If they are too busy to talk to an affiliate like me, they lose.” And Overstock wins.

“No other merchants are calling them,” says Stephens. “We call them. We’re like a free marketing consultant, and affiliates are all ears.We tell them our best sellers and suggest placement. We give them the resources and tools to make money.”

Industry Advocate

The company also won admiration from many affiliates for filing the first suit under Utah’s groundbreaking Spyware Control Act. The suit alleged rival SmartBargains created ads that popped up over the Overstock Web site. (SmartBargains had filed its S-1 for an IPO. At the time of publication, it was in a quiet period and could not comment.)

“I love them,” said affiliate Connie Berg of FlamingoWorld.com, who recently shared LinkShare’s award for “Most Vocal Advocate” with Overstock’s affiliate team. “If they can get some spyware stopped, it helps people in other programs, not just Overstock’s.”

Byrne sees his raft of affiliates as his not-so-secret army to do battle with larger rivals like Amazon.com. “It’s a war of the fleas against the elephant,” he says. “A few years ago, affiliates did $150,000 in sales a month. Now they do millions It’s not yet $10 million a month, but it will be by the end of this year.”

While many companies trim inactive affiliates from their ranks to concentrate on their top producers, others see them as a source of potential growth. LinkShare CEO Steve Messer, for example, believes that once an affiliate shows interest in a company, “there’s always a chance to reactivate them.” (See Issue 3, Share And Share A Link.)

Overstock never cuts affiliates, meaning many of those 35,000 soldiers are ghosts that occasionally come back to life. One “inactive” affiliate who hadn’t generated any sales for Overstock in more than three years recently turned in $10,000 in one month.

Overstock champions the little guys, small affiliates who generate between only $500 and $3,000 in sales per month. The superaffiliates may generate more sales per affiliate, but they also demand higher pricing, flat fees and enhanced commissions, which makes them more expensive and harder to work with.

“We like the medium and small affiliates. I’d rather have 10,000 of them anyway. We try to do well by our affiliates. At this point, we think of them as jedis and padawans,” says Byrne, referring to the fully trained warriors in Star Wars and their young apprentices. “They are a mercurial bunch and they react quickly to good treatment.”

Stephens, meanwhile, translates the focus on the smaller affiliates to hard cash. “When you work to get 50 affiliates to add even $1,000 to $2,000 each in sales each month, it ends up affecting the bottom line,” he says. “Everyone else is cutting down and we are building out. Other companies limit themselves. But their loss is our gain.”

And the company does try to treat them well. “You can never lose sight of the fact that affiliate marketing is a symbiotic relationship,” says Stephens. This focus on affiliate appreciation seems to be paying off for Overstock. Affiliates like knowing they are talking to someone who specializes in their category (see list).

“Overstock is one of the easiest ones to set up and start earning money with,” says Gabriel Lam, who runs GotApex.com. “They have a wide range of products and very good pricing.”

Less Than Perfect

Of course, just as Elvis had a weakness for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Overstock has a few flaws, too. Its immense expansion had led to some growing pains, and the company has yet to achieve profitability.

Some affiliates report that Overstock’s coupons get posted but don’t work right away, which they say happens very infrequently with other merchants. And Overstock spends a lot on advertising: $5 million in 2003 and $2 million in January through July 2004. It acquired 744,000 customers during 2003, but the cost was high – $13.30 per customer.

Overstock handles all advertising internally, a risky venture for a company dependent on brand awareness and national media buys. (It had to back off its “Big O” campaign after Big O Tires complained.) And Wall Street analysts remain wary. Only two analysts follow the stock and both are from investment banks that do business with Overstock.

In a research report published in July, analyst Tom Underwood of Legg Mason Wood Walker rated the stock as a “hold,” roughly the equivalent of a grade of C in school. “Success is not only still unassured,” he said, “we can’t quantify potential financial results around the business with any accuracy.”

And then there’s the area of search engine ranking. Overstock does its own optimization and could use some improvement. In a recent Google search for “discount shopping,” Overstock didn’t even appear on the first page for sponsored or unsponsored links. (The sponsored links included Target and SmartBargains. Curiously, Connie Berg’s FlamingoWorld .com topped the unpaid list.) Because Overstock describes itself as selling “name-brands at clearance prices,” Revenue ran a search for “name-brands clearance prices.” Again, Overstock was a no-show, paid or unpaid.

‘Smitten’ Buyers

Some affiliate managers find that some of their best customers are their own affiliates. It makes sense given that affiliates want to support their merchants and earn a commission on their own purchases. But Overstock’s cultish shoppers have been known to turn that model around by becoming affiliates simply because they love shopping at Overstock.

That’s the case with an affiliate named Beverly C. Lucey, editor of the blog WomanOfACertainAgePage.com. She has affiliate links to Amazon because, as an educator she wants to encourage reading. She turns down other business ventures offered her – from manufacturers of Viagra, weight loss products and “anti-aging goop.” But she decided to provide a link on her site to Overstock.com. “They didn’t ask me to,” Lucey wrote in an e-mail interview. “I’ve been a happy customer for the last four years.”

Of course, she swoons, there was another factor: After hearing an NPR interview with Patrick Byrne, she became “smitten.”

Byrne seems to have that effect. “Everything he touches turns to gold,” gushes Stephens. And Marketing Vice President Kamille Twomey says, “He is an exciting and convincing man. ” I came in to talk to him and a few minutes later, I was working for him.”

Special Treatment

The company runs network-wide promotions with tiered bonuses, but it also brokers one-on-one deals with Web sites, letting affiliates sell, say, a Burberry scarf, for less than Overstock does. Many affiliates who Revenue interviewed said special deals were a great incentive.

“I call Overstock and Amazon the Masters of Promotion,” says Michael Conley of Amazing-Bargains.com, who has been working with Overstock since 2000. He also likes their dependable and cheap shipping, which is usually $2.95 whether users buy a book or a couch, and sometimes is free. The symbiosis should help around the holidays.

The holidays are critical to Overstock. “In 2003, half our sales were in the fourth quarter,” says Twomey. In the late summer, the company employed about 500 people. With seasonal help, that number will jump to 2,500, up almost 80 percent from the 1,400 working for Overstock last holiday season. Clearly, the company is preparing for sales of biblical proportions.

“We’ve been thinking about the holiday season since January,” says Byrne. “In past Novembers we finished the ark by wading in waist-deep water pounding nails in the rain. This year our ark will be complete before the first raindrop falls.”

Spoken like a true believer.

DIANE ANDERSON is managing editor of Revenue.

Online Travel Takes Off

Schlepping his burgundy leather briefcase and navy canvas travel bag through the Portland airport, George Bragg doesn’t care as much about how he gets his ticket as how soon he’ll get home to Dallas. He’d happily buy tickets from affiliates, discounters, travel agents or airlines.

With travel representing the single largest source of Internet commerce, travelers like Bragg have so many options "it’s hard to keep up with them any more," drawled the weary business traveler with five frequent-flyer cards in his wallet. Airlines and hotels sell directly from their own sites. Discounters offer an array of fares. Travel agencies – hit hard when airlines stopped paying commissions – offer online fares and more. That leaves affiliates with a hearty marketing challenge: reaching consumers and agents already bombarded by messages from the big brands and the discounters that resell the brands. But there’s hope in the numbers: "Close to 100 million people have purchased travel online at some point over the last year," said Melissa Derry, a spokeswoman for Expedia. "While there are 20 million people coming to Expedia’s site each month, there is still a huge number of people who are out there looking for a place online to get these services."

Though higher fuel prices may put a crimp in auto or jet travel, industry watchers still predict record years. Online bookings have never been more popular. Out of all flight and hotel reservations, 30 percent come from online bookings, reports travel researcher PhoCusWright. By 2005, it predicts half of all flight and hotel reservations will be made online. "It just continues to grow," said Bill McGee, a consultant who watches the sector for Consumer WebWatch. "A few years ago, it was mostly business travelers, but now it’s really across the board. It’s used by leisure travelers, by families, by just about everybody."

Airlines, hotels, cruise lines, rental car companies and travel discounters see this huge market, and know their marketing can’t capture it all. So they turn to affiliates. "We think of them as an extended sales force," said Blagica Stefanovski, online marketing and affiliate manager at Orbitz.com. Nearly any site can sell flight, hotel or rental car bookings, whether it’s a sophisticated rewards site or a simple Web page put up by a neighborhood association to fund speed bumps or stop signs. "There are so many opportunities for travel on the local level," said Jason Price, vice president of marketing at Hospitality eBusiness, an Internet consultancy for hotels. "You can post local news or sports information, and provide a travel link to help fund the site. Maybe some kid in his basement wants to talk about high school sports in the area – why not have a Marriott button there for the hotel around the corner?"

Whatever the site, now is the best time for sales. "We’re [in] our best seasonality – the peak summer travel season – so it’s a great time for affiliates of travel merchants to promote their travel options and improve their placement or for new affiliates to give it a try," said Veronica Young, affiliate marketing manager at Hotwire.com. "The winter holidays are another big travel season: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s."

Travel is perhaps the easiest entry for new affiliates. They are credited for sales up to 30 days after customers click through their links, even if customers don’t go through the affiliate when they actually buy. New banner and link codes are sent within emails so affiliates don’t have to log into an interface. Many travel affiliates don’t even update their codes anymore. Their merchants do it for them using dynamic rich media. Travel merchants often have teams of "program managers," rather than one affiliate manager, to give personalized service to affiliates. "It’s certainly an ongoing challenge to stay on top of all the changes," said Michael Bauer, senior vice president of affiliate marketing for Hotels.com, which offers an online "university" for new affiliates. "What we offer affiliates is we are the eyes and ears of our industry. If there’s a swing, we identify it."

Travel merchants also actively help affiliates convert the curious into buyers. Interactive banners, for instance, are the hottest buzz in this industry and are offered by most travel merchants: Customers input their destination and dates at the affiliate’s site first, moving them further into the search and committal process.

Since the peak summer travel season is in full throttle and holiday travel is just around the corner, these perks should prove beneficial to affiliates trying their hand at the high-flying online travel industry.

Hotels

So what’s the hottest-selling travel product now? Hotels top the list. Eighty percent of active business travelers and 73 percent of active leisure travelers went online for hotel reservations in the past 12 months, according to the 2004 National Travel Monitor (NTM).

Affiliates could work directly with the brands, but few offer affiliate programs. "Only two or three brands have actually launched an affiliate program – only in the past two or three years and with moderate success," said Price, who cites Accor Hotel’s worldwide affiliate program with 3,700 hotels. "The rest of the brands have not embraced the affiliate market. As soon as these early adopters come out with performance, the others will jump on." Individual hotel properties may be willing to negotiate with affiliates who can give them Web bookings. Try it.

Affiliates can work with discount sites that show fares for dozens of hotel partners, ranked by price or brand. They can work with "opaque" sites like Priceline and Hotwire, which rank unbooked hotel rooms – along with excess airline seats, car rentals, vacation packages and cruises. Both pay 2 percent commissions to affiliates. "We’re kind of the Costco of the online travel industry," Young said. "Any affiliate that has a site where customers are going to be looking for cheap prices is a great fit for our program: a travel site, a discount site, a coupon site."

Affiliates also can work with affiliate-only networks like World Choice Travel. World Choice offers fully branded travel search pages, with an underlying software that combs the Web for lowest fares. World Choice pays 5 to 10 percent on hotel bookings, plus half of any transaction fee.

Flights

Nearly 75 percent of consumers who researched travel online bought their airline tickets online in 2003, reports NTM. The incentive for online bookings is there: Internet fares are now, for the first time, the cheapest way to buy airline tickets, according to Consumer WebWatch.

Affiliates can sign up with specific airlines like Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air, which pays $2 for every ticket booked. Affiliates can sign up with discount sites that rank searches by price, flight times or airline. The largest are Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, CheapTickets, OneTravel and TravelNow. Consumer WebWatch found that Expedia leads in the greatest number of lowest fares but Travelocity, which has the best booking tools, has the largest array of flight times and low fares.

There’s also World Choice’s branded program, which searches anywhere in the US, Canada, UK or Europe for the lowest prices from about 30 airline and booking sites. Affiliates earn 5 percent on online sales and 3 percent on call center sales.

Car Rentals

Forty-five percent of active business travelers and 32 percent of active leisure travelers went online to rent a car during the past 12 months, reports NTM. Those numbers should only grow, as insiders predict that more than 20 percent of all car rental bookings will be made over the Internet this year. Alamo’s program pays 3 percent of time and mileage, with checks mailed monthly (no minimums). Expedia and Travelocity pay 2 percent commissions, and Orbitz pays a flat $2 per rental. World Choice Travel searches 28 worldwide car rental companies for best fares and pays 5 percent on any of those booking. Plus affiliates can split the optional $2.99 to $6.99 transaction fee.

Cruises

In the first quarter of 2003, more than 2.2 million travelers worldwide took a vacation with major cruise lines – a whopping 23 percent increase over 2002, reports the Cruise Lines International Assoc. (CLIA). "As the cruise industry has grown and as more people take cruises and become confident with the components of the cruise, they’re becoming more confident with booking online," said Brian Major at CLIA. "A lot" of affiliates, he said, have benefited as a result – most notably CruiseCritic.com with 110,000 registered members, as well as affiliates CruiseMates.com and Cruise Addicts.com.

Packages

Packaged travel is emerging as a solid moneymaker. More than 68 percent of online travel buyers buy more than one component, reports PhoCusWright. Among active leisure travelers during the previous 12 months, 20 percent went online to book a complete vacation package with flight, hotel and often car rentals in one transaction. "If you look at the online travel space, 2003 was the year of the package," said Joel Frey, a spokesman for Travelocity. Sites like Expedia have even added theater reservations, sports tickets and transportation to and from the airport. Flights are now "like the milk at the back of the store," said Derry at Expedia.com. "By packaging options together we can afford customers better pricing and affiliates better commissions." Now affiliates can get paid for the whole trip and not just one flight.

Affiliate Options

Affiliates have a number of ways to get into the travel industry.

Link or banner: You don’t have to be a travel site to make use of affiliate links. Webmasters with sites touting everything from book reviews to financial advice have travel banners on their home pages, suggesting that the appearance of having advertising support from a big travel provider has its benefits.

Powered by: More travel-specific sites often go with co-branded versions of the merchant’s site. Visitors make their reservations on a page of the affiliate site that is "powered by" a merchant. After typing in their destination and time frame, their travel options are displayed on the merchant’s site.

Private label: With this option, affiliates can carry their own site design onto every one of the travel reservation pages. And affiliates can offer personalized call center services to buyers. Options are either a generic toll-free number, where the call center asks for the discount code or special Internet code from the affiliate’s site, or a dedicated private toll-free number answered on behalf of the affiliate and its brand. "We are usually the ones that come to the affiliate and say, Ã”I think it’s a good time to offer this customized toll-free number,’ which doesn’t cost any additional dollars," said Bauer from Hotels.com. World Choice Travel’s private label program even puts the affiliate site’s name on consumer credit card statements.

Trends

The implementation of account management teams is enabling more personalized services for new and existing travel affiliates. "There’s a lot of competition, so merchants have to differentiate themselves from the competition," said Young of Hotwire. "Part of that is how they treat their affiliates."

Globalization is another big trend. The Internet has no borders, so these days an affiliate in Europe can be a merchant’s top producer of US travel bookings and an affiliate in the US can produce great bookings for an Italian air travel site. "We encourage our affiliates to think outside of their boundaries," Bauer said. "No matter where they are in the world it’s up to them what region they want to target." Hotels.com supports five different languages and 13 different currencies through its US, European and Asia/Pacific affiliate networks.

Meanwhile, last-minute bookings are moving online. Several integrated sites like Travelocity offer cheap rates up to three days prior to a trip.

Bus and train bookings online are still in their infancy in the US. In Europe, Euro Railways is ahead of the game, offering 5 percent affiliate commissions on discount rail passes.

"For me," said businessman Bragg, ready to board a flight to Dallas for the 12th time this year, "it’s all about price and convenience and the simplicity of the site." Affiliates or not, sites offering those features have the potential to get him, and 100 million others, on board.

JENNIFER MEACHAM is a freelance writer who has worked for The Seattle Times, The Columbian, Vancouver Business Journal and Emerging Business magazine.

Here’s Herby

From his passionate crusades against spam and “scumware” to hosting his group’s annual summit, the baritone-voiced entrepreneur has a knack for stirring things up and forcing long-neglected ethical issues to the front burner. Now, he’s ready to launch an accreditation program that would require participants to act more responsibly.

Herby (hardly anyone uses his last name) has been a leading advocate for the creation of a magazine about affiliate marketing and generously shared his expertise as we assembled this first edition of Revenue. Herby sat down recently with Editor-in-Chief Tom Murphy for a frank talk about his organization’s background, problems and goals.

TOM MURPHY: Why was your group formed, and what does it hope to accomplish?

HERBY OLSCHEWSKI: In 1999, I was a speaker at an affiliate marketing conference in San Francisco. There were about 700 people in the audience who basically paid money to listen to different affiliate solution providers bicker with one another. It made me realize there was a need for an association.

Our main goal is to help merchants and affiliates keep it fair in revenue share. That’s really a two-sided coin. It’s to help merchants understand what affiliates need in an affiliate program. And we have to help affiliates understand how best to reach the revenue share opportunity offered by merchants.

TM: How big is your association?

HO: We have just over 4,000 members, and that’s really without having done any sort of membership drive. Hence, we know that there’s a need to band together into a professional platform that will help to further the interests of affiliate marketing.

TM: How many of your members are merchants?

HO: We estimate about 55 percent of our members are merchants with affiliate programs. About 45 percent are pure affiliates. We must remember the overlap; there are affiliates who are merchants and vice versa.

TM: What are the top two issues facing the industry right now?

HO: Predatory advertising and the need for the public to understand just what affiliate marketing really is.

TM: Let’s start with the second one. What do you think is the misconception about affiliate marketing?

HO: The first misconception is that affiliate marketing is actually some kind of multi-level marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The basic difference between an MLM program and an affiliate program is the commission structure. In a multi-level program, you can have anywhere from three to 16 levels. In an affiliate program, there are only two levels, a first tier and a second tier. It can be equated to a car dealership where you have a car manufacturer making cars available to a wholesaler and the wholesaler having dealers out there.

TM: I think a lot of people who hear “multi-level marketing” think about pyramid schemes. Do you think that?

HO: One of the goals of the association is to fight the trend of multi-level programs in companies that are trying to get around the stigma of that area by calling their revenue-share opportunities affiliate marketing. The Internet Affiliate Marketing Association takes a strong stance against that. And the way to do that is to educate the public on what affiliate marketing really is.

TM: The other area you mentioned was predatory advertising. Can you explain the problem there?

HO: Let’s first see how these predatory advertising mechanisms are distributed. The first is a Trojan horse mechanism where a software company will offer freebie software that might appear to be a music file-sharing program or whatever the case may be. What they include in that software program is a memory-executable program that will determine when the user goes online to search for a particular product or service. So, if somebody were searching the Web for “baby clothing,” that program in memory will remember that and will pop up an advertisement for baby clothing. That makes it very targeted for a merchant. The merchant will have a much higher success rate from that pop-up. But the problem is, how did that pop-up get into that system? The user, nine times out of 10, doesn’t even understand that they loaded that program onto their computer.

TM: When people first hear of affiliate marketing, the first image that pops into their heads are all the ads for male potency drugs, bank loans, or weight loss products that trash-up their in-boxes. Is that affiliate marketing at work?

HO: No, that is not affiliate marketing, but we do have affiliates that go out and spam in order to increase their commission rates. We help merchants identify who those affiliates are, and we would actually report them to the merchant. It’s in the best interest of the merchant to curtail that and to expel that affiliate from their affiliate program.

TM: I know you certify people within your organization. How does that touch on some of the ethical issues, like spamming or predatory advertising?

HO: We’re launching a certification process where our members can apply to be an approved merchant, an approved affiliate, a recommended solution provider, etc. The difference between membership and the certification process is that we want everybody to feel welcome to be a member, including the unethical people and the uneducated people.

Our mission is really to educate our membership, and the certification process revolves around our manifesto. The member voluntarily agrees to sign the manifesto and agrees to abide by a certain code of ethics. One of those line items in the code of ethics is regarding spamming. They have to make a public declaration that, A, they won’t spam, and, B, they won’t tolerate affiliates who do spam.

TM: You’ve had your share of controversy within your organization recently. Some of your postings on bulletin boards were deleted and I know you took some flak personally for making that decision. Can you tell me what happened and why you did that?

HO: In most online forums, people sign into the forum with a pseudonym, Zorro123, or XYZ. We’re opposed to that in our forum. We have a very strict first-name, last-name policy. We believe that anyone who says something in our forums should do so under their own name and with personal decorum. We don’t have moderators. What happened recently was that some of our members got too emotive about the industry, and specifically about predatory advertising. We don’t believe in making litigious, derogatory statements against merchants, so we curtailed that sort of behavior.

We created a thing called “Forum Decorum,” which is very basic. It’s Professionalism 101 on how people can debate with one another. Four of our members chose to flaunt that publicly, and we had no choice but to enforce a seven-day posting suspension. They reacted to that as censorship, and they voluntarily left the association. And, to be quite honest, good riddance. Our forums have ended up being far more professional as a result.

TM: In another recent controversy, you recently had a split with one of your long-term colleagues within the association. Could you talk about that?

HO: That involved the previous president of the United States chapter of our association. We had a difference of opinion as to the role of affiliate managers in the association. He wanted a bigger voice for affiliate managers and a separate forum that only affiliate managers could enter. The association in general is against that sort of thing because we don’t want to create a them-versus-us situation. We believe affiliates, merchants and anybody else in the industry should be on equal footing and should be available to each other to discuss issues. This individual subsequently decided to start his own forums for affiliate managers and also decided to start a rival summit to our summit, which is now in its fifth year. (See sidebar: Shawn’s Turn)

TM: Do you have a rough estimate of how many affiliates there are in the world?

HO: It’s almost impossible to say. If I had to take a guess, I’d say it’s in the 10 million, to 15 or 20 million range. Now these are people who may or may not be operating a successful affiliate program.

TM: I would think many of those would be participating in more than one program. When you eliminate the duplicates, the final number of affiliates is actually quite a bit smaller, isn’t it?

HO: Yes, an affiliate may be a participant in more than one affiliate program. It’s almost impossible to say [how many affiliates do that] until we can establish from the affiliate managers themselves. Because of the privacy policies in most affiliate programs, it’s almost impossible to say.

TM: When we talk about the number of affiliates out there, the truth is most of them don’t make a lot of money. Isn’t that right?

HO: Absolutely. I would hazard to guess that less than 5 percent of the affiliates out there actually make any money at all. A popular theory is that most affiliates don’t even make $100 a month. But there are some that make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. It works in the two extremes.

TM: We’re looking at a few of those success stories in the magazine. What in your mind is the difference between them and the others?

HO: The difference is really how well the affiliates niche themselves. If you look at a stay-at-home mom or someone trying to derive a second income from the Web, then they need to focus on something. Let’s take baby clothes for example, or retail clothing. They really have to build a site around that, and they will make money. You’re not going to make money by just creating a site and slapping up a banner for it. Your success will be extremely limited that way.

TM: How many merchants would you say are involved?

HO: We have a mailing list of over 7,000 affiliate managers, so the estimate is that there are anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 affiliate programs.

TM: That strikes me as a very low number when you consider the number of corporations there are in the United States.

HO: The problem is that affiliate marketing was perceived as the underbelly of the Internet. It was seen as people sitting at home in their pajamas, writing scripts in order to generate incomes from affiliate programs. In the dot-com era, it was one of the things that suffered. A lot of affiliate programs went under. And affiliate marketing was hyped up. Companies didn’t get the return they were expecting, and they left affiliate marketing. Our job now is to get those companies back.

TM: What do you see as the greatest challenge for the year ahead?

HO: The greatest challenges for the year ahead are, A, get the public to understand what affiliate marketing is and, B, keep the companies from being wooed away by the predatory advertising agencies. What ultimately could happen is that affiliate marketing could die away, and a great opportunity would be lost to help companies market their goods on a pay-per-performance mechanism that makes far more sense.

TM: What is your vision for the association going forward?

HO: The vision is that everybody is welcome, and those who do choose to be part of the organization need to abide by a simple manifesto that lays down industry standards. We’re not going to get all merchants in there. We’re not going to get all affiliates in there. We just want to create a little oasis for people and to grow the association. Over a period of time, people on the outside will realize the benefits of being on the inside, and the association will just grow naturally.

TM: It almost sounds like you are building a self-regulatory organization. Is that because of the lack of regulation internationally on the Internet?

HO: Absolutely. If you look at the Internet as a whole, it’s a great medium for global communication, but without frontiers. We already know it’s going to be absolutely impossible for any one country to control the Internet. That’s even truer in the case of affiliate marketing where an affiliate in New Zealand can be making a lot of money out of merchandise in Cleveland, Ohio. Who is going to lay down regulations? No country can do that.

TM: Say I’m getting spammed. Is there anything I can do as a consumer to get your association to help me out?

HO: Yes, absolutely. We’re shortly going to be publishing a series of guides to look at affiliate marketing from various points of view. And the very first guide is actually the rev-share guide from a consumer perspective. And we’ll be telling consumers how to combat spam, how to get discounts on products, how to use affiliate marketing to their advantage.

TM: I have a personal philosophy that it takes about 20 years for new media to develop. We saw that with radio and television. Since the dissemination of the first popular browser, Mosaic, it’s only been about 10 years. I think we have another 10 years to go before the Internet really matures. Do you believe that’s true?

HO: I do. We see a lot of consolidation in the industry. Web sites are consolidating. Dot-com companies are getting together. Affiliate marketing is really an opportunity for the average guy or lady in the street to derive a second income from the Web and also for the small merchant to sell their products on the Web beyond the realm of traditional advertising, which is unaffordable in many cases.

I think probably in the next 10 years, affiliate marketing is going to grow in three ways: as a way for merchants to sell their products, as a way for people to make a second income on the Web, and as a way for corporations that can actually reduce their advertising expenses by learning how to pay for performance and not just shove money into ads.