Affiliate Marketing resilient during crisis
While overall ad spend has dropped during to the Covid-19 crisis, affiliate marketing has been resilient, according to a study by Rakuten Advertising. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, one being a significant and rapid shift in consumer behaviour, which has made affiliate publishers identify opportunities to re-evaluate the way they meet customer’s needs. The survey revealed that 57% of affiliate publishers have continued “business as usual” throughout the pandemic and some were even seeing stronger performance during the crisis. More than quarter of affiliate publishers said they have also launched new inventory or campaigns to fight the crisis. Some are also providing new services and content to site visitors, while 24% of them have invested in different channels to meet new consumer activity. The pay-for-performance model has been an especially attractive proposition for advertisers during the crisis, since they can determine in real time what they are willing to pay for a sale and thus have total control over channel ROI. As consumers have become more cost-conscious, many companies have become promotional and now rely on large affiliates that are very adept at getting their promotional messages out. The expansive models that affiliate marketing covers (on-site promotion to email, social media, paid search, shopping feeds and more) are helping advertisers to get their offers out far and wide. With large parts of the world now coming out of lock-down, advertisers and publishers need to consider how to prepare their businesses for a post-pandemic world, especially in the face of a collapse in customer demand in certain sectors, significant regulatory modifications, supply chain interruptions, unemployment, economic recession, and increased uncertainty. Perhaps the management theorist Henry Mintzberg defined it best as the 5 Ps: plan, ploy, pattern, position, and perspective. What position can you attain during and after the pandemic? What is your plan for bouncing back? How will your culture and identity change (perspective)? What new projects do you need to launch, run and coordinate? How prepared are you to execute on these plans and projects? You can download a worksheet for the 5 P’s here. It can help you plot your current and future moves. Best of luck for the coming weeks and months and remember, we are here for you if you ever need guidance or help in how to set up your campaigns or change your messaging. Onwards and upwards! The Publisher Team
