Networks Move to Restrict Affiliates, Appease Retailers, Shift Risk Off Google
by Jeff Molander
jeff-at-thoughtshapers.com
The world’s largest affiliate network will soon take back control of all but a scant few of its advertisers’ affiliate links and is positioning to run from the affiliate marketing status quo beginning in June of this year. Affiliate networks are offically circling the wagons after becoming nearly completely reliant on search marketing (read: Google). Commission Junction, Linkshare and others are coming under increasing pressure from advertisers to control affiliates—and their hands are now forced. Change is in the wind.
Chaos on the Boards
Pick your affiliate bulletin board forum and tune in to the drama as affiliates are thrown into, what seems to be, mass hysteria this morning. This (CJ’s handing out Java script rather than URL links to affiliates) can mean only one thing: change.
Even affiliate-marketing die-hards like Scott Jangro are hard pressed to turn the frown upside down today. Jangro is forced to admit…
“Let’s face it. The Internet has become overrun by sites mass-produced to make money. Affiliate marketing has played no small part in this.... this may be a move by Commission Junction to clean up the streets of trash with a big green ‘CJ’ on it. The more affiliate marketers piss off the search engines, the larger the bulls-eye becomes on CJ’s backside. JavaScript links may, at the very least, slow and even reverse the proliferation of affiliate links, masquerading as content, filling up the search engines and forcing them to clean it up. My gut feeling is that this is the big one. Self-preservation is a strong motivator.”
Jangro’s perspective is dead-on and worth listening to…
“There’s a rule-of-thumb I like to go by: ‘If you take the affiliate links off of your website, what’s left?’ If the answer is, ‘not much’, then your site isn’t likely to be considered worthy of ranking well in search engines (lately, this includes paid-search as well). CJ and other affiliate networks stand a much better chance by keeping their code out of the search engines than to leave it to the search engines to decide what gets obliterated.”
Search = Affiliate Marketing
What’s this all about? As I’ve said for many years now: Search. Search IS affiliate marketing, folks. The rest is tollway change.
Most of this online marketing strategy is NOT about tapping into something that affiliates have which marketers do not—it’s about leveraging what affiliates do; and they do search. But don’t marketers do that now? Heh, heh… indeed they do.
It’s important to understand:
1) Affiliates use of all forms of search marketing + product data feeds has proven to = big problems for retailers who are under fire from their manufacturers’ (OEM) brands as they’ve noticed sloppy affiliate practices reflecting poorly on their brand
2) Marketers do search now too and if they don’t they want to… and they want control and accountability from either their internal team or their outsourced agency (affiliates offer little of either)
May 24, 2006