No one looks for a car with the biggest gas tank—they look for a car that has the best mileage per gallon. Advertising is no different. While a bigger publisher can certainly have a quality, engaged audience, advertisers have been prioritizing size of reach above all else for quite some time.
The affiliate industry is working to change that perception. Publishers are now in the driver seat of their relationships with advertisers, and antiquated incentivization strategies are changing for the better. A publisher was rewarded if and when they can deliver a last click leading to a purchase—but now, thanks to the inevitable cookieless future and publisher first-party data being more valuable than ever before, advertisers are more willing to understand and work closer with their publisher partners.
We now can prove that publishers deliver value far beyond that last click, thanks to modern attribution capabilities. But advertisers are also finding that some of the most strategic partners don’t always have the biggest audience.
Striking a balance between quality and quantity
If you show an advertiser two different publishers—one with over a million unique monthly visitors and another with around 500,000—and ask them which one is more valuable, the odds are that they’ll choose the larger publisher.
At face value, that might seem like a no-brainer, but there are several variables that are not being considered here. What is the socioeconomic profile of the average reader? How often do they visit the site within that month?
Advertisers can work with publishers to understand more about their audience and make more informed decisions, rather than thinking of affiliate as a blanketed strategy.
If that same advertiser knew the average income of the visitors across both publishers, and the visitors of the publisher with less reach had significantly more purchasing power, then the advertiser might rethink their answer. Just because one audience is bigger and might still be contextually relevant to an advertiser’s brand doesn’t mean that it is delivering the most valuable audience.
That’s not to say larger publishers don’t have quality, engaged audiences, but publishers need to consider more than size. A publisher with less traffic may have more reach and influence with a target demographic or may be well trusted for expertise in priority product line, for example. Advertisers certainly can have their cake and eat it too, but they stand to benefit from diversifying their spend across publishers with different audience sizes as well.
Improving partnership strategies with dynamic commissioning
So how exactly can affiliates make sure they’re aligning with the right publisher partners to further target and optimize their affiliate strategies? The answer is simple. Incentivize publishers for delivering more than just a transaction.
Through dynamic commissioning capabilities, advertisers can incentivize publishers to deliver higher quality customers and drive life-long loyalty. These commission rates can be adjusted on a short-term basis to meet evolving business needs or can be long-term strategies to acquire the most valuable customers across the board.
For example, an advertiser that is looking to drive long-term loyalty can adapt commission rates based on the value of the customer. They can increase rates for first-time buyers, target lapsed customers, incentivize loyal customers to increase basket size, etc.
Similarly, advertisers can incentivize publishers to deliver higher quality first-time buyers. A publisher who includes affiliate links in a story about “the best credit cards of 2022” can earn more commissions by delivering high-quality customers by including qualifying language such as recommended credit ranges.
This gives publishers with less traffic the ability to earn more and get rewarded for the quality of their audience, even if they don’t have the most reach. This also helps advertisers identify and build stronger relationships with customers who can ultimately become the most valuable to their business.
Strengthening relationships between advertisers and publishers
We are entering a new era of affiliate. We’re seeing innovation that is strengthening the relationships between advertisers and publishers, improving personalization and targeting and unearthing new strategies that can help advertisers meet specific business objectives.
Even if this was a product of evolving data privacy laws, the long-term result is going to be much more beneficial for both advertisers and publishers as the affiliate industry continues to bring new capabilities and strategies for both.
Advertisers who embrace this change and truly want to build these publisher relationships will undoubtedly get the most out of their affiliate investment. Those who are still hesitant to think of publishers as strategic partners will fall behind.
