Affiliate Insider : aff102110

Network Solutions Selects Paulson

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:05:00 GMT

Network Solutions has chosen affiliate marketing agency Paulson Management Group to manage their affiliate program in the Commission Junction network.

“We chose to partner with Paulson Management Group because of their successful track record in helping grow affiliate programs for name brands,” said Pragnesh Shah, vice president of Online Channels and User Experience for Network Solutions. “They are a creative group with proven knowledge and skills to help new and existing affiliate partners be successful with Network Solutions.”

The Network Solutions affiliate program currently offers a 30 percent commission for new domain name registrations, and up to $150 for annual web hosting packages. The Network Solutions® affiliate program is a modestly high-performer, currently showing a 3-month EPC of $54 and a 7-day EPC of $83.

Affiliates should be wondering if Network Solutions is gearing up to leave CJ (similar to eBay and GoDaddy) - not too far of a stretch when you bring in an affiliate management company like Paulson.

Ticketmaster Stops Affiliate Program

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Ticketmaster notified its affiliate partners in early October that it would no longer pay commissions on sales. The affiliate program technically still exists and Ticketmaster will continue to provide affiliates access to its concert database. That program has long paid a small fee (about 1% to 3% of the ticket price) to third parties whose traffic to Ticketmaster.com resulted in a sale.

“This was a difficult decision to make, as we recognize the fiscal impact on our affiliates,” the company stated in the email. Indeed, affiliate revenue is important to companies that provide concert listings and collect a small fee for sending traffic to their ticketing partners.

The company made several other cutbacks in its affiliate program back in July, when Ticketmaster cut some of its smaller affiliates and stopped paying commissions on tickets sold during pre-sales.

Expect Ticketmaster to keep paying some of its bigger affiliates as it clearly helps drive traffic to Ticketmaster.com and would address increased competition from smaller competitors. It does raise questions however about whether larger merchants and service provides on the scale of Ticketmaster will cease serving smaller affiliate marketers.

UK Affiliate Survey - Key Results

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:30:00 GMT

Big Mouth Media's 2010 UK Affiliate Survey has been released and some fascinating insights were gathered:

- 68% don't think agencies provide enough creatives for affiliate campaigns

- 70% think there are not too many UK networks

- 72% think UK networks have a problem with fraudulent traffic

- 76% think they are better digital marketers than the merchants they work with

- 66% dont think attribute modeling threatens the affiliate industry

- 28% think location based marketing offers the best opportunity for affiliates

- 32% think mobile offers the best opportunity for affiliates.

"Affiliate marketing is always best when brands work with affiliates rather than against them", said Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations director at bigmouthmedia. "Our affiliate survey shows that affiliates are willing and very able to help push a brand's digital marketing efforts forward, but this is sometimes thwarted by a lack of resources and sometimes understanding from agencies and merchants."

Retail was revealed as the most popular affiliate vertical, cited by 46% of respondents to the survey as the vertical within which the majority of their business is done, with 24% quoting the travel sector as their industry of choice. Finance came in a distant third at 8%, with telecommunications and gaming affiliates bringing up the rear at 4% each. Interestingly however, opinion remains divided as to whether affiliates are more successful when they concentrate on just one niche or when they cover several, with a straight 50-50 split between the two.