Affiliated Marketing:

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING ?

Affiliate Marketing is the practice whereby a digital publisher or website promotes an online retailer and earns a commission based on the sales or leads that the advertising generates for that online retailer.
We term this payment metric CPA – Cost Per Action. Typically an ‘Action’ is a sale of an online good or service, but it can also be a lead or registration, a call, a download or any other trackable action that is desired of the end customer. In recent years this has grown to even include offline sales  provided they can be tracked back by a coupon or barcode.There are two ways the CPA are set:Flat rate: For every action a fixed fee is paid. This is typeically used for registration type actions with no cost, such as a credit card sign-up or for a fixed price product like a mobile phone contract.Revenue Share: The price of the item purchased is tracked and a percentage of that price is then paid to the affiliate. This is generally favoured by advertisers selling a range of tangible goods at varying prices, such as fashion retailers.

How does it work technically?

Most advertisers will employ an Affiliate Network to administer the tracking of their Affiliate Campaign. The network will provide a set of tracking links to the affiliates that sit behind the banners and text links on the affiliates’ websites. When the customer clicks on that link a cookie is dropped on to their computer and that click is registered by the Affiliate Network. When that customer then completes a purchase and reaches the advertiser’s confirmation page, the Affiliate Network’s tracking tag is fired. That tag checks for the relevant cookie and if the customer has come from one of the Affiliate Network’s publishers, the sale is recorded by the Affiliate Network in their platform. Via
that platform both the advertiser and affiliate should be able to see that the sale has tracked and a commission can be awarded.The advertiser populates the tracking tag with all of the information relevant to the sale, typically the price and order ID are always included, then additional fields such the product stock keeping unit (SKU) or promotion code can be added and tracked to assist with
analysis of the campaign’s performance.