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Is Affiliate Attribution the future of Performance Marketing?

Affiliate attribution is a concept which has been discussed for several years within the performance marketing community.  It is an affiliate model which spreads the commission out to each affiliate involved in generating a commission, rather than paying the entire commission to the last affiliate before the sale.

For example, if I am looking to book a vacation to Disney World, I am very likely to do a lot of research before I put down a few thousand dollars on my trip.  I may visit one affiliate blog which reviewed Disney World, some forums which have an affiliate system to discuss my trip, and a trip deals site which finds the best deals on a particular vacation.  If the last site I visit is the trip deals site, they get 100% of the commission, and the blog and forums get nothing.

In the affiliate attribution system, all three sites would be paid out based on a variety of factors, including when the person buying the vacation (or other product) clicked the site.  One of the early adopters of this method, Resort Hoppa, rewards affiliates in the following way:

  • The first publisher gets a 50 weight on their clicks
  • The last publisher gets either a 50 or a 20 weight on their clicks (depending on the type of site)
  • Any clicks in the middle get a 20 weight

If a sale is made with a $100 commission payout after three clicks, the first site will get $55.55, the second and last site will get $22.22 each (assuming the last site is getting weighted at 20 as well).  Each affiliate program can set up their own attribution levels, of course, so this is just one simple example.

The system should benefit most sites since a growing number of sales are occurring after the buyer clicks on several different sites to do research.  The big group of marketers who may suffer, however, is those who are able to write high-quality sales copy that converts at a great rate.  They will be finalizing far more sites, and only getting 20-50% of the commission.  Sites which may not push sales as much, but still provide good information, will end up getting a portion of the sale.

The big question will be how much this benefits the actual companies using affiliate marketing to gain sales.  They will have to use much more complex systems to track where the sales go.  If they don’t feel it is worth the extra effort, the attribution won’t be used.  If it helps them improve sales, however, it is certainly going to be used in the future.

If adopted by major brands, this could be a huge change in the world of Performance and Affiliate marketing.  Marketers and brands alike should be taking the time to learn about this new system so they can position themselves to benefit from it if it does get accepted on a larger scale.

What do you think about the attribution model?  Please, share in the comments below.

Pesach Lattin
Pesach Lattinhttp://www.adotat.com
Pesach "Pace" Lattin is one of the top experts in interactive advertising, affiliate marketing. Pesach Lattin is known for his dedication to ethics in marketing, and focus on compliance and fraud in the industry, and has written numerous articles for publications from MediaPost, ClickZ, ADOTAS and his own blogs.

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