What’s really happening in affiliate and influencer marketing?



James Bennie, Area Vice President of Customer Success at impact.com, recently hosted a round-table of brands, agencies, and tech businesses – including IG, TUI, ASOS and Scale Digital – to discuss partnership marketing and what’s happening in this space, here are his biggest takeaways from the discussion.

Partnerships – and getting the metrics right – are increasingly critical

“As partnerships develop, so must the metrics,” suggested Toby Shortland, Senior Affiliate Manager at ASOS. While PR or commercial teams may focus on engagement and brand awareness, he said “it’s vital they also track and report on performance; rather than limiting measurement, teams must be thinking holistically”.

It is clear that while affiliate partners and influencers are different and must be treated as such, centralising reporting and taking a holistic view of tracking can bring them together. Amy Johnson, Affiliate Marketing Manager at TUI, suggested that “adopting a cross-funnel approach allows the overall impact of affiliates and influencers to be gauged at both the upper- and lower-funnel level”. It’s by understanding how they work together that their true business value can be proved.

The experiences partnerships can offer will be important this year in numerous ways, for both brands and consumers. As Alex Ratford, Global Marketing Partnership Team Lead at IG, said: “Brands with access to events that can’t be experienced elsewhere – be they sporting, cultural, or social – have an opportunity to involve influencers and creators, who in turn can generate unique content for their audience, sometimes even outside their normal sphere.”

Ratford also pointed out that businesses able to evolve their partnership marketing practises to better turn satisfied customers into brand advocates are likely to witness a boost in campaign performance.

Sustainability is top of the agenda for adtech, but not for consumers

Consumer feedback clearly indicates that the public wants to buy sustainable products when they can. When discussing how businesses consider the sustainability credentials of adtech, Ratford highlighted the “increasing pressure on the digital marketing world to significantly reduce its carbon footprint”.

However, when it comes to consumer purchasing power, Jason Codrington, Client Services Director at Scale Digital, pointed out that increasing cost pressures are “forcing an adjustment in attitudes”, and the reality is the current financial challenges hitting many families are taking priority over their desire for sustainability. The group agreed this change in attitude was supported by reduced investment in ESG-led companies and a dip in sales since the cost of living crisis began.

But adtech is still working hard to up its sustainability game, in view of the fact that digital advertising accounts for over 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Buyer pressures are forcing the issue, as sustainability is still increasingly influencing who advertisers will work with – which in turn has implications for publishers and adtech providers.

Market changes are having important data implications

Within martech, developments around tracking, cookie activation and the future of targeting are perhaps the most burning issues of all. As we move towards a world free of third party cookies, consent in all its forms will continue to be a significant challenge for companies to be on top of.

Businesses also need to adjust to a world of data scarcity, with increasingly stringent regulations causing more signal loss. Jason Codrington, Client Services Director at Scale Digital asserted that partnerships can serve as a solution to this issue.

He said while many businesses are wedded to the giant tech platforms to deliver insights and support their acquisition programmes, there’s also a pressing need to look beyond these “with partnerships providing an opportunity to diversify the approach”.

We need to raise the profile of affiliate and influencer marketing

While partnerships have become increasingly important to businesses, they have not necessarily made a corresponding impact on those who provide paths into the industry. While further education caters for pay-per-click (PPC) and display, marketing lecturers often know little about partnership and affiliate marketing.

There’s an opportunity here for the industry to come together and develop something that educators could offer, opening this area of marketing as a career and encouraging the flow of new talent.

Shortland said: “Affiliate and influencer marketing is often reductively bracketed with performance marketing. “Raising its profile among CMOs and the C-suite will allow it to come out from behind the curtain and give it more weight internally.”

Essentially, with a better understanding of the value of partnership marketing, leaders can build their teams to ensure they have the necessary skills.

The round table session left me with the lasting impression that 2024 is going to be a hugely exciting year for influencer and affiliate marketing. Advertisers, brands and publishers of all shapes and sizes need to embrace tech and its limitless opportunities, but also remember that at the core of everything sits the consumer. Deploying data, partnerships, tech and creativity to meet their needs is a sure-fire way of driving performance, ensuring a successful year ahead.

Also published in : Performance Marketing World