Affiliate Marketing and Programmatic

Marketing
 What Is Affiliate
Marketing?
► Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another
person’s or company’s products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then
promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make. The sales are
tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.
► Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company pays others (e.g., bloggers) to
advertise their products and services and generate sales. Affiliates place ads or market the products
or services on their website, app, or blog. Commissions are paid on leads that convert to sales.
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning money (commissions) every time you promote a
company's products or services and drive a sale. You only get paid every time you drive a sale, just
like a commission-only sales representative.
► Because affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product marketing and creation
across parties, it manages to leverage the abilities of a variety of individuals for a more effective
marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit. To make this work, three
different parties must be involved:
• Seller and product creators.
• The affiliate or advertiser.
• The consumer.
1. Seller and product creators: The seller, whether a solo entrepreneur or large enterprise, is a vendor, merchant,
product creator, or retailer with a product to market. The seller does not need to be actively involved in the
marketing, but they may also be the advertiser and profit from the revenue sharing associated with affiliate
marketing. For example, the seller could be an ecommerce merchant that started a drop shipping business and
wants to reach a new audience by paying affiliate websites to promote their products. Or the seller could be a
SaaS company that leverages affiliates to help sell their marketing software.
2. The affiliate or publisher: Also known as a publisher, the affiliate can be either an individual or a company that
markets the seller’s product in an appealing way to potential consumers. In other words, the affiliate promotes the
product to persuade consumers that it is valuable or beneficial to them and convince them to purchase the
product. If the consumer does end up buying the product, the affiliate receives a portion of the revenue made.
Affiliates often have a very specific audience to whom they market, generally adhering to that audience’s
interests. This creates a defined niche or personal brand that helps the affiliate attract consumers who will be
most likely to act on the promotion.
3. The consumer: Whether the consumer knows it or not, they (and their purchases) are the drivers of affiliate
marketing. Affiliates share these products with them on social media, blogs, and websites. When consumers buy
the product, the seller and the affiliate share the profits. Sometimes the affiliate will choose to be upfront with the
consumer by disclosing that they are receiving commission for the sales they make. Other times the consumer
may be completely oblivious to the affiliate marketing infrastructure behind their purchase. Either way, they will
rarely pay more for the product purchased through affiliate marketing; the affiliate’s share of the profit is included
in the retail price. The consumer will complete the purchase process and receive the product as normal,
unaffected by the affiliate marketing system in which they are a significant part.
 How Do Affiliate Marketers Get
Paid?

a. Pay per sale: This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the merchant pays
the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product
as a result of the affiliate’s marketing strategies. In other words, the affiliate must actually get the
investor to invest in the product before they are compensated.
b. Pay per lead: A more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs compensates the affiliate
based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s
website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a
trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading software or files.
c. Pay per click: This program focuses on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their
marketing platform to the merchant’s website. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to
the extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is paid
based on the increase in web traffic.
► Become an Affiliate
If you are an affiliate, the first thing you need to do is find a product or service that you are going to promote.
This means that you will have to find a company or an individual whose products or services you want to
promote. Finding something to advertise should not be a very hard thing to do if you know what you are
looking for. That is why you should always look for something specific, that you believe is relevant for your
blog or useful to your audience. The company you will choose will be your merchant that will pay you the
determined commission per visits or sales from other people that will use your affiliate link. To join a
company’s partner program, you will have to apply first. For this purpose, you should be looking for
“Affiliates”, “Partners” or “Affiliate Program” as it goes under different names online. When you finish this
process, you will become their affiliate and you will be given your own custom affiliate link to promote
wherever you like. Every affiliate link has a unique ID that the merchant as well as you can track.
► The following steps are required to become an affiliate:
1. Step #1 — Review Niche Products
2. Step #2 — Focus on Building an Email List
3. Step #3— Teach Your Audience Something
4. Step #4 — Use Paid Advertising:
 Tips that may help you more easily find products and services to promote.

1. Promote Products You Already Use: Keep in mind that your audience will listen to your words, so do not
advertise something you have never tried or you hate. Already knowing the product well enough, will allow
you to give a more detailed review, therefore, convince your audience to purchase that specific product.
2. Join Big Affiliate Networks: Affiliate networks have the main purpose of being middleman between the
merchants and the affiliate marketers. So, if affiliate marketing is something you try for the first time, it is a
great idea to join some of the biggest affiliate networks. The affiliate networks will help you quickly
findproducts and services that are relevant in your industry and promote them on your website or social
media platforms.Currently, the list of best affiliate marketing platforms mentions names such as eBay,
Shopify, Skimlinks, VigLinks, ShareASale, PeerFly, StudioPress and many more.
3. Look for Products/ Services Others Promote: If you have a hard time finding products or services to best fit
your page or profile, what you should do is look for products people or blogs similar to you, are
recommending. This will give you an insight into what their audience is interested in. If you already have a
similar profile or page means that you probably have the same audience so those are the products or
services you should be advertising too.
4. Contact the Companies: There are many companies that do not offer any kind of information about their
affiliate programs on their websites. This does not mean that the company has no such program. Reach out
to any company that has a product or a service that you like and would like to promote. By sending them an
email, the companies will tell you whether they have an affiliate program or not. If they actually have an
affiliate program, they will invite you in their program and will give you an affiliate link. You literally have
nothing to lose but a lot to gain.
 What Do I Need to Get Started with Affiliate
Marketing?

1. Create a Website: Most of the influencers around the world are affiliate marketers too, therefore they use
their social media accounts as a platform, to begin with. Some of them never even create websites, since
all the sales they aim to make, they achieve through their social media influence. However, having your
own website won’t hurt. It can actually help you a lot when promoting products online. So, the first thing —
make sure you are using the right blogging platform. What does “right blogging platform” means? Well,
because your main focus will be to run affiliate marketing campaigns, you need your blogging platform to
allow such operations.
2. Add a Disclosure Page: trust is very hard to establish, and the only way for your audience to start believing
you and your words is by being honest to them. Adding a disclosure page on your website will help you
gain more credibility. Look at this example of WPBegginer disclosure page. When you are honest, it can do
miracles. This kind of pages works to reveal how the creator of the website actually makes their money.
3. Add Privacy Policies: This one is a must. If you do decide to create a website, then you will need to have
privacy policies as well as terms of service, added to your blog. On any website, the privacy policy is one of
the most important documents. Why? The reason is simple. Since you are going to deal with clients and
visitors of your page, they will want to know your procedures and views on the information that you collect
from them.
► What are Affiliate Networks?
An affiliate network is an intermediary between the merchant and the affiliate marketer. Such networks help
the affiliates, the publishers, to find and participate in various affiliate programs more easily. The affiliate
networks also can help you, as an affiliate marketer, find something that is suitable for your website, and they
help the merchants reach to a larger crowd of publishers in order to inform them about their affiliate
programs.
Here are some of the many; • Merchant’s benefits: • Ad tracking technology, • Payment Processing • Access
to a large database of publishers • Reporting tools for ad campaign/s • Affiliate’s benefits: • Track campaign
performance • Track the earnings • Easy to Join • Easy to search for products and merchants
► Top 6 Affiliate Marketing Network
1. Amazon Associates: Amazon’s affiliate marketing program is called Amazon Associates. As the world’s
largest e-commerce website with millions of products, Amazon Associates offers equally many ways for
merchants and affiliates to make money. Via this affiliate network, the marketers are allowed to monetize
the mobile apps they distribute on Google Play or the iOS App Store of Amazon Marketplace. This is
possible due to the reason Amazon offers the biggest choice of digital and physical products. The top 3
features of Amazon Associates are: • Flexible commission structure • Top brand support • Page system
for influencers Amazon Associate’s payment
methods include cheque and bank transfers. The network pays off monthly, and they have CPS
commission type. It is free to join and very easy to use Amazon Associates. As soon as you do that, you
are free to start earning by sending people your own affiliate links to a website they already use when
they shop online
2. LinkShare: LinkShare connects publishers and vendors together from all over the world, and like most
affiliate networks, they provide their own payment and tracking system. LinkShare is one if the easier
affiliate networks to join, making it suitable for beginners and experienced marketers alike. Publishers will
be able to access the LinkShare dashboard in order to track commissions and payment history from a
centralized location. Additionally, the dashboard provides plenty of useful statistical information to help you
track the performance of your affiliate advertising campaign. LinkShare pays out only once your balance is
$50 or higher.
3. Commission Junction: Recently rebranded to CJ Affiliate by Conversant, this is one of the largest affiliate
networks in the world. In recent years, the company has reimagined itself, helping both publishers and
vendors alike to succeed with affiliate marketing. By signing up to their publisher’s service, you’ll be able to
access thousands of digital products to advertise on your website, and commissions are typically quite high.
However, there are still a lot of poor quality digital products in the selection, so you’ll need to choose
carefully to find something suitable. CJ provides a range of useful publisher’s tools including affiliate links
search, reporting, product widgets and payment services.
4. ClickBank: Another major online marketplace connecting publishers with vendors of digital content such as
e-books and software products, ClickBank is suitable for both social media marketers as well as those who
have their own websites. It also provides some generous commissions on many of its products, although
again, it can take some searching to find the relevant, quality products that you need in order to make
enough sales. Commissions are sometimes as high as 75%, and they also have a reliable payment system
that allows you to earn commissions on products purchased by buyers who clicked on your referral link as
long as 60 days before actually making the purchase.
5. Share a Sale: Share a Sale is another high-end affiliate marketing network that operates a strict
no-software policy, instead focussing on physical products ranging from jewellery to clothing to
books and media and more. The network hosts almost 4,000 affiliate programs over a total of forty
categories, and you can take a look at some of their top merchant programs without having to sign
up. Publishers can earn commissions of up to ten percent depending on the type of goods sold.
Share a Sale will pay affiliates whenever their account balance reaches $50 or more, and they
operate by a strict set of terms and conditions to ensure a quality service.
6. Google AdSense: Although not an affiliate platform in the same sense as the aforementioned
ones, since publishers don’t have much control over which ads are actually displayed on their
website, Google AdSense warrants a mention thanks to its immense popularity and the fact that
many affiliate marketers also use it. Installing the Google AdSense code is often the first thing that
people do to monetize their websites, and hundreds of thousands of websites all over the world
use it. Google AdSense displays context-relevant ads based on the content of the page that
they’re displayed on, and you get paid every time a visitor clicks on one of your ads.
 Programmatic
Marketing
► Programmatic marketing is the term used to describe the practice of using automated bidding and
placement platforms that buy and sell digital ad space in real time. The decisions on the ad placements
are made using hyper-specific data including the target consumers age, location, career, and specific
consumer interests. This enables companies to launch hyper-targeted, extremely effective, ad
campaigns that yield the highest ROI. This allows businesses to target consumers across the full range
of the internet. A hugely differentiated factor of programmatic marketing is the sheer volume of tests
you can actually run, meaningfully in any given time period. An example of a highly effective
programmatic marketing campaign was run by the digital and print publication The Economist. A
programmatic marketing approach allowed The Economist to customize its ads to its various target
audiences and created several specialized audience cohorts which received hyper-personalized ads.
► Programmatic marketing can be especially valuable for B2B ad campaigns; in many B2C campaigns it
is beneficial to target a mass audience, however, in the B2B sector the target audience of key decision
makers is often much smaller / specialized and therefore is very well suited to a programmatic
marketing approach. This kind of data-driven targeting is just not possible with conventional display
advertising that is purchased upfront.
► Other key benefits of programmatic marketing include:
• Allowing your team to focus on strategy instead of on mundane tasks such as creating ad orders.
• Creates more brand awareness through highly efficient CPMs (cost per thousand impressions).
• Optimizes exact best targeting in media buying.
• Reduces ad fraud through machine learning that helps identify fraudulent clicks.
► Real Time bidding
Real-time bidding ( RTB) is a subcategory of programmatic media buying. It refers to the practice of
buying and selling ads in real time on a per-impression basis in an instant auction. This is usually
facilitated by a supply-side platform (SSP) or an ad exchange. An SSP is software that lets publishers
sell display, mobile and video ad impressions to potential buyers – automatically and in real time. This
includes ad exchanges, networks and demand side platforms (DSPs), giving publishers greater control
of their inventory and CPMs. An ad exchange is how the supply-side feeds inventory into the ad
exchange.
 How does real-time bidding (RTB)
work?
► At any given moment, multiple advertisers can bid on a single impression of a publisher’s inventory, then the
winning ad (with the highest bid) is shown to the user. Through RTB, advertisers can apply fine-tuned targeting
and focus on the inventory most relevant to them. This, in turn, yields better ROI and higher eCPMs. RTB also
allows advertisers to adjust their campaign budgets in real-time in order to optimize campaign performance.
Take, for example, the moment in a mobile game where the player watches an ad between game levels. At that
moment, the mobile SSP runs an auction for all of the advertisers interested in showing an ad to that player. The
advertisers make their bid and, in a split-second, the highest bidder is chosen. Their advertisement is then
served to the player.
► Why is real-time bidding important? RTB is effective for advertisers and publishers. Let’s take a look at how RTB
is useful for each:
• For advertisers: RTB means more streamlined, efficient and targeted buying. It provides them with the ability to
fine-tune targeting and focus on the most relevant inventory results in higher ROI. Ultimately, users see more
relevant ads.
• For publishers: RTB increases revenue and fill rates by opening inventory to a wider variety of buyers in a
competitive auction. Finally, publishers gain visibility of who is buying which inventory and can leverage this
knowledge to charge more for their premium placements.
 There are six major types of programmatic deal
types
1. Open Marketplace RTB: Real-time bidding (RTB) is a technology that enables the buying and selling of digital ad
impressions through instantaneous auctions, facilitated by ad exchanges or demand- and sell-side platforms. In the
open marketplace, RTB impressions are available to all bidders.
2. Private Marketplace (PMP): These are customized, invitation-only marketplaces that provide publishers with the
ability to set aside certain ad inventory packages and sell it to a select buyer or group of buyers with an emphasis on
margin management for the seller. Unlike a direct buy, which can be quite labor-intensive, buyers in a Private
Marketplace use programmatic methods to purchase from publishers.
3. Private Marketplace Guaranteed (PMPG): Similar to Private Marketplaces, a PMP Guaranteed deal is also a
customized, invitation-only marketplace, however it is one in which a single premium publisher makes inventory and
audiences available to a single buyer, thus guaranteeing a total spend and audience. This effectively guarantees the
delivery of the impressions to the buyer.
4. Automated Guaranteed (AG): The automation of traditional digital direct sales often of publishers’ most highly valued
(e.g. premium) inventory. In Automated Guaranteed deals, the RFP and campaign trafficking processes are
automated, inventory and pricing are guaranteed, deals are negotiated directly between sellers and buyers and
facilitated by a technology platform. Direct integration with publishers’ ad servers allow for real-time availability of
impressions and direct line item insertion for trafficking.
5. Automated Performance (AP): This is workflow automation, similar to Automated Guaranteed, but for these deals
campaign performance is guaranteed, rather than impressions. The two main performance metrics for these deals
are cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-install (CPI).
6. Spot Buying: Spot Buying transactions exist within an exchange environment with prenegotiated, fixed pricing (on
things like CPM or CPC). Typically, these are given a higher priority in the ad server than open marketplace or PMP
transactions. These types of deals are the result of advertiser demand for a more predictable offering within the
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