What is a Marketing affiliate and what will Superquinn get for it?
Yesterday I read that Superquinn had signed up to Tradedoubler’s affiliate marketing scheme hoping to driving online sales. It is not the most innovative tactic. Many large organizations do it. It just means there will appear a lot more online.
For those who may not know how a marketing affiliate system works here you go: Tradedoubler and Superquinn will agree a cost per lead/sign up/sale or something similar that is tangible quantifiable. A visitor to the web site is not a good example. Lets say for this example that the unit is a sale over €15. So Superquinn may pay tradedoubler €10 for this sale. Its basically free money for Superquinn I hear you say but its not as straight forward as that. Now Tradedoubler now have to go out and try and make that sale for under €10 to make a margin/profit. Tradedoubler have a large number of publishers (people who run a site/s) who run tradedoubler affiliate advertising. In return they get a small income which is less that the €10 that they agreed to pay for it. maybe a diagram will explain better.
So Superquinn get a €15 sale and pay €10 for it.
Tradedoubler ger a €10 payment and pay an amount for it.
Hope this is all clear now. So is the fact that Superquinn have done this really newsworthy? probably not but hey its a slow week. I have to state that this is a basic view of how affiliate marketing works, there are a few more aspects that complicate things more but I would be here all day. If you do have any further questions please leave a comment and i will try my best to answer. All figures used are made up, I have no idea of the costs or Tradedoubler or indeed the spends of Superquinn. Its just an example folks.
Hi Will, thanks for the mention on your blog. I just feel I have to add a few things from TradeDoubler Ireland’s perspective to make sure the Affiliate Marketing is presented in a fully accurate manner. It seems like you don’t have a lot of faith in Affiliate Marketing and I quote: “ Yesterday I read that Superquinn had signed up to Tradedoubler’s affiliate marketing scheme hoping to driving online sales. It is not the most innovative tactic. It just means there will appear a lot more online.” Although your explanation of how Affiliate works is correct I would challenge you on the above reference to lack of innovation and the resultant ‘meagre’ increased online visibility element.
Our new client Superquinn will drive more online sales in the same way as Tesco have been doing for the last 6 years. The achievement of sales remains our primary objective, as is inextricably entwined with the affiliate methodology– not brand exposure or prompting of qualified traffic or impression serving. Affiliate Marketing is actually the most creative and pioneering tactic if you consider that we have to innovate in order to stay in business given that we are only paid on results. We are using all type of media (including social, search, mobile) and not just display to drive online sales which is what I think you might be referring to. For more information I would like to refer to the IAB UK site http://ht.ly/2q3kj . Again thanks for bringing this up Will and keep up the good work on your blog!
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for your input. I am not going to even claim I know as much about your business as you or challenge your points. It was just a personal opinion. I really hope and expect it goes well for you.
The main aim of the post was to explain the area of affiliate marketing to those who may not have heard of it.
Will