Ad Network vs Affiliate Network

Ad Network is also a mediator which sits in between a merchant and publisher and provides the trackiing technolgy as does the affiliate network. However there are many differences which seggregate an affiliate network from an ad network.

Below are listed some of the major differences b/w an ad network and an affiliate network.

1. Affiliate network purely work on CPA/CPL model (pay for performance in other words) whereas an ad network work on CPM/CPC and CPL as well (upto some extent) model.
2. Affiliate network work on click cookie (30-45 days normally) where as an ad network work on session cookie when it comes to CPL. This is an advantage for an affiliate.
   
3. Affiliate network gives an affiliate complete control of an ad running on his website and he can choose to promote the product an affiliate is willing to as compared to ad network where affiliate doesnt have any control over an ad.
4. Ad networks are more specific to demographic, behaviorial targeting of a product as compared to an affiliate network.
5. A merchant has the complete transperancy of where the traffic is coming from as far as the affiliate network is concerned whereas ad networks could be completely blind and a merchant has no idea where the traffic is coming from.
6. Affiliate network has compeletely different group of affiliates which are content rich websites, cashback sites, email marketers, niche websites dedicated to a merchant which might not be very high but very targetted traffic generator. Whereas an ad network has group of websites which has very high traffic.
   

Ad Networks in India
Below are given the popular ad networks in India.

• Komli Media
• Tyroo
• Tribal Fusion (International with presence in India)
  
• NetworkPlay (Goosefish media ventures and Capital 18)
• OzoneMedia
• IndiAds
• Paypod
• Axill
• Integrid Media Solutions
  
• Ad Magnet
  
• AdChakra
• Adwinks (Ibibo Group)
• Tonictag

Affiliate Networks in India

• Shoogloo Network
• Dgm India
• Rupiz Affiliates
• Clixgalore
• AffiliateCurry
• Vcommission

What all you need to become an affiliate?

It requires nothing except a domain name along with a website ready and hosted, to become an affiliate. However, in true sense this is not enough and requires a lot of affiliate marketing knowledge and time to really get something materialistic out of it.

The affiliate marketing has become so competitive that it is very difficult for new players to even step into this field. New players without knowledge might land up losing money as well as time. As the main traffic source for affiliates is search engine so it is very essential for them to have presence on search engine. This can be acquired either by SEO or PPC. Now SEO is very long process and might take 5-6 months to achieve ranking at first page on search engine. But on the other hand SEO can be very effective and cost saving for longer run. PPC is a quick way to have presence on search engine but it can prove to be quite costly and affiliate might land up losing money. PPC requires a greater amount of attention, experience as well as money in initial stages and going forward can prove to be beneficial but can not say for sure whether it will be or not.

If one is really looking to start then affiliate marketing is the field where one can make handsome amount of money but requires knowledge, experience, hard work, time and money which are the essentials of affiliate marketing.

How to Get Started?
You will need to do some work to get things started. First of all you will need to book a domain. You can book a domain on any of the following sites.

* www.godaddy.com
* www.signedomain.com
* www.name.com

Now the question comes as to which domain to book. This depends as which category you want to promote or you think you can. The domain name should be relevant to the category you want to promote. For example, lets say you want to promote air tickets booking, you could book www.airticketbooking.com, www.bookairticket.com, or other extensions (.in, .info, .co.in, etc.) but this will depend on the availability of the domain as well.

Once you have booked a domain you will need to buy a hosting space (for example www.godaddy.com). This will cost you somewhere b/w INR 1500 to 4000 depending upon the type of hosting space you require.

Now have a website created and host it and you are ready to become an affiliate.

Super Affiliates

As such there is not any specific definition of a super affiliate. Super affiliates are high quality affiliates who can drive a huge number of sales /leads to merchant. These affiliates account for more than 70% of the total revenue generated by an affiliate network or any merchant.

How do these affiliates work?
These affiliates send very high quality traffic through search engines or email marketing. They create websites specific to merchant’s product with domain names similar to the merchant’s website name e.g. for www.makemytrip.com the domain name could be www.makemytrip.info, www.makemytripoffers.com, www.makemytripdeals.com, etc. Once they have created a website they start driving traffic through search engine paid ads.

Affiliate Networks in India and Around the World

There are many affiliate networks around the world. Some of these networks are popular. The list of the affiliate networks is given below.

Affiliate Networks In India
Its been around two years when first affiliate network www.dgm-india.com stepped into India in june 2007. Then another network http://network.shoogloo.com was launched in association with OMG-UK. There are some other networks as well such as www.rupizaffiliates.com, www.affiliatecurry.com, clixgalore.

Affiliate Networks in UK
The UK market is quite a matured and competitive market as compared to Indian affiliate marketing. And it will take another 8-10 years for Inida to reach upto that level. The popular and leading networks in the UK are:

1. www.tradedoubler.co.uk
2. Commission Junction
3. OMG-UK
4. DGM-UK
5. Affiliate window
6. Buy At
7. Advertising.com
8. Affiliate Future
9. AffiliNet
10. Clixgalore
11. Zanox
12. Afform
13. Netklix
14. Directtrack
15. Offersquest
16. Paidonresults
17. R O Eye
18. Silvertap
19. Smartquotes

Affiliate Networks in US
1. Affiliate window
2. Linkshare
3. Commission Junction

Conditional Tracking

This is quite a possible scenario that an advertiser is promoting a product on multiple channels e.g. on affiliate, on search engine, on ad network or any other channel. And this is also quite possible that user might land to advertiser’s site passing through many channels. For example say a user first comes through an affiliate channel but doesn’t perform any action and later on might come through search engine and does some action this time. Now search engine will claim this sale as well as the affiliate and advertiser might land up paying twice for a single sale and the true effectiveness of any particular channel will never come out.

To overcome this kind of situation advertiser can define their set of rules such as last referrer (search engine in above example), or first referrer (affiliate in above example) wins the sale, or the sale will be distributed among all channels.

In conditional tracking advertiser sets its own cookie specific to the particular channel and fires the tracking code accordingly, to track the sales from that channel. E.g. an advertiser is having association with 2 channels say search engine and affiliate network. Now merchant will its set parameters such as referrer or source (it could be any) in the destination URL. So the URL would look like http://www.advertiser.com/?source=Affiliate for traffic coming from affiliate channel or http://www.advertiser.com/?source=search-engine for traffic coming from search engine. Now whenever user clicks on any banner or any link, this parameter (source) is captured at advertisers end and the tracking code specific to that channel only is fired as per the rule set by advertiser (first referrer or last referrer).

Cookie vs. Session Tracking

The type of tracking plays an important part whenever it comes to evaluating the true effectiveness of any particular marketing channel. Although most of the users complete the action in the same session yet this is quite possible that a user comes on any merchant’s website through any affiliate website but doesn’t purchase anything at that instant and comes later on through bookmarks or may be any search engine and completes the action. To track this behaviour cookie based tracking comes into picture. The two types are explained below:


• Cookie based tracking: as explained in the above diagram, a user might come on merchant’s website through affiliate site (a cookie is set in user’s browser at this instant) however doesn’t purchase or perform any action at that instant. But he might come later on through search engine or directly and completes the action this time. This action is recorded by the tracking code on thank you page in assistance with cookie residing in user’s browser.

• Session based tracking: the lifecycle of a Session is bounded by the beginning and end of a logical transaction. Now suppose a user clicks on any AD running on an affiliate website and lands on merchant’s website and completes some action (filling any form or purchasing something) and lands on thank you page. Session tracking is also a type of cookie based tracking wherein the cookie duration is equal to the session the user stays on merchant website.

Cookie and It’s Role In Affiliate Marketing

What is a Cookie?
Cookie is a small text file which is set in user’s browser whenever any action (impression or click) happens on creative. This is used for tracking purpose. In context of affiliate marketing, this file contains information such as affiliate ID, merchant ID, creative ID, IP address, click date, sale date for reporting purpose etc. The cookie duration, post which the cookie gets expired, is flexible and can be set by affiliate network as per the merchants consent.

Post Impression (PI) Cookie & Post Click Cookie
Post impression cookie is set whenever a banner is served from the affiliate network’s server to affiliate’s website. Its duration is normally two days as per the global norms. So, the sales/leads happening within the two days time duration will be attributed to the affiliate.

This cookie comes into picture considering the fact that user might have seen the banner on any affiliate website and might visit merchant website again through search engine or directly, later within two days.

PI cookie is undoubtedly in favour of affiliates however merchants might lose their sales happening via other channels causing them cost a single sale twice and hence lowering the effectiveness of other channel.

PI cookie is now hardly supported by any affiliate network. DGM is the only network that supports PI cookie. So, it is kind of obsolete now and merchants have also started realising the pitfalls of PI cookie.

Post click cookie is set whenever a user clicks on a banner. The duration of the click cookie is normally 30 days to 45 days. For gambling merchants it can be up to 999 days.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

The complete process as how affiliate marketing works, is illustrated in the flow chart given below.

Affiliate Marketing Basics

In simple words affiliate marketing is an internet marketing practice in which an affiliate is rewarded with a preset commission by advertiser whenever a user is referred from affiliate website to merchant website and user purchases something or completes any action. Here action could be a registration or newsletter signup. So, affiliate is only paid when any sale happens or an action is completed; which is why affiliate marketing is also termed as performance market.

Parties involved and their roles
The whole affiliate marketing concept revolves around three key players as listed below.

1. Merchant/Advertiser: the party that want to promote or market their product.
2. Affiliate is the party that actually do the marketing for a merchant through their website, various online marketing activities. Based on the marketing activity followed by affiliates they can be categorized as:

* Email marketing affiliate: these affiliates promote merchant’s product through email marketing. These affiliates have their own database to which they send very targeted and converting e-mailers.

* PPC Affiliates: these affiliates promote merchant’s product through search engine marketing i.e. paid ads on Google, Yahoo, MSN and other popular search engines. These affiliates send very highly targeted traffic. PPC affiliates either create a single page for lead capturing or they create comparison website providing comparison among various products and hence giving consumers the flexibility to choose between the best, suiting to their requirement.

* Display Affiliates: affiliates having big websites with huge traffic come under this category.

* Loyalty/Cash Back Affiliates: these are special type of affiliates that pay consumers with the benefit of cash in return if they purchase or refer some to purchse via their website. They provide the complete reporting to their consumers wherein they can check the commission earned.
* SEO affiliates: these affiliates promote through SEO on various search engine such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
* Social media marketing affiliates: these affiliate promote merchants product using many social activities such as blogs, social communities , online forums and email groups.


3. Affiliate Network is the third party player that sits in between merchant and an affiliate. Both merchant and affiliate signup with an affiliate. Both the parties have to rely on affiliate network for reporting purpose. Both are provided with a panel wherein they can check reports and do other activities such as approving affiliate, applying to a program, take banner codes etc. The role of an affiliate network includes:

• Providing technology to track end to end user activity
• Reporting
• Affiliate recruitment and management
• Affiliate support
• Banner serving space to advertiser