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Director of Product Marketing
The U.S. affiliate and partnership marketing industry is projected to surge to nearly $12B in spend in the coming year–growth that speaks to advertisers’ increased confidence in the channel’s effectiveness. As favorability toward partnership marketing continues to surge with double-digit annual growth forecast for the next two years, a growing number of both traditional and non-traditional partners are becoming active in the channel to monetize the sharing of their favorite brands and products with audiences. The increase in channel newcomers has sparked conversation around equitable rewards and commission attribution, with many partners unclear on the logic behind why they may (or may not) have been paid out for the referral of a sale they presumably influenced. Let’s discuss how commission is earned and rewarded in the channel.
Traditionally, affiliate and partnership marketing has been a last-click model, meaning that the final partner in the path to purchase garners the rewards triggered by the conversion. Despite advances in attribution and commissioning methodologies that enable sophisticated tracking and reward functionality, the channel is still dominated by the last-click model with 84% of advertisers relying exclusively on last-click payment models according to the IAB. Here is an example of how it works:
In this example the consumer began and completed their buyer journey with the same partner. However, it is possible that a consumer may interact with multiple partners in the path to purchase. Advertisers that employ the last-click payment model would credit only the final partner in the click path for the value they provided to the outcome. Here’s an example of multiple partners in the affiliate path to purchase:
Here is an example of a path to purchase that contains multiple touchpoints:
In addition to supporting tracking of last-click payment models, Partnerize gives advertisers necessary payment flexibility with our suite of spend allocation tools that enable evolution beyond last-click payment models:
Enabling spend allocation tools allow advertisers to reward partners equitably for their contribution to outcomes by commissioning partners for the valuable touchpoints that occur across the affiliate path to purchase.
Learn more about how Partnerize supports advertisers in rewarding partners equitably by downloading Evolve Beyond Last Click. Or, get in touch with our team.
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