Sorry for missing a week of writing, has been a hectic few weeks for me.Anyway, decided it was time to look over the comments that people have left regarding Facebook, Myspace, Performance Based Marketing – curious what people are saying? I was, and you'll find people's comments very interesting.
This morning, I wanted to talk a little about the incentive marketing game, which still has a significant impact on revenue generation of almost every company in the marketplace. We’ve even come up with a word that my spell-check hates, called incentivization, which is the process where you provide rewards for filling out offers, signing up for a service or some other pay-per-action type service. Incentive based advertising is probably one of the most hated, yet needed systems in the industry and perhaps its time for a frank discussion.
I wrote a few weeks ago about the issues with performance marketing and display networks, especially with the focus of cost-per-action and cost-per-lead campaigns. As mentioned, I’ve been involved in both the CPA affiliate marketing business and the interactive brand marketing business and know both of them inside out. Also, as mentioned I see the benefits of both, but see that performance based marketing is the future of our industry, and all agencies need to wake up and start learning about this part of the industry immediately.
It was revealed that Facebook, the mega social networking site, had topped over $800 million in revenue for 2009. Since it is not a public company, they have not publically revealed this, but according to my source over there, this number is accurate and that the revenue number for 2010 is already trending at what could be a $1.4 billion dollar year. However, he did point out (since he is a reader of my blog) that there is some sign that the revenue for the last half of the year might actually be less than the first half of the year based on the enormous policy changes that Facebook has had in its relationship to Affilaite Marketing. As I’ve pointed out before, Facebook has taken a very aggressive stance on Affiliate marketers, and I might know why.
Over the last few weeks, despite only posting once in a while, IndustryPace.com has grown larger than many of the major performance and brand marketing publications. Ranked in the top 100,000 of US websites, I must say, is pretty damn spectacular for a personal blog by a writer who barely has time to read his own blog, let alone write in it. That being said, it’s obvious that with over 40,000 readers a month, I’m hitting the nail on the head and forcing some people to think (or change their business models?).. or at least writing well enough that some people find it interesting. I’d like to challenge readers to work with me on brainstorming topics and more importantly, solutions and partnerships in brand and performance marketing. This will be a perfect opportunity to feature your company, what you do exactly and how everyone in the industry can work with you—and more importantly, how we can all work together.
Over the weekend I reloaded the list of advertisers for facebook and then used a tool I have that shows me all the advertisers on Facebook based on demographics and other factors. I was really curious what I would personally see, versus what other people could see on the pages. I had thought perhaps that my user experience was significant different than other user’s experiences and perhaps that the advertising varied. I found out two things: first of all, since I am not single, I was being blocked from seeing thousands of dating ads featuring long-legged girls in strange positions and secondly, that there is a huge lack of brand based advertising on Facebook. Facebook, despite all its push to get brands, still doesn’t have major brands advertising that frequently on Facebook and the main reason is because of Facebook itself.
Recently, I wrote in my little blog here, that brand advertisers need to start listening to Missy Ward, the founder of Affiliate Summit. I pointed out that despite the schism in the two camps, the brand world is looking more and more into working with affiliate marketers and wanting to learn from them. One of the most important points was that Affiliate Marketers tend to be innovative and know how to connect with audiences to develop results. Thanks to thousands of people who read that post, I received a lot of inquiries into how brand marketers could work with affiliate companies. So here are three ways I’d like to work with brand marketers through our affiliate system, in ways that would both create branding plus have a verifiable back-end ROI.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 7:01AM