The Hitflip UK Blog

Sometimes when thinking back on the CJU EU it becomes quite clear to me: There comes a point in Affiliate Marketing where we need a higher level of detail in the terminology of various concepts. If it is about Affiliate Marketing, there are three possibilities to entitle the interacting parties (We’ll leave out networks here).

1. Affiliate/Merchant
2. Publisher/Advertiser
3. Affiliate Programme User / Partner

The combinations are listed in the sequence according to their popularity. I’m a big fan of the terms Affiliate and Merchant and on my trip to England I got new arguments for it!

For a UK user an Affiliate is not called a Publisher. (This is also the case when CJ internally uses this term for Affiliates). There are many clearly different types of Affiliates and only one of these are Publishers. That one is also only a subset of others. So below are the different types of Affiliates which I believe exist at the moment.

What types of Affiliates are there?

1. Publisher:

Affiliates which have one or more websites or projects and who include advertising materials of Merchants there. Most Affiliates operate SEO-intensively.

2. PPC Arbitrage Affiliates:

Affiliates which post ads via AdWords (and other keyword-buying sites) and channel traffic directly or over the landing-page of a merchant. It is not such a big topic in Germany but is a bigger deal in the UK. At Hitflip we have an extra keyword policy for these kinds of Affiliates.

3. Email Affiliates:

Affiliates who use the advertising material of an affiliate programme exclusively by email. You can often find many large, serious and relevant partners here that you would quite like to have.

4. Web 2.0 Affiliates/Affiliate 2.0

This is a new kind of Affiliate which in my opinion will become the most important. Andre gave a lecture on the topic at this years CJU. We have also given a more detailed report on this in our Affiliate Marketing Series here on the blog.

5. Spyware/Malware/Adware-Affiliates

The unethical kind of affiliate approach from which you should distance yourself.

6. Offline Affiliates

Via voucher codes on flyer, for example.

More roles are simultaneously possible.

Affiliates can of course be involved in other roles other than the ones mentioned above but nevertheless one must be able to differentiate between them. In the UK it goes without exception that most Affiliates use PPC. And those are not just individuals but separate companies with up to 50 employees. The above mentioned four kinds of Affiliate are in my opinion perfectly non-overlapping. They clearly apply to many diverse authorities.

Feedback/Additions:

We appreciate suggestions and feedback so that we can establish a clear concept. Are there other groups/kinds of affiliates?

Tags:affiliate marketing 2.0, CJU

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under Affiliate Networks, Online, Affiliate, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.