At Affiliate Summit West, of The show for the North American affiliate industry shined a strong light on the industry's so-called “elephant in the room”: Amazon and scale. Affilizz's CRO, Richard Bean, talks about the issues raised at the summit and their solutions. Spoiler alert: It's AI.
Let's set the context. During his three days early last month, January 15th to 17th to be exact, over 6,500 affiliates, advertisers, ecom sellers, networks, and technology suppliers gathered at Affiliate Summit West 2024 in Las Vegas. This show is widely considered. Certainly the standout affiliate program in North America.
But what made the 2024 show stand out was how it tackled a number of important issues that had previously been swept under the Las Vegas rug along with stale popcorn: the power and influence of Amazon, and how affiliate marketing is becoming a big deal. The challenge of making it work at scale was something that publishers grappled with. Everyone is too conscious.
In the aftermath of the conference, we spoke to Richard Bean, CRO at Affilizz, one of Europe's leading affiliate platforms, to get his take on Las Vegas and the challenges it addresses.
Mx3: Can you elaborate on why Amazon is a major theme at Affiliate Summit West (as it certainly is every year)? What will be different in 2024?
Richard Bean: Amazon is the dominant player and its “Amazon Associates” program is huge globally, as are its products. It's just vast. So it's no surprise that Amazon is always a hot topic at affiliate industry gatherings.
For publishers, Amazon is clearly an opportunity, but as it becomes increasingly sophisticated, it also poses a greater challenge. This has created a need to hire affiliate professionals specifically experienced in working with Amazon, which is not economically viable for many smaller and mid-sized publishers.
Second, it has always been easy for publishers to only provide links to one seller, Amazon, but the cost of living crisis has forced everyone to want more bang for their buck. So if there's only one link, consumers are more likely to simply leave the publisher's site and see if they can find what they want for cheaper elsewhere. Comparing prices on the page increases your chances of closing the deal.
Mx3: You mentioned the issue of scale at the Las Vegas Summit. Could you elaborate on this?
Richard Bean: Building affiliate scale is critical and has been a major pinch point for publishers for years. Historically, adding affiliate links to a page has required a significant investment, and not everyone has the desire or financial resources to do this. And then there's legacy content. Most media businesses have years, even decades of online content that still remains relevant, and his 40% of affiliate revenue comes from content that is more than 60 days old.
And don't forget that affiliates are competing for the budget of many other publishers, including search, social, and programmatic. Affiliates need to be able to prove themselves in terms of revenue and wash their hands on par with budget competitors. Therefore, the key question is, “How can publishers of all sizes grow their affiliate programs in a profitable way?”
Mx3: What is Affilizz doing to address these challenges and help publishers?
Richard Bean: With our price comparison technology, we've always helped publishers reduce their (over)reliance on Amazon, but now we're able to address the cost barrier that was preventing publishers from building affiliates at scale. is destroying. Late last year, we launched Magic Match, which uses AI to dynamically identify and highlight relevant products in your content, automatically deploying a series of relevant affiliate links, buttons, and price comparison tables. did.
We're now introducing Magic Match 2.0, with automated, dynamic affiliate widgets running on tens of thousands of pages of content on over 700 sites. Additionally, it stores live information about his 300 million products from over 1,200 retailers and is updated daily.
Affilizz has already proven that publishers can easily scale up their affiliate campaigns. In fact, we currently have many clients who do not use any human intervention to power their affiliate programs. This allows you to invest in other areas, such as content and making your content more discoverable through SEO and social media.
We also make all content that was previously considered not worth the effort to be affiliate friendly.
Richard Bean, CRO, Affiliz
A good example is the French recipe website marmiton.org. There are literally thousands of recipes, but recipes are not classic affiliate content. But now you can scan recipes, figure out what equipment is needed, what's best-selling in that category, and automatically add widgets. Bake a cake? Here we introduce you to the best cake molds and mixers. Roasted potato? This is the top roasting tin. Since November, using Magic Match he has added his affiliate widget to over 4,000 pages of Marmiton content.
Mx3: Will price comparison still be an issue? If Amazon and Google are using them, will it be a formidable competition?
Richard Bean: Comparing prices is essential to competing with industry giants. That's why we include price comparison as a default setting within our platform. Our research ultimately showed that displaying a price comparison widget of his 6 sellers on your web page is the best strategy. Not one, not three, but six. This approach has been shown to significantly increase click-through rates, potentially by up to 200%.
Mx3: Any last thoughts?
Richard Bean: Publishers need to know that AI has already begun to transform affiliate marketing, the technology is proven, and publishers of all sizes can unlock lucrative revenue streams with very little effort. Don't leave money on the table!
Affilizz is part of Mx3's Collectif. If you are interested in Collectif, please email john@mediamakersmeet.com.
