Through the last 20 years, affiliate marketing companies have been a part of the marketing landscape. The basic concept and execution have remained steady throughout; find a publisher that matches your brand, have them skillfully weave your product and story into their content, and reward them directly, usually with some sort of commission for performance and conversion.
Yet, the opportunity for shady, lower-level affiliates to capitalize on shoddy, impersonal correspondence and last second loopholes has given affiliate marketing (and affiliates who do it well) a bad name.
While this was a common practice 15 years ago, brands and good affiliate marketing agencies have mostly recognized how to steer their strategies towards trusted and effective affiliates who have your (and, subsequently, their) best interests at hand. But they don’t do this out of the kindness of their hearts…they need to be properly compensated for all of the work they do. Which brings us to attribution.
What is Attribution?
Attribution is:- the science of identifying a timeline of touchpoints for the consumer
- Giving credit to the affiliate who gets them to those points
- Fairly paying affiliates for their introduction to a brand and the results they rightfully scored