Rakuten's DealMaker Australia 2023 event brought close to 300 advertisers, publishers and industry experts together for one day at Sydney's Luna Park. Cashrewards relished the opportunity to connect face-to-face with many of our valued brand partners and the wider industry for a day packed with content, conversations and celebrations.
Cashrewards' Nick Ognenovski was proud to join an expert panel alongside Jeff Flanagan (Microsoft), Jade McDade (Skimlinks), Michaela Michaut (Cotton On Group) and Angus Sladden (Rakuten Advertising) to discuss the complexities of affiliate marketing, in the session Affiliate: The Attribution All Rounder.
Affiliate marketing and the problem with attribution
The panel discussed a range of different topics related to affiliate marketing and, in particular, the age-old question of attribution. Questions were raised about pet peeves, major challenges and...
Correctly giving attribution
With nearly every purchase, consumers go on a long and winding journey to find the product they want - journeys that differ significantly across industries and buyer personas.
The problem that therefore arises is which of those touchpoints do you attribute a sale to? Is it the first touchpoint that introduces the idea to the buyer or the one that closes the sale? Or is it more likely a combination of each that led to the sale, and if so, how do you balance attribution and prove incrementality?
Cotton On Group’s Michaela Michaut said, "Customer purchases are getting more and more complex, as is trying to understand which publisher has had the main influence on them to make that purchase. Likely it's going to be multiple publishers that have got them to that final decision, so it's really tricky to gauge."
Traditional Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) metrics can be powerful in demonstrating value in an affiliate marketing model. Cashrewards’ Nick Ognenovski noted, ‘Feedback from our clients and partners shows there’s a positive uplift and incremental value delivered through our platform, but we’ve backed this up with an independent study to verify the numbers. In ‘The Total Economic ImpactTM of Cashrewards’ report by Forrester Consulting, consolidated results showed a 514% ROI and 14:1 ROAS with Cashrewards.”
