Affiliate marketing is tipped to hit $8.2bn by the end of 2022, with as many as 80% of brands likely to be using affiliate campaigns this year. And driving this growth are the twin powers of ecommerce and messaging, with DCB and RCS both set to have a huge impact.
The nexus of affiliate marketing, DCB and messaging is becoming a critical part of ecommerce in 2022 and will be behind much of the growth being seen in affiliate marketing – and across telemedia – in the months ahead.
Rich messaging holds the key to creating this growth. RCS offers businesses a powerful tool for engaging consumers (see page 4) and brings the ability to make messages as long as they need to be – no 160 character limit here – as well as including GIFs, videos and more. This not only can make the messages
ook more appealing, but it can also make them actionable.
This is where DCB comes in. Adding carrier billing to RCS marketing messages offers affiliates the opportunity to create messages that not only carry interesting and graphical content, but which can be directly and speedily monetised by adding payments to the message.
The concept has already been demonstrated in the UK, where mGage worked with charity Oxfam to create monetisable RCS messages to illicit donations.
Ecosystem
The move to monetise affiliate marketing messages is part of a wider move to create an ecosystem around rich messaging and carrier billing and its already opening up huge opportunities in developing markets.
“DCB is already in a pole position in markets where market dynamics have shown micro repeat transactions, higher spending on mobile transactions vis-à-vis POS devices digital wallets being favoured for redemptions and loyalty programs, and telcos being the direct beneficiary of a mobile financial ecosystem,” says Arun Mathew , VP -Business Development at Cookies Digital.
While affiliate marketing is clearly here to stay, it is set to evolve in developed markets too. “One of the ways of such evolution, we see the emergence of an industry-wide international marketplace focused on the mVAS market,” says Igor Kholin, co-founder of Golden Goose. “The key advantage of such a marketplace will be its global reach, which allows you to get traffic here and now to any content offer in the world. For several years now, we have been developing such a marketplace based on our CPA platform.”
Rules, regulations and trust
However, there are some potential drags that may slow the growth of rich messaging based affiliate marketing.
“Affiliate marketing will continue to be a dominant force, in the short term, for telemedia propositions, but the longevity of this channel for acquisitions would only happen if the enablers showed caution and restraint and employ technologies that safeguard the user experience,” says Cookies’ Mathew. “When partners and carriers deliver a DCB payment experience, the onboarding journey is an equally important aspect and affiliate marketing has yet to, collectively, provide a seamless, error-free experience for the consumers.”
Mathew also sees trust as a key issue with making this fly. “With carrier billing services becoming increasingly important for a consumer’s purchase journey, “Trust” has become a valuable asset and soon will be a “currency” for enablers looking to join the DCB bandwagon,” he says. “Trust has to transcend across the carriers, content providers, and right until the purchase by a consumer.”
There are also issues around privacy rules. Mathew’s colleague, Paola Silano, founder of Cookies Factory, says: “For the future we need to learn how to manage all the changes we are facing on the advertising scene – and I mean the change of the privacy policy rules and how it is impacting on the tracking of the users. We need to understand how the world will change and how we can continue to follow the user during his journey.”
Top trends in affiliate marketing 2022
What services are affiliate marketers looking to target in 2022?
• Live streaming and video – live stream shopping and video marketing are on the rise. Twitch and YouTube are the key places where retailers and brands are live streaming, while TikTok is also becoming a key sales channel for brands looking to use short-form video to sell. Both of these are where affiliates are turning to capture the attention of consumers.
• Micro-influencers – There are a growing band of micro and even nano influencers using video and these are a lucrative long tail for affiliates to get into bed with as they attract very focussed and loyal audiences
• Co-marketing – Many more affiliates will enter into co-branding and co-marketing partnerships to exploit these micro and nano influencers, as well as partnering to capture the right niches for their ads.
• Crypto – cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream and have led to a raft of crypto affiliate networks making early moves into this interesting sector.
• Marketplaces – the rise of mVAS marketplaces is also going to shake up the affiliate space. Services, such as Golden Goose’s DCB HUB are set to create an ecosystem for mVAS-DCB services that affiliates can tap into.
