We’re back with the second half of our conversation with Todd Crawford. The impact.com Co-Founder and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, is continuing his discussion with Lee-Ann about the future of affiliate marketing and where he predicts it’s going with its modern operations.
Listen in on the podcast here for all the insights:
The CPA addiction
Is the CPA (cost-per-acquisition) model really working in every situation? Todd doesn’t seem to think so. He says in the future of affiliate marketing, managers should be looking elsewhere for a better payment method when the situation calls for it.
Todd explains: “I think one of the things that is holding this industry back is this addiction or philosophy that this channel is solely pay for performance. I think if those teams could start getting the budget to do CPC or hybrid against a 10% commission or a dollar CPC, whichever is greater because your traffic is worth it. The content you’re creating, the real estate you have, is in such high demand that if I am not willing or capable, of offering an alternative payment model, I’m going to lose out on that traffic and my competitor that can is going to get it.”
“We’ve got to get beyond that. It’s not like you should just switch everything to CPC, but when it makes sense, you should test it and use it, or other payment models.”
Data is 3D?
Todd definitely shared a new perspective on an old concept: data as 3D. It’s something we probably hadn’t considered. Data is numbers, but does it have any shape or is it an idea? Todd says not only does it have shape, but you’re looking at it all wrong.
Todd says: “I think a lot of people, when they do their job, they have their go-to reports, they look at that data and it’s very flat to them, and it’s maybe how they’re being measured.
“People use the word ‘data cube’ and data is three dimensional. Most people are looking at it from one side of that cube in a two-dimensional format, and just looking at your data from the other side of that cube is a different perspective.
“Understanding data from multiple perspectives helps you understand the data better, and I think becoming fluent in data, it can help you in so many ways.”
Drag and drop data
Todd has a prediction of what’s to come in the future of affiliate marketing. In fact, he narrowed it down to the next 18 months.
“We’re launching some additional capabilities on top of some of the stuff I already talked about in our contracting. I think data is probably the most important thing and I’m really proud of our Data Lab solution, which is basically a pivot table. We have all your data in our platform that you can just drag and drop and create amazing data without having to use more. It’s an extremely powerful solution, and to me, it’s the data that helps you feel confident in decisions that you have made or that you’re considering. That’s going to be amazing.”
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Catch up on Part One of our conversation with Todd, here.
Listen to find out more about:
- The industry’s addiction to performance
- The importance of having “more than one card to play”
Key segments of this podcast and where you can tune into go direct
[09:00] – Brand to Brand: the new B2B
[16:00] – Todd’s affiliate marketing pet peeve
[20:00] – 3D data?
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