A monthly online feature for Target Marketing readers (also running bimonthly in Target Marketing magazine's Nuts & Bolts department), Affiliate Spotlight introduces you to a variety of players on the affiliate marketing scene. Check back monthly for the lowdown from Google Affiliate Network's Dan Chiss on the fastest-growing and top-performing affiliates around.
CREDITCARDS.COM
Name of affiliate/URL: CreditCards.com; www.creditcards.com
Type of publisher: Comparison and content
About CreditCards.com: With more than 1 million unique visitors each month, CreditCards.com is the most-visited credit card site on the Web where consumers can compare hundreds of credit card offers and choose the one that’s right for them. CreditCards.com also is one of the Web’s leading publishers of original consumer credit card-related news.
Audience profile/demographics: CreditCards.com serves a national audience with a very broad demographic profile. The audience skews slightly toward middle to upper-middle income, professionals and families with children.
Offers that work best: Rate/term-competitive card offers that are easy to understand and short on fine print. Offers that can appear in multiple categories also are very effective.
Top-performing advertiser categories: While low-rate cards are always the consistent winner, CreditCards.com has been surprised by the emerging popularity of prepaid and debit cards.
Seasonal opportunities: New card acquisition is strong in the fourth quarter as holiday spending peaks, but then shifts to cards with attractive balance transfer rates as consumers consolidate activity. Rewards card demand grows as summer travel approaches, and then student cards come into favor during the back-to-school/fall season.
Top things CreditCards.com needs from advertisers to drive success: The affiliate needs a broad product portfolio. Issuers that make their entire product sets available can optimize their exposure across the site.
Dan’s Digest: Creditcards.com is a resource for consumers searching for the best credit cards, and an acquisition dynamo for the financial institutions/issuers looking to acquire new cardholders. Through its uncluttered design, original content and intuitive comparison tools, CreditCards.com delivers highly qualified consumers who convert.
ENTERTAINMENT PUBLICATIONS
Name of affiliate/URL: Entertainment Publications; www.entertainment.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty and rewards
About Entertainment Publications: Entertainment Publications is a leading provider of promotions and discounts. Best known for the popular Entertainment Membership book and savings Web site, Entertainment.com, the company helps consumers get more for their money by providing them with billions of dollars in discounts every year. The company's other products include an online savings membership, customized discount programs, and Sally Foster giftwrap and gift products.
Audience profile/demographics: Entertainment members are predominately female, ages 25-54 and have an income 77 percent above the national average.
Offers that work best: Free shipping, buy one/get one free and percent-off deals tend to draw the most interest.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Popular categories can vary by season or specials, and include department stores, electronics, travel and apparel.
Seasonal opportunities: Special sections devoted to Cyber Monday and offers for the “12 Days of Christmas” are especially popular with Entertainment members.
Top things Entertainment needs from advertisers to drive success: The affiliate needs unique offers that can’t be found anywhere else, helping to attract new customers and encourage additional spending.
Dan’s Digest: The nearly 50-year old Entertainment Membership book is a staple for millions of households looking to save money on local, regional and national offers. The online component, Entertainment.com, is updated daily with even more offers and discounts, including many that are facilitated through affiliate marketing (where advertisers pay on a cost-per-sale or cost-per-action basis). Given its trusted reputation as a money-saving resource—especially relevant during these trying economic times—it’s no wonder that advertisers continue to take part in this longstanding discount and promotion service.
RETAILMENOT
Name of affiliate/URL: RetailMeNot; www.retailmenot.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions
About RetailMeNot: RetailMeNot is one of the Web’s leading consumer destinations for online coupons, discounts and promotional codes for merchandise, travel and services. Built around an online community that posts, uses, recommends and ranks online discounts and promotions at more than 100,000 restaurants, retailers and brands represented on the site, RetailMeNot’s mission is to help consumers save money and enjoy a hassle-free discount shopping experience online. RetailMeNot, a division of Stateless Systems, is located in Melbourne, Australia.
Audience profile/demographics: RetailMeNot boasts nearly 7 million unique visitors per month (U.S.), and while all demographics are represented, its visitors tend to skew female, ages 35-54, with annual household incomes of more than $50,000.
Offers that work best: Long-term, storewide dollars-off coupons; long-term, storewide percentage-off coupons.
Top-performing advertiser categories: All categories perform well, although there is a particular emphasis on clothing, shoes, housewares and computer hardware.
Seasonal opportunities: Special sections devoted to Black Friday and the holiday season are extremely popular with RetailMeNot’s users.
Top things RetailMeNot needs from advertisers to drive success: Great offers that are of substantial value to customers. All coupons on RetailMeNot.com are ranked by the community depending on their popularity. The better the offer, the greater the likelihood its user ratings will elevate it to the homepage or the relevant category’s popularity list.
Dan’s Digest: RetailMeNot has been a phenomenal growth story in a just a few short years. With its whimsical site design and treasure trove of “crowdsourced” deals and discounts, RetailMeNot has become a top destination for many of today’s recession-weary online shoppers. As a result, this top 200 ranked Web site delivers some serious e-commerce sales for many affiliated advertisers and retailers.
LOOTZI
Name of affiliate/URL: Lootzi; www.lootzi.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty and Rewards
About Lootzi: Lootzi promises to be the simple way for consumers to shop online and get cash back. Lootzi features easy-to-find offers and coupons for thousands of retailers and cash back shopping at more than 800 retail partners. Visitors can simply search for their store or coupon and are presented with the results they expect. The Lootzi promise is to help consumers save both time and money.
Offers that work best: Compelling consumer offers such as site-wide free shipping and/or discounts, exclusive pricing on popular products, and competitive cash back rates.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Although a general shopping site with many categories, Lootzi will be focusing on home and garden, apparel and electronics.
Seasonal opportunities: Additional advertising opportunities will be available starting in first quarter of 2010. Cash back sales, paid placements, and seasonal shopping guides are planned throughout 2010.
Top thing Lootzi needs from advertisers to drive success: Compelling consumer offers and competitive commission rates enabling Lootzi to offer attractive cash back rates at launch.
Dan’s Digest: The cash back shopping arena is crowded, but the folks behind FatWallet—the "granddaddy" of online deal community sites and a leading sales producer for most online retailers—think there’s still plenty of room for a new player. While sharing a common technology infrastructure and marketing resources with FatWallet, Lootzi will decidedly not contain any forums. Rather, leading brands and approved coupons will be presented in a clean and simple cash back environment, making it a likely no-brainer for most advertisers. Will Lootzi gain traction with consumers? While too early to tell, the FatWallet team and track record definitely makes Lootzi one to watch.
PERKSPOT
Name of affiliate/URL: PerkSpot; www.perkspot.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty and rewards
About PerkSpot: PerkSpot is a leading provider of corporate benefit and discount programs. Through its proprietary technology platform, PerkSpot provides employees and association members with a single point of access for voluntary benefits, personal insurance products and discounts on consumer goods and services.
Audience profile/demographics: Mostly white-collar, corporate employees; 45 percent/55 percent male/female split; income moderate to high. PerkSpot’s total reach is more than 4 million employees and members.
Offers that work best on PerkSpot: Exclusive offers and ongoing/long-running discounts.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Electronics, travel, entertainment, apparel, flowers and gifts.
Seasonal opportunities: Traffic typically follows a general retail/holiday calendar; PerkSpot has “gift guides” and special sections of the site dedicated to retail/holiday promotions, in addition to e-mail blasts and employer-specifc communications.
Top things PerkSpot needs from advertisers to drive success: Exclusive or unique coupons, which help make PerkSpot’s offering attractive to companies (using its employee perks platform) and employees; flexibility and willingness to experiment; accessible and timely content and creative.
Dan’s Digest: PerkSpot is an emerging player in the corporate benefits/employee perks category, licensing its private-label platform to a growing number of corporate clients such as CDW, AirTran and LexisNexis. For affiliate advertisers willing to provide exclusive offers to a captive and targeted audience, PerkSpot delivers sales and customers through a unique, quality distribution channel.
COUPON TWEET
Name of affiliate/URL: Coupon Tweet; www.coupontweet.com
Type of Publisher: Community & Content
About Coupon Tweet: Coupon Tweet is a community coupon site that provides the latest and greatest coupons as tweeted by millions of Twitter users. The site uses proprietary search algorithms to find relevant money-saving coupon codes and links, sending only the best and most useful community coupons to the top of search results, while allowing users to vote, comment on and share coupons with friends. While Coupon Tweet uses Twitter for its coupon search, users don’t necessarily need to be familiar with Twitter to save with all of the site’s coupons and discounts.
Audience profile/demographics: Most Coupon Tweet users are active Twitter users and therefore reflect the demographics of Twitter. Coupon Tweet has attracted over 19,000 followers on Twitter in 5 months.
Offers that work best on Coupon Tweet: Limited-time and exclusive offers work well when combined with user incentives/contests as they harness the viral effect of Twitter.
Top-performing categories: Electronics, Travel, Apparel, Flowers and Gifts.
Seasonal opportunities: Traffic typically follows a general retail/holiday calendar; Coupon Tweet will run more contests and promotions during these times
Top things Coupon Tweet needs From advertisers to drive success: Exclusive or unique coupons; flexibility and willingness to experiment; accessible and timely content and creative
Dan’s digest: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the word “tweet” means more to you than just a bird song. As marketers scramble to figure out whether (and how) to participate in the Twitter phenomenon, a crop of enterprising affiliates have emerged who are focused on the commercial aspects of the service. While Coupon Tweet helps users find the best coupons and deals from across Twitter, it is also a platform for advertisers willing to experiment with Twitter’s potential as a direct sales channel.
PIXAZZA
Name of affiliate/URL: Pixazza; www.pixazza.com
Type of publisher: Community and content
About Pixazza: Founded in 2008, Pixazza provides an Internet service that turns static images into engaging content while generating incremental income for Web publishers. Consumers visiting Web sites enabled with Pixazza’s technology can mouse over images to learn more about a product, see where it’s available and, ultimately, click through to purchase directly from a relevant online advertiser.
Audience profile/demographics: With Pixazza’s initial focus on entertainment- and celebrity-oriented sites, such as Just Jared, Socialite Life, Celebuzz, I’m Not Obsessed and The Hollywood Gossip, a majority of the audience clicking through Pixazza-enabled images today is female (60 percent), between 18-49 years old (90 percent) and college-educated (67 percent).
Top-performing advertiser categories: Apparel and accessories. Pixazza plans to expand into the home and garden, travel, sports, and electronics categories in the near future.
Seasonal opportunities: The content of the images on Pixazza’s publisher partners, which may change seasonally, drives contextual relevance for the products matched from online advertisers.
Top things Pixazza needs from advertisers to drive success: A product catalog data feed that Pixazza’s product experts can use to match to those within the images of their publisher partner sites.
Dan’s Digest: Pixazza’s approach to monetizing “in photo” ads provides a unique, interactive experience for consumers, and a branding and sales opportunity for advertisers selling relevant products. Pixazza also has attracted some high-profile investors, including Google’s new venture arm. (Full disclosure: Google Affiliate Network also is part of Google.)
CATALOG CHOICE
Name of affiliate/URL: Catalog Choice; www.catalogchoice.org/icatalogs
Type of publisher: Shopping & Promotions
About Catalog Choice: Catalog Choice is the nation’s largest contact preference service that strives to connect brands with consumers to reduce unwanted mail and go paperless. In an effort to promote paperless marketing and help advertisers increase their use of digital marketing tools, Catalog Choice has developed a distribution opportunity based on embeddable widgets. The widgets (“iCatalogs”), are brand-oriented paperless catalogs packed with products and deals from an advertiser’s product feed that allow consumers to browse, save items to a private “MyList”, share discoveries with friends, and/or purchase directly from an advertiser’s Web site.
Audience profile/demographics: Catalog Choice’s audience is made up of avid catalog shoppers and environmentally conscious consumers. Their 1.1 million registered members want to reduce clutter in their lives and help the environment by shopping online.
Top performing advertiser categories: The service launched in June with widgets from Crate and Barrel, Uncommon Goods, Plow & Hearth, Sierra Trading Post and many other major brands.
Seasonal Opportunities: iCatalogs can be updated in real time by advertisers to reflect seasonal trends.
Top things Catalog Choice needs from advertisers to drive success: Catalog Choice needs product data feeds with high quality photos; editorial content to supplement the product information; and exclusive and/or time-sensitive offers.
Dan's Digest: Catalog Choice puts consumers squarely in control of their catalog mailing preferences through a simple (and free) service. Having registered nearly 1.5 MM consumers through national media exposure, and partnered with over 500 catalogers, Catalog Choice is now focused on building a suite of tools for advertisers to retain and grow their relationships with customers online. For advertisers who embrace the social Web, but don’t have the resources to build their own tools or widgets, Catalog Choice may be a great partner.
SAVINGS.COM
Name of affiliate/URL: Savings.com; www.savings.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions
About Savings.com: Savings.com is a leading provider of the coupons, discounts and promotions on the Web. Some of the best deals available online are posted, rated and reviewed by the site’s members and coupon hunters. Savings.com currently offers more than 10,000 deals and coupons from more than 2,000 online advertisers.
Audience profile/demographics: Savings.com users are discount and coupon hunters looking for deals. The majority of users are college-educated men (40 percent) and women (60 percent), 18 to 49 years old with an average household income of more than $70,000.
Offers that work best: Sitewide “dollars off” coupons, free shipping coupons and sitewide “percentage off” coupons.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Clothing and fashion (including shoes), consumer electronics, and computers and hardware.
Seasonal opportunities: Savings.com follows seasonal trends from retailers’ holiday schedules. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Halloween are some of the top seasonal categories.
Top thing Savings.com needs from advertisers to drive success: Exclusive offers (with branded codes), high-quality content and dedicated affiliate managers to maintain consistent, open communication with its account managers.
Dan’s Digest: True to its “Pure & Simple” motto, Savings.com is a clean, well-designed site that’s organized around the deals that are voted highest by its users. Generating more than $2 million a month in sales for some of its top advertisers, Savings.com is capturing—and converting—a growing share of the bargain-hunting online audience.
BUZZILIONS.COM
Name of affiliate/URL: Buzzilions.com; www.buzzillions.com
Type of publisher: Community & Content
About Buzzillions.com: Buzzillions.com bills itself as the most comprehensive customer reviews site on the Web, providing customer reviews and recommendations to assist consumers at every step in their shopping process to find the right product for them. Deemed by the Wall Street Journal as "Product Reviews Just Right for You," Buzzillions.com has “Top-10” customer-generated product recommendations in over 4,900 product categories and over 5 million product reviews overall.
Audience profile/demographics: Buzzillions.com targets the active online shopper looking to read product reviews and figure out which product to buy. The audience is fairly evenly split between male and female users.
Offers that work best: Site-wide offers that are placed in the “where to buy” section.
Top performing advertiser categories: Sporting Goods, Electronics, Computers, Home & Garden, Health & Beauty, Toys, and Baby products.
Seasonal Opportunities: Seasonal and topical site-wide offers such as free shipping, percentage- or dollar-off discounts.
Top things Buzzillions.com needs from advertisers to drive success: The advertisers listed on Buzzillions.com must have product reviews (parent company PowerReviews.com provides review solution platforms for both small/medium and enterprise retailers like REI, Staples and Toys R Us.) Exclusive site-wide offers, high quality product images and descriptions, and a daily feed of accurate price and in-stock information all contribute to success.
Dan's Digest: More than just a site with a quirky name, Buzzillions.com is quickly becoming one of the dominant players in the consumer reviews segment. Leveraging its treasure trove of product reviews from actual buyers—culled from the thousands of retailers licensing the PowerReviews platform—Buzzillions.com presents consumer reviews in a unique and appealing format that helps users make more informed buying decisions. Along with the traction the site is gaining with consumers, we’re seeing a growing number of our advertisers partner with Buzzillions.com with good success.
OFFERS.COM
Name of affiliate/URL: Offers.com; www.offers.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions
About Offers.com: Offers.com aims to be the place to go for all of the best offers. The site provides intuitive categorization; comparison tools; a clean design; and editorial content including ratings, descriptions and reviews.
Audience profile/demographics: Offers.com is targeted at the general Internet audience. Initially, search marketing will be the primary method of driving traffic to the site. But over time, Offers.com expects users to frequent the site for its unique content, quality design and memorable domain name.
Offers that work best: Coupons and other promotional codes, exclusive offers, free merchandise, free shipping, free trials and more.
Top-performing advertiser categories opportunities: Offers.com expects success from services categories like insurance and travel to retail categories like clothing, electronics and computers.
Seasonal opportunities: Offers.com provides advertisers with promotional opportunities in relevant categories, such as holidays, travel and other themes.
Top thing Offers.com needs from advertisers to drive success: Quality offers and exclusive promotions and coupon codes. There also are opportunities to work closely on effective search marketing campaigns.
Dan’s Digest: The team behind Offers.com knows a thing or two about online customer acquisition, having built a successful practice around search marketing and vertical Web site development. I expect Offers.com to become a fast-growing destination site for today’s deal-minded consumer and an efficient platform for conversion-seeking advertisers.
CITIZENHAWK
Name of affiliate/URL: CitizenHawk; www.citizenhawk.com
Type of publisher: Non-traditional domain recovery publisher
About CitizenHawk: CitizenHawk enables clients to recover domains from cybersquatters and typosquatters, as well as monitor, protect and enforce proper use of their online brands, on a 100 percent performance basis. CitizenHawk drives traffic by recovering advertisers’ misspelled domain names and redirecting the traffic to the advertisers’ homepage URL. The company has recovered thousands of misspelled domain names for some of the Web’s largest brands, leading to millions of dollars in recovered traffic and revenue.
Audience profile/demographics:CitizenHawk reaches a broad set of online consumers who are (attempting to) directly type in an advertiser’s domain.
Top-performing advertiser categories: CitizenHawk’s top performing verticals include travel, service and retail; however, its unique model performs well across all verticals.
Seasonal Opportunities: CitizenHawk successfully recovers domains and drives traffic and revenue for advertisers year-round. During peak seasons, when online traffic increases and more misspellings occur, CitizenHawk drives increased traffic and revenue.
Top thing CitizenHawk needs from advertisers to drive success: CitizenHawk operates on a performance based cost-per-action (CPA) model, and takes on all hard costs associated with the domain recovery process. Any exclusive or premium payout is preferable, which enables CitizenHawk to allocate additional resources to recover misspelled domains for an advertiser.
Dan's Digest: CitizenHawk brings a unique and compelling solution to advertisers vexed by typosquatters, while providing a great service to bad spellers everywhere—landing them on the site they intended to visit! We’re seeing a growing number of advertisers partner with CitizenHawk with good success.
UPROMISE
Name of affiliate/URL: Upromise; www.upromise.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty and rewards
About Upromise: Upromise is a free service that helps families save money for college while making everyday purchases of products and services at more than 600 online stores, 8,000-plus restaurants, and thousands of grocery and drug stores. Launched in 2001, today Upromise is the largest private source of college funding contributions in the U.S., with more than 9 million members and $450 million in member rewards. Upromise is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sallie Mae, a nation-leading provider of saving-and-paying-for-college programs.
Audience profile/demographics: Upromise’s users are educated (more than 60 percent are college grads), and more than 80 percent are homeowners and have families (33 percent have children less than 10 years old).
Offers that work best: Because Upromise is a loyalty site that shares a portion of commissions with its members (in the form of college savings), the best offers combine coupons/discounts with a high commission rate that can be converted into maximum college savings.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Upromise’s top-performing categories include big box retailers, electronics, home and garden, and apparel.
Seasonal opportunities: Media placements (on-site and in e-mail newsletters) around various seasons and holidays, including an offline holiday gift guide mailed to millions of Upromise members.
Top thing Upromise needs from advertisers to drive success: Competitive commissions to ensure that the percentage in college savings on eligible purchases is as strong as possible.
Dan’s Digest: Our advertisers love Upromise, not only because of the significant sales it drives, but also because of the positive “halo effect” on their own brands. With its universally appealing mission—helping families address the soaring cost of education—Upromise consistently delivers an audience of loyal, Web-savvy shoppers who are highly motivated to spend with participating stores/advertisers.
MSHOPPER
Name of affiliate/URL: mShopper; www.mshopper.com
Type of publisher: Comparison Shopping centered on mobile commerce/mobile advertising
About mShopper: mShopper is a free one-stop mobile site that allows customers to shop and buy over 14 million products, from over 100 merchants/advertisers, directly from their mobile devices. Because most e-commerce sites are not designed or optimized for mobile, mShopper brings advertisers a unique solution: a branded mobile environment ("mStore"), where products are featured along with logos, taglines, and a mobile URL for quick access. Through partnerships with the top three carriers (Sprint, Verizon and AT&T), mShopper's solution ensures that consumers can properly view and shop for products through each of the 600-plus different handsets currently in use.
mShopper also provides advertisers with promotional opportunities, by driving mobile customers to the advertiser's mStore through landing page promotions and text messaging campaigns.
Audience profile/demographics: mShopper's users skew toward young, male, tech savvy, urban business professionals. 50 percent are college graduates, and 50 have household income of $60,000 to $100,000-plus.
Top performing advertiser categories: mShopper's top performing categories include electronics, music, games, clothing, shoes, baby, toys and gifts.
Top thing mShopper needs from advertisers to drive success: Access to an advertiser's product catalog, which is integrated into the mStore environment.
Dan's Digest: Advertisers who want to leverage the emerging mobile web will find a good partner in mShopper, whose platform powers Sprint's entire mobile shopping portal. And because it works through an advertiser's existing affiliate program, mShopper provides an easy way for advertisers to participate in the mobile space without committing IT resources.
RECYCLEBANK
Name of affiliate/URL: RecycleBank; www.recyclebank.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty nd rewards
About RecycleBank: RecycleBank is one of the fastest-growing and influential loyalty and rewards programs, motivating people to recycle and engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors. The core business involves weighing a household's recycling cart and rewarding it with RecycleBank Points for each pound recycled. This results in exceptionally high recycling rates, heavily engaged consumers, and a unique platform where members earn points and redeem them for reward offers with more than 700 partners.
Audience profile/demographics: RecycleBank's demographic spread is very broad, as it services households in all types of communities throughout the country. General U.S. demographics would be a good proxy for RecycleBank's audience profile.
Offers that work best: Site-wide discounts with a percentage off or a dollar value off total orders.
Top-performing advertiser categories: RecycleBank's top-performing categories include grocery and retail. All retail categories perform well, including apparel, health and beauty, home and electronics.
Seasonal opportunities: RecycleBank is popular year-round, but creates special shopping guides for events and holidays.
Top thing RecycleBank needs from advertisers to drive success: A unique and exclusive promotional offer for RecycleBank members. This is a program requirement, as members exchange their hard-earned points for these offers.
Dan's Digest: RecycleBank brings together one of today's most pressing issues-the environment-with a time-tested model for motivating people to change behavior. By making recycling simple and rewarding, RecycleBank's innovative program resonates with the growing number of consumers and communities it serves. Many of our affiliate advertisers have partnered with RecycleBank, not only as a source of sales/customers, but also because of the positive impact it makes on our environment.
MECHMEDIA
Name of affiliate/URL: MechMedia, Inc., owner of ShoeHunting.com and Costumzee.com
Type of publisher: Community & Content
About MechMedia: Building off its success with Costumzee.com, a 3-year old costume ideas and community Web site, MechMedia's platform provides a community experience for niche-specific markets. Members bookmark and share their favorite ideas, products, and Web sites, upload photos, and keep watch on the latest trends. By focusing on very specific vertical markets, MechMedia builds rich features that are tailored to users' specific interests.
ShoeHunting.com is the latest Web site launched on the platform allowing shoe lovers to share their favorite shoes they have discovered online, submit photos of their own shoes, and discuss with their friends and fellow shoe-obsessed.
Audience profile/demographics: MechMedia's properties attract everyone from casual visitors who are looking for specific products to heavy users who are fanatical about a particular product niche or subject area.
Offers that work best: Visitors to MechMedia properties tend toward "ready to buy", so the best offers are those that encourage users to buy more, like dollars off or free shipping on orders of a certain size.
Top performing advertiser categories: Currently, costumes and shoes, although MechMedia is working on a number of Web sites in other niches.
Seasonal opportunities: In addition to the general shopping seasons, different niches can bring their own seasonality. For example, costumes are not only popular during Halloween, but also Christmas, Valentine's Day, and other themed holidays and events.
Top things MechMedia needs from advertisers to drive success: High quality product data through a daily data transfer, direct linking to specific pages and products, and good offers.
Dan's Digest: Whereas many affiliates aggregate offers across a broad range of categories and brands, MechMedia's success is based on the premise that opportunity lies in the niches. Run by technologists and performance marketing veterans, MechMedia's approach translates into highly productive partnerships.
BRADSDEALS
Name of affiliate/URL: BradsDeals; www.bradsdeals.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions
About BradsDeals: BradsDeals was created by Brad Wilson to help his friends save time and money shopping online. Created originally just as a service for his family and fellow students at the University of North Carolina, now Wilson and his team help as many as 2 million consumers shop online each month.
Audience profile/demographics: The demographic is broad, but the average visitor is an affluent, educated, 35- to 40-year-old woman.
Offers that work best: Percentage off, dollar off or free shipping.
Top-performing advertiser categories: All retail categories perform well, including apparel, home and garden, and computers and electronics.
Seasonal opportunities: BradsDeals is popular year-round but creates special shopping guides for events throughout the year (Holidays, Last-Minute Shipping, Back-to-School, Valentine's Day, etc.). Wilson specifically started the site to help UNC students with back-to-school shopping.
Top things BradsDeals needs from advertisers to drive success: 1) exclusive coupons and pricing that is legitimately competitive and compelling; 2) the ability to manually create links to any page on the fly; and 3) assistance in identifying interesting and top-selling items. All of the deals on BradsDeals are filtered, found and written by Wilson and his editorial team based on their quality and attractiveness.
Dan's Digest: BradsDeals brings personality and a fresh editorial voice to a category of sites that is often cluttered and undifferentiated. Living up to its "handpicked savings" tagline, Wilson and his team comb through thousands of online coupons, sales and codes to highlight the best (and often unexpected) deals. Boosted by some great national media coverage, along with a new syndication deal with Yahoo, BradsDeals delivers an audience of qualified, high-converting shoppers to advertisers.
SHOPWIKI
Name of affiliate/URL: ShopWiki; www.shopwiki.com
Type of publisher: Shopping & Promotions
About ShopWiki: ShopWiki characterizes itself as a shopping search engine designed to help consumers find specific products on the Internet with ease. Using advanced crawling technology, ShopWiki actively crawls the Internet to find and index products from nearly 200,000 retail stores and features nearly 2,000 wiki-style buying guides, written and edited by users.
ShopWiki is also rapidly expanding internationally in markets including UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia.
Audience profile/demographics: ShopWiki.com receives about 1.5 million visits per month. Its users skew slightly female (53 percent) and are between 18-49 years old, college-educated and earn $60,000/year to $100,000/year.
Offers that work best: ShopWiki wants to help advertisers sell products at their best price without the use of margin-reducing coupons. And since they don't require any specific creative assets, ShopWiki is low maintenance for an advertiser.
Top performing advertiser categories: Shoes, soft goods, sports equipment, electronics, specialty items, hard to find items and more. With over 250 million products, ShopWiki can help any shopper find anything on the Web and drive them to purchase through affiliate relationships.
Seasonal Opportunities: ShopWiki has something for every season, and optimizes the site and features for each season.
Top things ShopWiki needs from advertisers to drive success: ShopWiki needs permission to crawl an advertiser's Web site and the ability to deep link to individual product pages. (Currently, they cannot combine a data feed with crawled products.) Conversion and commission rates drive performance and ultimately impact the ranking/position of advertiser products.
Dan's Digest: ShopWiki entered the crowded comparison shopping space with some unique features: a massive product index built from crawling; a CPA pricing model; and perhaps most notably, the integration of community-driven elements throughout, such as wiki-style buying guides. We're seeing healthy sales growth rates from ShopWiki in our network and expect that to continue as traffic and consumer adoption increase.
STYLEFEEDER
Name of affiliate/URL: StyleFeeder; www.stylefeeder.com
Type of publisher: Community & Content
About StyleFeeder: StyleFeeder combines Web 2.0 social and personalization aspects in a personal shopping engine. By learning about each person's unique sense of style, StyleFeeder helps shoppers discover products they'll love and others who share their tastes; search results are returned with the user's predicted order of preference in mind, providing an efficient way to find products. StyleFeeder also has the largest shopping application on Facebook, helping users share shopping finds and access personal recommendations.
Audience profile: StyleFeeder can help anyone shop better, as the recommendation engine is designed to show users only the people and products likely to appeal to them.
Audience size/demographics: StyleFeeder.com has more than 600,000 registered users and 1 million monthly unique visitors; the StyleFeeder Facebook application has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times. The site is particularly popular among 18- to 35-year-old female power shoppers.
Offers that work best on StyleFeeder: Free shipping and site-wide discounts, provided in standard Interactive Advertising Bureau creative sizes.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Items that are highly reflective of a person's individual style, such as clothing and accessories, furniture and home décor, and gadgets and gizmos.
Seasonal opportunities: StyleFeeder often covers trends for the upcoming season and provides gift-giving ideas for major holidays.
Top things StyleFeeder needs from advertisers to drive success: Accurate, clean, up-to-date data feeds so products can be recommended to the people most likely to buy them, as well as automatic link generation to enable "deep" linking.
Dan's Digest: While a number of publishers today blend community elements with commerce, StyleFeeder's "special sauce" is the layer of personalization technology that learns and adapts to user preferences. With fast-growing traffic and user adoption, StyleFeeder is a smart pick for forward-looking advertisers.
DEALTAKER
Name of affiliate/URL: DealTaker; www.dealtaker.com
Type of publisher: Shopping & Promotions
About DealTaker: DealTaker is the shoppers' resource to get the best deal on whatever they are seeking. The company partners with over 1500 merchants and has a team of moderators to ensure that DealTaker visitors will always get the best deal no matter what or from where they are looking to purchase.
Audience profile/demographic: DealTaker has more than 1,000,000 visitors each month, with the largest demographic being women 18-49. Registration is not required to use the site or access deals, but DealTaker does have more than 125,000 registered users.
Offers that work best on DealTaker: Free shipping, dollar off and percent off deals typically generate the most traffic and the best conversions.
Top-performing categories: All categories perform well on DealTaker, from apparel to home to services to tech to small business to travel.
Seasonal opportunities: DealTaker has consistent traffic throughout the year, but definitely ramps up in November and December. It hosts a very successful Black Friday section, but is always looking for great content for every holiday, and every day.
Top things DealTaker needs from advertisers to drive success: The best way for advertisers to gain exposure on—and get traffic from—DealTaker is by providing exclusive coupons and deals tailored to the DealTaker audience. Other success factors are receiving "fresh" deals and coupons sent regularly along with easy-to-find promotional information (start date, end date, what deal is good for, coupon code, link to specific product or category, etc).
Dan's Digest: DealTaker is a great resource for deal-seeking online shoppers, and as such, turns in solid performance for many advertisers, particularly brands that are promotionally active. Recently acquired by Media General, which owns a number of print and TV outlets across the Southeast, DealTaker is poised for further growth nationwide as it's marketed to new audiences through online and offline media.
MINT
Name of affiliate/URL: Mint; www.mint.com
Type of publisher: Community & Content
About Mint: Mint provides consumers with fresh online money management. The online personal finance application is free and saves consumers money by automatically creating personal budgets and connecting them with relevant and financially sound offers. Once users register, Mint securely downloads transaction data on a daily basis from more than 5,000 bank, credit card and investment accounts. Users enjoy a unified view of all account activity, balance alerts, bank fees, bills, potential fraud and suggested savings opportunities.
Audience profile: Consumers seeking to improve their financial situations and find opportunities to reduce payments and increase savings.
Audience size/demographics: Currently, more than 200,000 consumers use Mint.com, which launched in November 2007.
Offers that work best on Mint: Simple, straightforward offers that are easy for users to understand.
Top-performing categories: Currently, credit cards, high-yield savings and other bank accounts, cable, and phone service offers are top performers, but Mint will roll out new categories in the future.
Seasonal opportunities: Holiday spending hangovers, tax time, etc.
Top three things Mint needs from advertisers to drive success: Simple, straightforward offers; opportunities for consumers to achieve immediate savings; and a willingness to embrace new/emerging media.
Dan's Digest: It's easy to see why Mint.com has won accolades and awards from the likes of BusinessWeek, TechCrunch and PC World. Mint turns traditional personal finance management software on its head through a simple and intuitive interface and Web-based technology that makes money management a cinch. Mint's focus on identifying savings opportunities for users creates powerful and micro-targeted opportunities for advertisers.
TRIALPAY
Name of affiliate/URL: TrialPay; www.trialpay.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty & Rewards
About TrialPay: TrialPay unites advertisers, merchants and shoppers to create a payment platform that benefits all parties. Using TrialPay, merchants turn lost and indecisive shoppers into paying customers by giving away their product for free when a shopper completes an offer from blue-chip advertisers. Shoppers get a free product. Advertisers acquire new customers. Merchants earn revenue from customers otherwise lost.
Audience profile: Advertisers working with TrialPay reach customers of some of the most respected companies in industries that include software, gaming, online services, retail and publishing. These companies turn to TrialPay and its network of partner advertisers to monetize shoppers that would otherwise not buy, and shoppers earn a free gift they desire.
Audience size/demographics: TrialPay reports signing up 20,000-25,000 new users each day.
Offers that work best through TrialPay: Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) offers work best, utilizing a flat fee, bounty-based structure.
Top-performing advertiser categories: Financial services, subscription and some retail
Seasonal opportunities: TrialPay works with merchants and advertisers to develop custom promotions around their most important holidays. Valentine's Day, tax time, Mother's Day and many other seasonal opportunities exist.
Top three things TrialPay needs from advertisers to drive success: 1) Compelling offers with competitive pricing; 2) offers with clearly defined consumer actions; and 3) a commitment to working together, optimizing campaigns over time, etc.
Dan's Digest: TrialPay provides a unique twist to the "typical" rewards model by creating what is effectively an alternative payment platform for highly qualified customers in buying mode. So far, TrialPay's model is not only resonating with consumers; it may very well represent the next (and more rational) wave of reward partners for advertisers moving forward.
COUPONCABIN
Name of affiliate/URL: CouponCabin; www.CouponCabin.com
Type of publisher: Shopping & Promotions
About CouponCabin: CouponCabin features coupons and deals from more than 900 online advertisers. While it primarily serves consumers looking for deals, its newest affiliated Web property, CheapUncle.com, helps consumers find the best prices and offers for a specific product or product category-think comparison shopping meets coupons.
Audience profile: Most CouponCabin users are females ages 28 to 48. Education and income levels are moderate to high, with heavy concentrations in affluent markets like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
Audience size/demographics: In December 2007, CouponCabin connected more than 2.2 million consumers with valuable deals.
Offers that work best on CouponCabin: For advertisers averaging less than $100/order, CouponCabin recommends dollar-off coupons. For advertisers exceeding $100/average order, percentage-off coupons work better (for consumers more willing to do the math).
Top-performing categories: Soft-line goods work best, specifically apparel, shoes, baby, and home and garden.
Seasonal opportunities: For the most part, spikes in demand at CouponCabin follow typical retail and holiday schedules.
Top three things CouponCabin needs from advertisers to drive success: Content; exclusive offers; and knowledgeable, creative and dedicated affiliate-marketing managers.
Dan's Digest: CouponCabin stands out among its peers for offering extremely creative marketing programs, a suite of proprietary tools to optimize offers and placements, and unique distribution through an exclusive syndication relationship with Yahoo! Shopping.
WORKING ADVANTAGE
Name of affiliate/URL: Working Advantage; www.workingadvantage.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty & Rewards
About Working Advantage: Working Advantage provides an employee savings portal for its more than 7,000 member companies, who offer it as a soft benefit to their employees. Employees gain access to the Working Advantage Web site for free, but must create accounts to log in and access the offers. In 2007, WorkingAdvantage.com had more than 3 million unique visitors and generated more than $25 million in sales for its merchant/advertiser partners, all while experiencing more than 300 percent growth over the prior year.
Audience profile: Working professionals, including many employed by Fortune 1000 companies
Audience size/demographics: More than 5 million actively employed
Offers that work best on Working Advantage: Exclusive or semi-exclusive offers
Top-performing categories: Anything that appeals to professionals, including apparel, electronics, home goods, floral, etc.
Seasonal opportunities: Deals are available year round, but every Wednesday, Working Advantage sends out its opt-in Web Deals e-mail, which yields 25 percent to 30 percent open rates and clickthrough rates of 35 percent to 50 percent. Aggressive offers that appeal to working professionals; regularly updated creative and content; and interaction and cooperation to keep offers fresh.
Dan's Digest: Working Advantage has a unique marketing "advantage" over most affiliate publishers, in that it is initially introduced to consumers through their employers. (Disclosure: My employer, DoubleClick, is actually one of its 7,000 customers.) This explicit employer endorsement translates to an extremely high level of trust, engagement and conversion rates among its members. Across Doubleclick's client base, we have seen particular success with advertisers who provide Working Advantage with high-perceived value, "exclusive" offers. With its ability to target a hard-to-reach customer segment through a range of promotional and placement opportunities, Working Advantage is a key partner for a number of advertisers.
SHOPDISCOVER
Name of affiliate/URL: ShopDiscover, www.Discovercard.com/shop. For Discover Business Card members, www.Discoverbiz.com/shop.
Type of publisher: Loyalty and rewards.
About ShopDiscover: Launched in October 2006, ShopDiscover rewards Discover Card members with 5 percent to 20 percent "Cashback Bonus" or "Double Miles" year-round on purchases at top online retailers like Circuit City and Sears.com when they shop through ShopDiscover.
Audience profile: All 50 million Discover Card members who are registered on Discovercard.com can access ShopDiscover.
Audience size/demographics: A customized version of ShopDiscover now also is available to Discover Miles and Business Card members. The type of rewards the card member receives (either cashback bonus or double miles) depends on the card product.
Offers that work best on ShopDiscover: The larger the cashback bonus, the more successful the offer. Other special offers like free shipping, free shipping on returns and in-store pickup also work well.
Top-performing categories: Electronics and appliances, apparel, travel, and vacation.
Seasonal opportunities: In addition to standard Web site placements, advertisers can partner with ShopDiscover to target the Discover Card customer base with special seasonal promotions and direct marketing opportunities.
ShopDiscover is fairly selective about the advertisers participating in its program. The best advertisers offer: 1) A cooperative attitude to co-develop site copy and other materials; 2) the ability to meet minimal technology requirements; and 3) a willingness to test new things, as more enhancements are planned for 2008.
Dan's Digest: Since launching, ShopDiscover has established itself quickly as a valuable and highly productive partner for a number of advertisers. The size and purchasing power of its card member base, along with the straightforward way that members automatically earn cash rebates through their account statements, make ShopDiscover a "no-brainer" for any advertiser who is selected to participate.
STYLEHIVE
Name of affiliate/URL: Stylehive; www.stylehive.com
Type of publisher: Community and content
About Stylehive: Stylehive is a global social shopping community, dedicated to discovering and sharing the most exciting products, the stores that sell them and the people who find them.
Audience profile: Stylehive's audience members share a desire to know what's fresh, new and hot right now, specifically with new products and retail sites.
Audience size/demographics: Most Stylehive visitors are women between the age of 20 and 40. They come from all parts of the nation, but particularly from affluent urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Offers that work best on Stylehive: The Stylehive audience appreciates exclusive offers. A free shipping offer, for example, is more effective when offered exclusively through Stylehive; the same is true for discounts and other savings offers.
Top-performing categories: Fashion and apparel, home design products, and electronics and gadgets
Seasonal opportunities: In addition to mainstream holidays, back-to-school season and similar retail boosters, Stylehive's traffic spikes before, during and after fashion weeks (New York Fashion Week, for example). Stylehive encourages merchants to provide exclusive offers around fashion weeks to convert a greater percentage of shoppers during these major traffic spikes.
Top three things Stylehive needs from merchants to drive success: The ability for Stylehive members to "deep link" directly to any page of a merchant site; exclusive/interesting offers; and fresh content to draw members and consumers to the brand's Stylehive page.
Dan's Digest: The growth of social shopping sites like Stylehive reflects the greater seismic shift occurring online around the power of community. We are seeing merchants increasingly embrace publishers like Stylehive as a way to participate in the conversation about their brand/products while cultivating a new source of e-commerce sales.
SHOPSTYLE
Name of affiliate/URL: ShopStyle; www.ShopStyle.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions, incorporating elements of community
About ShopStyle: ShopStyle allows consumers to virtually browse the racks of some the world's most fabulous stores, from big fashion names like Barneys New York to trendsetting boutiques like Lisa Kline Los Angeles, all in one place. Through community-driven merchandising, ShopStyle combines fashion, social media and commerce, enabling women to interpret seasonal style trends and create, share and shop personalized looks.
Audience demographics: Most ShopStyle consumers are women between the ages of 25 and 45 who want bargains and buy designer goods.
Offers that work best on ShopStyle: ShopStyle women care more about finding a hot product than saving a couple of bucks; however, they do respond well to free shipping and "percentage off" offers.
Top-performing categories: Apparel and accessories
Seasonal opportunities: ShopStyle excels during the big retail/gift-giving holidays, but spring and fall fashion seasons are the biggest seasonal opportunities for merchants. When fashion bloggers and magazines cover a particular product, ShopStyle customers look for it on the site.
Top three things ShopStyle needs from merchants to drive success: 1) A complete product catalog; 2) enticing offers; and 3) the flexibility and a willingness to try new things.
Dan's Digest: ShopStyle offers a unique set of merchandising tools that emulate the way fashion-forward people shop in the offline world. With a fast-growing audience-which will accelerate through partnerships with leading fashion publishers like InStyle magazine—ShopStyle is a great platform for reaching a highly desirable demographic.
BILL ME LATER
Name of affiliate/URL: Bill Me Later; www.billmelater.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions
About Bill Me Later: Bill Me Later is a fast, easy and secure way to pay online without using a credit card. Consumers can take advantage of such options as comprehensive searches by merchant, category and product, as well as special offers. More than 450 major retailers offer Bill Me Later, including Cabela's and GUESS.
Audience size/demographics: There are millions of Bill Me Later buyers. They range 35 to 55 years in age, 67 percent are female, and most are homeowners. According to Javelin Strategy and Research, Bill Me Later buyers shop online 40 percent more and spend more online per month than other buyers.
Offers that work best on Bill Me Later: Bill Me Later works with advertisers to promote special financing programs like "No Payments for 90 days" and create special "free shipping" or "dollars off" offers to drive incremental sales.
Top-performing categories: Consumer electronics, travel, computers, shoes and apparel, gifts, and anything else that can be bought online.
Seasonal opportunities: All major shopping seasons, including Christmas/holidays, back to school and Mother's Day, provide substantial spikes in volume.
Top three things Bill Me Later needs from advertisers to drive success: 1) Exclusive and relevant offers for Bill Me Later users; 2) participation and promotion of financing offers on advertisers' Web sites; and 3) prominent and consistent presentation of Bill Me Later offers on advertisers' Web sites.
Dan's Digest: Bill Me Later provides incremental distribution as well as users who tend to convert at a higher rate—and spend more than average. We expect even greater performance ahead as more advertisers adopt and promote the Bill Me Later payment solution across multiple channels.
KABOODLE
Name of affiliate/URL: Kaboodle; www.kaboodle.com
Type of publisher: Community and content
About Kaboodle: Kaboodle is a social-shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle's tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find the best prices.
Audience size/demographics: Kaboodle has 250,000 registered users and more than 2 million monthly visitors. Women ranging 14 to 44 years old make up 75 percent of its audience. Approximately 33 percent earn a household income of $75,000 or more.
Offers that work best on Kaboodle.com: Free shipping, "dollars off" and "percentage off" offers.
Top-performing categories: The majority of products added to Kaboodle are "lifestyle goods" that reflect a person's personal taste and style. Style and fashion, home and garden, and gadgets and gizmos are Kaboodle's top categories.
Seasonal opportunities: Kaboodle is a community, so people use the site year-round, but volume increases around the big shopping seasons, where wish lists, registries and gift guides are especially popular features.
Top things Kaboodle needs from merchants to drive success: Offers for products and stores in demand among the Kaboodle community, and deep linking capabilities that allow users to go directly from a product on Kaboodle to the specific product page on the merchant's site in one click work best.
Dan's Digest: Marketers who want to leverage the power of the "social Web" will find a great partner in Kaboodle, whose fast-growing community of style-conscious users are highly engaged with their favorite brands and products. Kaboodle's just-announced acquisition by Hearst further validates its social-shopping model.
MALL NETWORKS
Name of affiliate/URL: Mall Networks; www.mallnetworks.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty and Rewards
About Mall Networks: Mall Networks' private label online shopping portals connect more than 400 world-class merchants with members of loyalty and rewards programs from such diverse organizations as JPMorgan Chase, NASCAR, Spirit Airlines and Shop.org.
Audience size/demographics: Through its clients, Mall Networks' shopping portals reach more than 25 million consumers and small businesses across a broad range of demographics.
Offers that work best on a Mall Networks portal: Special offers, such as free shipping, percent off, and dollars off offers are strong performers within Mall Networks client base. For example, two top retailers offering books, home goods and related items have seen positive results from their free shipping offers promoted to members of a leading financial services brand's rewards program.
Top-performing categories: Popular merchant categories include apparel, travel, computers, office supplies and electronics, among others. Top-performing target client segments include financial institutions, airline and travel rewards programs, and small-business rewards programs.
Seasonal opportunities: Mall Networks considers seasonality from both the client and merchant perspective. NASCAR revs up in the summer time, but other clients win big during the holidays.
Top three things Mall Networks needs from merchants to drive success: (1) A clear description of goals and seasonal opportunities, (2) a commitment to rewards and loyalty programs, and (3) an interest in deploying promotions at strategic times of the year.
Dan's Digest: Retail merchants tend to find great success with loyalty publishers, and fast-growing Mall Networks' impressive portfolio of clients, including the recent launch of the Chase Rewards Plus mall, makes it a no-brainer for merchants looking for a scalable partner who can deliver sales growth and potential new customer segments.
KEYCODE
Name of Affiliate/URL: Kurt Lohse, Founder/CEO, Keycode.com and Nuuvy.com
Type of publisher: Shopping and promotions (Keycode.com); community and content (Nuuvy.com).
About Keycode: Keycode.com is an offer-comparison site and syndicated-savings network that services several million shoppers each month. The Web site excels at cataloging more than 3,000 retail offers on any given day to ensure shoppers never miss a discount, coupon code or sale event. Keycode.com also feeds more than 400 additional Web sites with retail-savings data to enable other publishers to benefit from its savings content and earn money from affiliate marketing without having to manage large amounts of daily data.
Nuuvy.com, a user-generated, video product review site and Keycode's newest project, provides access to hundreds of fun and informative video reviews in a social shopping environment. Nuuvy.com will use the strengths of social shopping, video and conventional Web 2.0 elements to take affiliate marketing to the next level.
Audience profile: Keycode.com attracts and services millions of shoppers from every imaginable demographic
Audience size/demographics: Keycode.com reaches more than 2 million active soccer moms each month with household incomes in excess of $80,000. The Keycode Syndicate Savings Network has a maximum reach of about 15 million users each month.
Offers that work best on Keycode.com: "Dollar off" or "percentage off" offers work best online; in-store or "printable" coupons work well for brick-and-mortar retail (nongrocery) purchases.
Top-performing categories: Consumer electronics, computers, women's apparel, housewares and general merchandise.
Seasonal opportunities: The big traditional shopping seasons, such as Christmas/holidays, Thanksgiving, back to school, Memorial Day and Mother's Day, all provide substantial spikes in volume.
Top three things Keycode needs from advertisers to drive success: Offers, offers and offers! A willingness to test promotional messaging is helpful in determining the type of consumer offer that generates maximum sales for the least amount of realized discount or cost.
Dan's Digest: Keycode is a sophisticated marketer that has focused on, among other things, proving the interactions between online and offline shopping. Its latest venture, Nuuvy.com, is a clever amalgamation of Web 2.0 tools and affiliate marketing.
Dan Chiss is the manger of policy and insights for Google Affiliate Network (formerly DoubleClick Performics), which provides affiliate marketing services and technologies to advertisers and publishers. He can be reached at (312) 348-4552.
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