In the course of 2012 I’ve put together two blog posts on the size of affiliate marketing: one on performance marketing worldwide, and another one on affiliate marketing Russia. Per sources quoted in the former post, in 2011 British affiliates were expected “to drive more than £5bn in e-commerce revenue.” But now we have better data. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, commissioned by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB), has conducted the first-ever in-depth study of affiliate marketing industry in the United Kingdom, and revealed some interesting numbers:
Advertisers spent over £800m in 2012 on Online Performance Marketing activities including affiliate marketing and lead generation. Generating £9bn in sales, equals £11 for every £1 spent. Driven by finance and retail advertisers…
…In 2012, UK consumers conducted around 100 million direct transactions to the value of £8 billion as a result of affiliate marketing, and submitted around 70 million enquiries (indirect transactions) which resulted in £1 billion in lead-generated sales. This means OPM drives around 5-6% of all UK e-commerce retail sales. [more here]
The full study is available for download here. Here are just a few bullet points (in no particular order) that I thought you may find of interest:
- UK advertiser/merchant count: ~3,000-4,000
- UK publisher/affiliate count: ~10,000
- Impact scale: ~100 million transactions, and ~70 million leads
- Scale: 7-9% of UK online marketing spend; ~6% of the UK Internet economy
- Top 5 affiliate types: cashback (31% of total revenue), coupons & rebates (17%), loyalty (17%), CSEs & directories (11%), content producers (10%)
- Growth: since 2008 UK affiliate marketing has registered an average 12% YoY growth
For more “sneak peaks” into this fascinating document, see Chris Johnson’s OPM Study Analysis – a £9bn Breakdown of Sales and Expenditure in the Affiliate Channel article published at a4u earlier this morning.