A week ago at LinkShare Symposium New York 2012 the affiliate network announced that “Forrester Consulting recently conducted a study on behalf of Rakuten LinkShare” and it was at the conference that the study findings were unveiled. Here are just three interesting observations from it:
1. Forrester has scaled down their previous growth prediction (of affiliate marketing spend expected to exceed 4 billion by 2014) — see the previous chart here — to the following:
So, while the industry is showing good signs of growth, we aren’t going to exceed the 4 billion threshold until late 2015 or early 2016.
2. Before committing to make that purchase decision, online shopper visits an average of 2.7 websites:
The above must be very accurate, as it corresponds to the results of a multi-touch attribution study by Slingshot SEO, where upon analyzing “23 million multiple-interaction conversions” the company also discovered that it took online buyers 2.79 interactions (online touches) before converting.
3. “Affiliate marketing favorably increases consumer perception of brands“:
You may download the full 18-page document with the results of this LinkShare / Forrester’s study here.
It’s interesting that affiliate marketing spend actually decreased between 2008 and 2010, I’d have expected more spend on performance advertising and less on other media during an economic downturn.
It’d be interesting to see what had happened with the spend on other media back then. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone took a hit, and performance marketing “suffered” the least.
Between 2008-2010 the economy took a huge hit and many companies tightened their purse strings with regard to marketing in general, not just affiliate marketing. But I know we felt it in the performance marketing world especially for those of us who operate as consultants within the industry.
Great article Geno – thanks for sharing this informative research.
Frankly, speaking as a consultant myself, we were affected by this right through mid-2011.
Liz, thank you for reading.
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