ASE ‘19 Session: Think “And,” Not “Or”
This past month at Affiliate Summit East ‘19, our CEO Peter Hamilton, shared his perspectives on working across networks in a session entitled, Building a Partner Program WITH Networks. His message challenged the conventional notion of only working with one or two networks as a default partner distribution strategy (particularly, traditional affiliate networks). Instead, he advocated the idea of working with all kinds of networks (e.g., mobile, content, influencer) to scale up your supply and reduce your concentration risk. The demand is most certainly there. Working with MANY networks should help you maximize your partnership value. Why not work with all available sources of supply, versus having to choose?
Postbacks Are Key to Scaling Easily with Partner Networks
Being able to scale with network partners means working in the most efficient way possible. Important considerations include reducing time and effort in setting up campaigns, allowing for real time campaign optimization, and ensuring product scale. TUNE invented the “Postback” over a decade ago to easily communicate tracking outcomes between advertisers and their network partners. A Postback carries critical information about conversions through a combination of parameters, values and macros. In TUNE’s platform, you can send multiple data points to your partners in real-time, including mobile device identifiers, order ID’s, SKU information, and conversion sale amounts. Postbacks are the easiest and smartest way to manage tracking across networks and throughout the customer journey, as they are built to work across mobile and web, without cookies and in alignment with new ITP measures.
Top Partner Networks Seek Simplicity
Top Networks, like She Is Media, depend on Postback tracking to work seamlessly. As Beth Lazar, COO of She Is Media says, “Real-time conversion data via postbacks is key to allowing our publishers to tune their affiliate campaigns running on She Is Media. Without this data, our key publishers must run campaigns blind which generally results in them choosing to promote a competitor’s campaign instead. It is simply a necessity and allows us to efficiently and effectively communicate with our advertisers, publishers and their tracking platforms.”
Also, take it from George Eames, Senior Director of Accounts and Operations at Fluent, who believes: “Conversion postbacks, event postbacks, and real-time tracking are critical to the success of performance marketing campaigns. Conversion postbacks enable publishers to measure revenue in real time, scaling campaigns when margins and quality are strong. Publishers use event postbacks to drive quality for advertisers, tracking post-conversion events and leveraging campaign data to inform optimizations. Postbacks create an open dialogue around performance between publishers and advertisers – ultimately enabling smarter and more effective digital marketing strategies.”
Set Your Network Partners Up for Success
Postbacks are a vital tracking technology to have in the partner management toolkit. As you begin to work across multiple mobile and desktop partners, you need to make it the new de facto tracking standard to accommodate an ever-changing partner ecosystem. In the end, it is about making your partners’ lives easier, to help you grow. Why not set your partners up for success from the get-go? If you are an Advertiser and are interested in learning more about TUNE’s flexible tracking solutions, please contact Sales at TUNE.
Author
Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.
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