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October 08, 2007
Is This the End of Incentivized Traffic?
By Jason Jugert
Senior Affiliate Manager
CPA Empire
“Can this offer be incentivized?” This question comes up with both affiliates and affiliate managers virtually every time a new offer goes live within a network. While there may be a straightforward answer to the question for each individual offer, the overall question of incentivized offers brings about mixed reactions and opinions from advertisers, publishers, networks and online users all across the internet marketing industry.
It seems that most people take one of two completely polarized positions on this topic - you either love it and believe it can be a valuable source of advertiser traffic, or you hate it would prefer to have it removed from the market. In recent months the incentivized industry has been shaken up with a variety of changes and reshuffling taking place.
Some networks are no longer accepting any incentivized traffic. Some incentivized offers have disappeared completely, while others have been revised in hopes of becoming profitable within the revised landscape. These changes have made many affiliates, advertisers and networks wonder, “Is this the end of incentivized traffic?” Personally I think that there is a place for incentivized traffic and offers and they will always be a part of the affiliate marketing industry.
With the appropriate changes and a conscious effort from both advertisers and affiliates, the incentivized industry can return to prosperity – although in a somewhat different form. For an incentivized offer to work for an advertiser it needs to meet their metrics and cancellations need to be kept to a minimum. In order to achieve this, I believe you will see offers being redesigned with better fraud protection, to eliminate duplicate leads and multiple sign-ups. You will also most likely see an increased effort to verify leads before credit is given to the affiliate, which means offers formerly reporting in real time will become two to three day imports. I would also expect to see offer payouts drop significantly to more accurately reflect the performance of this traffic source.
Affiliates promoting these offers will also need to make changes. For example, they will need to develop a stricter and more controlled approval process for new members on their sites and have the ability to block and prevent multiple sign-ups from the same IP address on individual offers. The value of a reward given to members for completing an offer needs to decrease to help deter fraud, and new features need to be added that remove an offer once it is completed by a specific member. Affiliates driving incentivized traffic also need to strictly follow network and advertiser rules and only run offers that allow incentivized traffic to assure profitability for the advertisers.
Many other efforts will likely need to be taken to breathe new life into this market, but these alone could help immensely. With positive changes and a conscious effort from advertisers, affiliates, and networks, I believe that the incentivized industry will continue to have a place in affiliate marketing.
Posted by Tom at October 8, 2007 01:38 AM
Comments
This is a thoughtful article about an industry that I am learning about. To date, I have read a lot of negative flames about incentivized offers.
It reminds me of the long ago war between internet "purists" and entrepreneurs about using the medium for business or strictly as a free place to exchange information.
Proper controls can lead to a useful advertising platform. Neglecting to implement tools to stop fraud will doom this business.
Posted by: Raymond Fellers at October 24, 2007 05:06 AM
I totally agree with this. Websites need to filter out the inappropriate offers, and only add incentivized offers. They need to be more strict on users and ban IP's for duplicate signups.
Posted by: S. at November 8, 2007 12:25 PM
As long as there are advertisers willing to pay, incentivized traffic will never die. I do agree that sites should take more preventative measures to stop fraud.
Posted by: JS at December 22, 2007 10:32 AM