2024: The Flight to Quality
Affiliate marketing is set for a bumpy ride in 2024. Tracking sales is going to become harder, with user consent and cookie deprecation adding further challenges to the ongoing inadvertent tracking breakages that occur.
In uncertain times there is often a 'flight to quality' and we suspect that'll be the case in 2024. It's certainly what we are hearing from our publisher conversations. Of course, knowing which advertiser has a high-quality tracking implementation is a difficult challenge for publishers, and indeed sometimes networks too.
Which is why Moonpull has introduced some new tools for 2024:
- Link Assurance
- Program Certification, and
- Advertiser Tracking Status Reports
Link Assurance
This is a trusted appraisal of the tracking of a specific link for a specific publisher to go to a specific page.
As 2024 progresses, publishers can have confidence in assured links provided by participating advertisers, knowing that the tracking is set up correctly for commission to be generated.
Program Certification
Moonpull Certification is a recognition for advertisers (and their agencies) to provide to publishers for the publishers to see and trust that the advertisers take tracking matters seriously. Moonpull Certification confirms the Advertiser is running Moonpull Audits on 50 or more links each month.
Advertiser Tracking Status Reports
The Advertiser Tracking Status Report is a regular report for an advertiser to understand the status of the first party tracking on a specific landing page on their site.
In most cases the report confirms all is in order on this specific page which means publishers can promote the advertiser in confidence and the advertiser can rely on the network's tracking for decisions around channel performance and how to grow the program.
Communicating Confidence
The combination of these tools will help publishers to focus on those advertisers that are right for them. For the publishers relying on results of the tools, there is likely to be a movement towards the advertisers providing assured links. This 'flight to quality' will mean advertisers can develop stronger partnerships with leading publishers, giving these advertisers more confidence to continue and increase investment in their affiliate relationships.
There are a number of OPMs who are in the process of implementing the Link Assurance products for their clients. We will be meeting with others at Affiliate Summit to discuss the same for their own advertiser clients, to help communicate that publishers can have confidence that they are positioned as best as they can be for this new environment in 2024.