Advertisers: Why Affiliate Commission Segmentation Matters

Advertisers: Why Commission

Segmentation Matters to You

Affiliate Summit East 2014

Aug. 11, 2014 New York City

Presented by

If you’re live-tweeting about this presentation

be sure to use hashtag #ase14.

Brook Schaaf

CEO and Co-Founder

Schaaf-PartnerCentric

Affiliate Program Management Agency

Twitter: @schaafpc

Thank you for being here!

What is Commission Segmentation?

The Path to Purchase Arrow

ShareASale LeapFrog Tool

Common Forms of Commission Segmentation

• Tiered by Volume

• First Touch Credit

• Time Based (Click to Conversion)

• New vs. Returning Customers

• Category Based/Flat Changes

• De-duplication Across Channels

• First to Cart

Case Study – Touch Points

• 12 month time span

• 121,000 total conversions

• One channel only: 51%

• Including company email

• Affiliate first click: 17,000 or 14.7% of conversions

• 66% credited to affiliate with last click

• 34% credited to a channel other than affiliate

Conversion Path Touch Points

% Solo

% 2 Participants

% 3 Participants

% 4 Participants

% 5+ Participants

Case Study – Coupon / Loyalty

• After analyzing program performance we began segmenting

coupon and loyalty publishers for a retail client.

• Value was lower for these “introducers” than it was

for other publishers who were “closers.”

• Coupon/loyalty publishers commissions were lowered

from 8% to 5%

What was the outcome?

Case Study – Coupon / Loyalty

• Revenue for coupon/loyalty publishers saw a modest year-

over-year decrease (6.66%) while the commissions paid to

those publishers dropped by 49.95%.

Overall Revenue and Commissions

Spread of Publisher Commissions

Case Study – Midline Commissions

• A new client had been paying coupon publishers a 5%

commission and non-coupon publishers a 20% commission.

However, many non-coupon publishers were still

promoting coupons.

What was the solution?

Case Study – Midline Commissions

• We established a midline commission rate and based a

tiered commission structure on that.

Commission payouts and the cost of sale remained

steady during this period of adjustment.

Monthly

Data Table

Revenue and Commissions Over Time

Cost of Sale Over Time

Case Study – Lowering Commissions

• An advertiser was offering a default 8% commission rate

that we lowered to 5% for most publishers (allowing two

top performers to remain at 8%).

Commission payouts fell from an average 6 - 6.5% to 5 –

5.5%. Click throughs and revenue remained consistent

with advertiser’s historical data.

Monthly

Data Table

Revenue and Commissions Over Time

Cost of Sale Over Time

Case Study – Lowering Commissions

• A top coupon publisher was earning a 10% commission rate

at initial takeover. This was lowered to 5% and then 1%,

dramatically reducing the cost of sale. Revenue remained

consistent with past performance.

Top Coupon Publisher

Revenue & Commissions

Top Coupon Publisher

Cost of Sale

Paid Placements

• A summary of Q4 2013 placements (20 in all) for a client:

Examples – Paid Placements

Examples – Paid Placements

Examples – Paid Placements

Paid Placements

Thank You

brook@schaafpc.com