Moose on the Loose

Just a simple thought for the day which was raised as a topic of conversation many moons ago.

With a number of agencies representing various “brands” and merchants, quite often the traditional override a network “The Cheese” may receive from a merchant is negotiated in order to secure the services of the merchant on that network “The Cheese”. Now granted these negotiations may not necessarily be of any concern the affiliate, fair enough.

However, sometimes an agency may receive a kickback from The Cheese, based on part of that override. I don’t necessarily object to this either, unless this kickback impairs the judgement of the agency in selecting the right network for the merchant, but importantly is all of or part of this saving / kickback being disclosed and passed back to the client (the merchant). Ultimately The Cheese is being squeezed akin to cashback sites maybe? I wonder if all agencies are ethical in this process, like the trimming of both ends some agencies used to get from their clients advertising spend on Google Adwords?

As Mark Russell From Existem correctly says … “I have to say that comments about kick backs is very poor reason and any management agency that chooses a network on these grounds is doing a bad job for the industry, we are all aware that kick backs are available from networks, but if you want to be a good successful management agency why would you put a programme with a certain network that either cant or wont support the programme just for a very short-term gain. From what I have seen the amounts for kick backs is not something that should affect a decision. Not only do you want to have a good reputation for growing good clean programmes – the benefit of choosing the correct network(s) that can maximise affiliate revenues is of great benefit by any financial criteria, client / network or agency.”

Squeezing The Cheese A Little More

So, we see that networks “The Cheese” offer agencies kickbacks in order to secure the merchant on the network.

So, how about Squeezing the Cheese for the Affiliates Benefit? By this I mean, from the override an affiliate earns the network, how about offering the affiliate a % of override on a sliding scale basis based on how much the affiliate earns in commission. Perhaps this might induce loyalty from an affiliate to a particular network based on these performance incentives. If the override is being used as a bargaining chip for leverage, then the affiliate should have the opportunity to utilise that same chip too.

Perhaps I am just floating an air biscuit in the wind, with another long winded blog entry, but it’s just a thought.

So hands up if you want some cheese squeezed for you?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 12:46 PM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.