Performance marketing is really about relevance – Don Mathis, Epic Advertising @ Affiliate Summit East 09

Key Trends in Performance Marketing: Performance Is Really About Relevance

Don Mathis CEO, Epic Advertising

Offline equivalent = direct mail

A lot of people don’t know what Performance or Affiliate Marketing really is

• Affiliate is a media buyer = CPC, display, email or combined
• Publisher is someone who has a site and puts up content
  • Blog posting content focused on long-tail, they want to publish, make money is secondary
    

Trends

• Shifting from brand spend to more sophisticated performance models
• Mainstream traditional advertising declining
• Online is healthy
• Now affiliates and publishers are hybridizing: hard to define and to manage them
• People buy terms on Google to sell to Blockbuster and Netflix, have more content, boosts quality scores
• No longer just thin landing pages to a couple dozen pages that drives organic as well
• Monetize more robustly
  

What do the trends mean?
    o    Opportunity
    o    Advertisers and agencies need to become more creative and diversify
    o    Ad networks need to target better
    o    Pubs need to utilize networks for success & keep up w/ what ads need for success

Need to focus on
    o    Playing by the rules: Attract larger advertisers
    o    Technology & targeting: Provide better ROI
    o    Education: Evangelize everyone on the win-wins