This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: Take a closer look at full-funnel planning and strategies, learn about an elevated affiliate reward program called Shareback, and more.

• Gen Z’s ecommerce habits require brands to focus on social media, sustainability, and advanced AI technologies.
  
• Full-funnel affiliate planning enhances customer journey engagement, integrating strategy, partner alignment, and personalized data for growth.
  
• Termination threats to affiliates are demotivating and, at worst, counterproductive.
  
• Merge influencer reach with affiliate conversion to maximize full-funnel marketing success.
  
• WeShop launches new program “Shareback” to elevate and reward affiliate relationships.
  
• Take a look at these important affiliate marketing terms, models, and strategies to enhance your program.

The post Affiliate Roundup: Full-Funnel Planning, Gen Z Trends, Shareback, & More appeared first on FMTC.

For a complete list of all merchant programs, please see our public-facing Directory. Current FMTC users can add new stores easily via signup links or the Manage Merchants page. (Clicking the link will allow you to see all unselected merchants that are currently available to add to your account.)

The post New FMTC Merchants Include Antler, Ferrari World, ILIA Beauty, Royal Canin, & Zodiac Watches appeared first on FMTC.

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: MFA continues to gain traction web-wide, Google further improves product search results, and podcast ad revenue is on the up and up.

• [Case Studies, Profiles & Awards] Affiliate links masquerading as organic search results threaten transparency and trust.
  
• [Case Studies, Profiles, & Awards] Dotdash Meredith partners with OpenAI to boost ad business and protect traffic.
  
• [Affiliate-Adjacent] A study of over 17,000 campaigns found that cost per lead increased by an average of 25% over the past year.
  
• [Affiliate-Adjacent] Podcast ad revenue rebounds to a projected $2 billion after a period of slow growth.
  
• [Affiliate-Adjacent] Google enhances product search results, streamlining price comparison within SERPs.
  
• [Affiliate-Adjacent] Almost half of all internet traffic in 2023 was the result of bots, highlighting a problem with open web programmatic.
  
• [Affiliate-Adjacent] MFA content farms — and questionable profits — are gaining traction at best and running rampant at worst.

The post Affiliate Roundup: MFA, CPL, SERPs, & More appeared first on FMTC.

For a complete list of all merchant programs, please see our public-facing Directory. Current FMTC users can add new stores easily via signup links or the Manage Merchants page. (Clicking the link will allow you to see all unselected merchants that are currently available to add to your account.)

The post New FMTC Merchants Include BIMBA Y LOLA, Brooks, L’OR Coffee, Nordstrom Rack, & TENA appeared first on FMTC.

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: Elevate Summit makes a major move out of the computer screen. BarkleyOKRP expands their performance marketing offerings with a new acquisition. Amazon’s investment in timely delivery pays dividends.

Special announcement: ELEVATE Summit announces first-ever in-person conference, September 16-17 in London.

• After merging in March, BarkleyOKRP acquires Adlucent to expand their performance marketing.
  
• Google cracks down on fake coupon content to protect consumers.
  
• Diversify content, build community, and secure sustainable revenue for niche sites.
  
• The 2024 Affiliate & Partnership Industry Review by IAB delves into industry insights, including advertiser spending trends and publisher revenue growth.
  
• Amazon bets on fast delivery — with monumental results.
  
• Marketers are shifting spend from big tech to affiliate marketing due to control issues.
  
• Affiliate marketing: Opportunity or online scam? Check out this crash course.

The post Affiliate Roundup: Elevate Summit, Niche Sites, & More appeared first on FMTC.

For a complete list of all merchant programs, please see our public-facing Directory. Current FMTC users can add new stores easily via signup links or the Manage Merchants page. (Clicking the link will allow you to see all unselected merchants that are currently available to add to your account.)

The post New FMTC Merchants Include CNC Tattoo, GE Appliances, Incase, L’Amour Pearls, & TikTok Shop appeared first on FMTC.

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: Cookies fight to see another day, Threads expands its creator offerings, and The NY Post provides a good use case for first-party data.

• Retail marketing firm Neptune Retail buys Quotient Technology for $430 million in cash.
  
• Revcontent Insider challenges claims on native ads, emphasizing their vitality.
  
• Google delays cookie deprecation, leaving marketers to pursue alternative solutions.
  
• Meta’s Threads, which is seeing stable growth, invites creators to earn bonuses.
  
• Estimating affiliate marketing growth is complex and often unpredictable; merchants are urged to focus on controllable aspects and view it as a long-term investment.
  
• The New York Post leverages first-party data for targeted ad sales and growth.

The post Affiliate Roundup: Neptune Retail’s M&A, Cookie Delays, & More appeared first on FMTC.

So many things have happened in the past 10 days it’s hard to choose what to write about! On top of everything else, I was at an entrepreneurs’ conference last week in Singapore. (Aside: If you are an owner/founder with an established business, reach out to me and I can connect you with this community, which includes a few affiliate marketers.)

Of all the developments, the one that seems most timely, if not significant, is Google’s recent inclusion of an anti-spam policy against “site reputation abuse,” including this specific example: “A news site hosting coupons provided by a third-party with little to no oversight or involvement from the hosting site, and where the main purpose is to manipulate search rankings.” 

Famed SEO Lily Ray asked on X/Twitter (doesn’t “ex-Twitter” make more sense than Twitter/X?) if enforcement of this would be manual or algorithmic, to which Google SearchLiaison responded, “Both,” indicating a serious level of intent. 

Forbes’ addition of a no-indexing tag to its coupon directory was cited over a week ago as an example of heading off a penalty, though multiple SEOs observed loss of SERP ranks and traffic for coupon and reviews pages. Ray contended there was a “double whammy” with the combination of no-indexing and algorithmic changes.

Since then, the coupon portion, managed by Upfeat Media, has apparently been shuttered entirely. (Forbes Vetted, which my sources indicate is operated separately, is still up.) The dramatic policy change and outcome merit some commentary. 

Upfeat Media, like its better known competitor, Global Savings Group, whose https://coupons.cnn.com/ is still up, is a subdomain leasing affiliate. For the record, they are, at most, indirect competitors to FMTC, because our core customer is an enterprise affiliate with its own relationships and platform. While we do have our sub-affiliate network called FreshReach, its strategy is speed to market and long-tail monetization, not being a concierge turnkey solution offering merchant negotiations, content curation, display technology, and backend operations. Moreover, the merchant sets are typically much smaller — in the low hundreds as opposed to FMTC’s low tens of thousands.

Thus, as a relatively neutral observer, I can sincerely say this takedown misses the real villains: sites that post totally fake data. While the frustration over search engine manipulation is understandable, subdomain leasing affiliates, which may also operate their own properties, generally publish valid, updated content. This means consumers have a good experience. When clickbait codes don’t work, that means there is a bad experience. My guess is that many people stop shopping through coupon sites entirely, which means merchants miss out, especially long-tail merchants.

My hope is that Google’s next ruling will be to penalize sites with demonstrably bad data, which should improve the overall user experience and, I think, the success of the affiliate channel.

The post Did Google Take Out the Wrong Guys? appeared first on FMTC.

For a complete list of all merchant programs, please see our public-facing Directory. Current FMTC users can add new stores easily via signup links or the Manage Merchants page. (Clicking the link will allow you to see all unselected merchants that are currently available to add to your account.)

The post New FMTC Merchants Include Foreo, Hamilton Watch, JLo Beauty, Trivago, & Wonderbly appeared first on FMTC.