Happy New Year. Let's get that out of the way first. So the year of 2018, there has been a lot of changes and yes, affiliate marketing is dead...
Not really, but it is heavily changing. With the year focusing on the data and privacy of how ads are distributed. Ad price increases and blackhat campaigns are getting harder. FB ads are getting tougher. Simple ads are not working as much.
There will be more efforts into a creative
Facebook Ad.. justments
I think Facebook will start to adjust their pricing and access to certain amount of data. I am not sure what will happen specifically but I think the audience pixel that we rely on will change dramatically.
Account strategies will also change, with the fight on fake accounts - it will be hard to manage to brand new accounts. Just managing accounts was a pain in 2018 and I think a lot more affiliates will automate such or stray away from.
Double Traffic Integration
I think this will be really popular in 2019, it just makes sense to optimize sources. For example, using a traffic source to fire retargeting pixels or the audience pixel at the click level. Then using those pixels to get better quality traffic. I see this becoming more popular with the eCom guys.
The reason why I think this will work is that more and more affiliates are going towards a more white hat strategy and if the CPC and CPA pan out, this strategy will work.
Influencer Traffic for eCom
The rise of influencer traffic as well as the fall of it. IG has become notorious for getting others to talk about your product. There are now more bots to help increase your followers and even likes.
Instagram is fighting this as has slightly started just a couple months back. Fighting bot traffic. This will put an end to the bot traffic IG, but I still notice some bot activity still.
True legit influencers are going to be where the cash is, targeting the true influencers with the blue check. It may be hard for someone who doesn't have the blue check to get some sponsors. In either case, I feel influencer traffic will continue to grow.
We can't seem to trust ourselves nowadays.
Death of Chat Bots
I kind of want chatbots to die, they serve no purpose in reality. Chatbots in the past sucks. Chatbots now still sucks. Some people are doing well with it, but I do not think it is a viable platform.
Some affiliates use it to create their own 'list' and push content to their new users, but I still think users do not want to toy with a bot - I personally hate customer service bots. Bots for trying to close on an offer, I think is harder.
Push Notification Rise
As the affiliate industry changes, affiliates will always want a new cheap traffic source to continue to make money off. Push traffic is still brand new and a lot of traffic networks are aggressively trying to grow their own internal source.
Push is a great source because it is an opt-in in style traffic. Users have to opt-in to receive alerts. These alerts are then sold as a traffic source for marketers.
I have done case studies on 2 ad networks:
I also think though affiliates and the traffic source might destroy this new source as well. I wrote about my thoughts here.
In all honesty, a lot of affiliates are moving towards the brand and white label business. Using their marketing skill to start a startup or an actual agency. It is better to utilize the skills to create something more sustainable.
Affiliate marketing will never die because it is a skill that teaches you about the internet, copywriting, a
NOW, I am not sure if I am seeing this because I am older BUT I also wonder if there is a young affiliate that see this industry differently. The times where bottles were everything!
