When setting up an affiliate program, each merchant/advertiser gets to a point when they need to decide which creatives to offer affiliates to use for the promotion of the merchant’s products/services.

If I were to rank merchant creatives in order of importance (to affiliates), and it were a retail-oriented web merchant (employing a pay-per-sale remuneration model), my list would look as follows:

1. Text links
2. Data feed (or individual product links)
3. Banners
4. Widgets, search boxes, etc
5. Video
6. Flash

Interestingly, it isn’t unusual to see an affiliate program without any text links at all. That’s no good. Historically, text (i) have a significantly higher CTR (clickthrough rate) than banners, and (ii) they almost always convert better. Why “almost”? Well, apparently much depends on the type of an affiliate program.

Here’s some interesting data I’ve just collected for merchants (and affiliates) to review and compare:

Performance of Affiliate Links
(PPS affiliate program / retail merchant)

Performance of Affiliate Links
(PPL affiliate program / insurance vertical)

So, in a B2C affiliate program of an e-tailer we see that:

1. Product links have the highest CTR (as expected)
2. Text links outperform all other links (I’ll comment separately about Flash below) on CTR and CR (conversion rate)
3. Banners have the lowest CTR of all other creatives in the program
4. Flash links show a surprisingly beautiful CTR, and an excellent CR of over 7%, but, in all honesty, the sample is too small to make any final conclusions on this one

In a B2C affiliate program of an insurance company we see a very interesting picture (one that is somewhat different from the above-described one):

1. On the CTR front text links outperform banners with a truly impressive lead (60% vs 0.3%)
2. But on the CR front banners seem to be significantly more effective than text links, having a 7+ times better conversion (5.28% vs 0.74%)

Conclusion: By all means, practice an assortment strategy when it comes to affiliate creatives. Cover all of the above, and beyond (see below), and let affiliates experiment with different kinds of links.

It is unfortunate that we weren’t able to compare video creatives to the above-mentioned ones (the network that these programs are on doesn’t allow for video ads yet). Just yesterday, eMarketer has published results of a study which revealed video that ads have an 83% higher dwell time than non-video ads (57 seconds for video, and 31 seconds for non-video creatives). It would’ve been really interesting to see how their CTR and conversion rate compares to text, banners, and other types of affiliate links.

Additionally, we haven’t been able to include widgets, search forms, and other types of creatives in the above comparisons.

If you have any additional creative comparison information, or any other thoughts on the subject, please share them in the “Comments” are below.

I have just received an affiliate-geared newsletter from the affiliate program manager at FootballFanatics.com, and it instantly reminded me of the topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. It’s the topic of dynamic affiliate banners. Are you using these in your affiliate program? If you aren’t, you should be, as it will immediately make you stand out among your competition.

Definitions first, and then I will provide you with a few exemplary contexts.

Traditionally, “dynamic banner display means that the same banner advertisement changes with each refresh of the page” making it possible to display “a myriad of ads on a Web site without having to clutter a single Web page” [source]. In affiliate programs the situation is similar, yet a little different. When a merchant offers a dynamic banner, it essentially implies a self-renewing creative, which does not need any maintenance on the affiliate side (beyond the initial placement, of course). An affiliate just places the banner code on his/her site, and every time the merchant decides to update this particular banner, they just do it on their end, and it self-updates on all affiliate sites that use it.

Some of the most suitable contexts for the use of dynamic banners are:

• Seasonal (or holiday-related) banners
• Deals of the day (week, or any other time period) banners
• Coupon banners

Here’s that example from the FootballFanatics.com affiliate newsletter that I have referenced above:

We are … moving to making our banners “Dynamic”. What does this mean? That we will automatically update these banners with current events such as a championship, signing or current season. This will allow you to take advantage of what is selling at any time! These banners are named “NCAA Mens (Dynamic)” in our banner inventory so they will be updated with any events in the NCAA Mens sports world.  (For Example: These NCAA Men’s banners will promote NCAA Basketball now during March Madness but will be switched to Baseball when that season starts)

This is a perfect example of how to make your seasonal creatives dynamic.

If you aren’t doing this in your affiliate program yet, today is a good day to start!

You’ve made a decision to start an affiliate program, decided on the tracking platform to use, and now you’re facing multiple questions, one of which may be worded this way: How do I put together best possible banners for affiliates to use for my program?

To a great extent, this question has already been answered in the following articles of mine:

• What Size Banners Should an Affiliate Program Have?
• 10 Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Affiliate Banners
• What Size Should Affiliate Banner Files Be?
• Examples of Affiliate Banners

However, there is one thing that I haven’t yet talked about. It’s a secret that affiliate program managers do not tend to share. I will, but let’s begin with a definition:

…competitive intelligence involves monitoring the company’s competitive environment, including customers, competitors, political and legal developments (regulations and laws), and social forces… The two main tasks are the collection and the analysis of intelligence. (Coombs, 2008, PSI Handbook of Business Security, pp. 217-218 / bold font and italics mine).

Employing the competitive intelligence approach is extremely helpful throughout the whole process of affiliate program management, and the affiliate program setup stage is a perfect time to start. It will help you build a competitive affiliate program, and one of the fronts on which you want to stay competitive is the creative front.

Open an affiliate account with the affiliate networks on which your competitors run their affiliate programs. Many affiliate networks allow affiliates to sort affiliate programs’ links by EPC (which normally stands for average affiliate earnings on 100 clicks on a link). Analyze the wording, and the design of your competitors’ best performing links, and when once you’ve gotten a clear idea of what works well for them, write down the text and design ideas you want to experiment with. This should give you good information to start with, but never stop experimenting (read: split-testing) and improving the quality of your affiliate creatives. This will be of benefit both to you as an advertiser, and to your affiliates.