Affiliate Industry Preview: Todd Crawford of Impact Radius

As part of the ReveNews 2012 Affiliate Industry Preview Series, I interviewed affiliate marketing industry leaders to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2012. Today’s interview is with Todd Crawford, Co-Founder of Impact Radius.

Angel: How do you feel about the health of the Affiliate Industry overall?

Todd: The industry has continued to mature each year and has established itself as a valuable marketing channel/business model. The numbers are very telling—each year they keep going up!

Angel: Beyond posting coupons, how would you like to see affiliates use social media?

Todd: Social media is a consumer-friendly channel that seems to appeal to people looking for information on things they are interested in. So I think we will still see it used primarily for deals, offers and promotions.

Angel: What excites you most about mobile?

Todd: Mobile is poised to shift consumer behavior as smart phones become more a part of everyone’s lives. Similar to how the internet slowly shifted consumers’ buying habits, mobile will do the same.

Angel: In what type of affiliate (coupon, loyalty, etc) would you like to see more of?

Todd: We would like to see more mobile apps driving consumer awareness of deals and promotions.

Angel: A lot of scrutiny has been placed on the SOPA legislation. How will it impact things if legislation like it passed?

Todd: First, as an organization, we’re hopeful it won’t pass. But if it were to pass, I am not sure it would have much of an impact on the performance marketing industry since it is dealing with copyright infringement abuse and the vast majority of media partners do not violate IP and copyrights (and if they are, advertisers shouldn’t be working with them). Enforcement will be manual and difficult. The government will primarily target larger companies where the majority of issues and harm are occurring.

Angel: How did Illinois passing the so-called Amazon tax impact the industry? Have we seen the worst of it?

Todd: We haven’t seen the end of the Amazon tax issue. Until the federal government creates a national internet tax, this issue will continue to harm small business across America.

Angel: How did the Top 25 Performance Marketing Influencers List come about? As with any “top” list there was controversy, what did you learn from it?

Todd: The list was created to recognize and help shine a spotlight on people contributing to the industry in a public manner through blog posts and social media. We combined several objective data points to identify and rank the top influencers. We knew going into it that it wouldn’t be perfect, but believed that the list would provide a great resource for others wanting to “tune in” to the industry and get diverse perspectives and information.

Angel: What is Generation and what will it do for your partners?

Todd: Generation is our flagship performance marketing partner management platform. It is the most advanced product of its kind. Generation offers advertisers the benefits of a private-branded, in-house solutions and the added reach of a network type solution all in one product at a fixed monthly costs.

Angel: What are Impact Radius’s goals in 2012?

Todd: Impact Radius’ primary goal for 2012 is to continue to develop our products: Generation, Foundation, Attribution, Coalition, Origination, and the Marketplace. We have a great product roadmap and will continue to bring new and innovative features to market in 2012.

I’d like to thank Todd Crawford for taking the time to participate in our interview series. Tune in tomorrow when we talk with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit.

About Angel Djambazov

Born in Bulgaria, Angel Djambazov has spent his professional career in the fields of journalism and online marketing. In his journalistic career he worked as an editor on several newspapers and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Wyoming Homes and Living Magazine. Later his career path led to online marketing where while working at OnlineShoes he earned the Affiliate Manager of the Year (2006) award at the Affiliate Summit, and In-house Manager of the Year (2006) award by ABestWeb.

For four years Angel served as OPM for Jones Soda for which he won his second Affiliate Manger of the Year (2009) award at Affiliate Summit.

Currently Angel serves as OPM for KEEN Footwear and MedicalRecords.com. His former clients include: Dell, Real Networks, Jones Soda, Intelius, Graphicly, Chrome Bags, Onlineshoes.com, Vitamin Angels, The Safecig, and Bag Borrow or Steal.

Angel is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher for ReveNews.com and ReveNews.org.

Angel lives north of Seattle, spending his free time reading up on obscure scientific references made by his wife MGX, while keeping up with a horde of cats and a library of books.

You can find Angel on Twitter @djambazov.

Website: http://www.revenews.com