DM News Discovers Affiliate Marketing

In an article released this week, the DM News seems to have just discovered Affiliate Marketing. When I read the article, I had to do a double take and check the date to make sure I was reading it correctly. Yes, this was written in 2005, not 1995.

The birth of technology has given rise to so much information, and, in its natural life cycle, its marriage to creativity has created marketing opportunities that couldn’t have been conceived 10 years ago. A good example of this marriage of technology and creativity is affiliate marketing.

Really, I bet Stephen Messer, the inventor of affiliate marketing, would have a thing or two to say about that!

As a primer in affiliate marketing as it was ten years ago, the article is actually pretty good. It explains what affiliate marketing is at a level that people out of the industry should be able to understand, so maybe you can use this when your Aunt Betty asks you what you do. It is a great example of best practices from the early days (user clicks on affiliate banner, etc.) and ignores the reality of today.

It also assumes that all affiliate tracking is done through 1×1 pixels – and the author does not even know what one is as she mis-defines the term.

Technically, an advertiser or seller of the product must be able to insert a pixel, an invisible image file, into the HTML code of the confirmation page in the order process. This allows the tracking of sales.

Aunt Betty may as well read that, because she would never understand data feeds, PPC arbitrage, co-branded sites, coupons, or any of the other successful ways that affiliates actually make money.

Twenty-first-century marketing has come of age.

Indeed.