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New Search Engine Amplifies Affiliate Discounts
Affiliate marketing is filled with pros and cons and working with coupon/discount-focused affiliates can cause serious, long term problems for a marketer… under certain circumstances. As search engines continue to dominate the Web-based consumer shopping scene, they are constantly doing battle with those who wish to “game the system” (often times, affiliates and competitors) so as to drive increased sales… or steal them away. With the recent launch of Info.com things are taking another dramatic turn that marketers should pay attention to. This search player is actively showcasing discount-focused affiliate sites front-and-center.
So, what’s the problem with asking (at the top of a results page) “Are You Looking for [merchant name] Discounts?” and directing consumers to a page filled (exclusively) with affiliate search returns? There *are* problems but first I admit there’s a sunny side. These affiliates can provide new and existing customers with incentives to buy-buy-buy… at a higher AOV and frequency. Yet they may, concurrently, “teach” customers to buy only when a discount can be applied. How?
Consumers tend to interact with search engines by using brand names to navigate to corresponding URL’s… and affiliates use this understanding to their advantage. In simple terms, consumers navigate to a brand’s site… via typing a trademarked search term into a search engine… and witness, in response, a flood of coupon-focused Web sites (handing out discounts). It doesn’t take them long to realize that they should repeat this process and *always* look for a coupon when shopping… I’ve run some un-scientific research on this phenomenon myself.
I’ve been known to call this development of a “negative behavior pattern” (from the marketer’s perspective). To a varying degree, some marketers don’t care about being known as a “discount brand” as they thrive as one… it’s their main value offering. In other cases, it can be a branding problem that can, ultimately, result in “bad customers” (customers that damage profitability) that the company ends up “firing” (another controversial topic altogether).
So, again, what’s the news here? This is the first time I’ve ever seen a search engine, itself, designed from the ground up to embrace discount-based affiliate sites and offer them up above the fold to consumers. Indeed, Info.com relies on syndicated advertising feeds from other partners. They bill themselves as a “meta shopping engine” which is fairly unique and seems to place them in the comparison space to a degree… and/or in the same category as Froogle.
What does this mean to you, the marketer? Quite a bit, actually. From what I can tell you have absolutely no way to “work with” Info.com on any of the search results it returns (other than Kanoodle). You’re forced to work with their ad syndication partners (Overture, Google, Shopping.com, etc.)… or with affiliates. Like it or not, if you work with discount focused affiliates you can expect this search engine to make sure consumers take note of affiliate sites. For affiliates, this is a dream come true as there’s no additional cost involved to them.
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