Marketers have come a long way in the world of advertising. Traditional advertising uses television, radio, and billboards. These mediums were effective but had limitations. In conventional advertising, targeting the right audience has always been a mystery.
Digital advertising provided advertisers with a broader range of opportunities. It has assisted brands in reaching the appropriate audience and tracking performance to optimize campaigns. As the scope of digital advertising expanded, a variety of options emerged. One of these is affiliate marketing. Let's look at affiliate marketing in more detail:
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is where an affiliate earns a commission from the advertiser for each customer action.
Affiliates either run PPC campaigns to drive users to the advertiser's website or use their audience or influence to raise awareness about the advertiser's product.
Shift in the Advertising World
Digital advertising has undergone significant evolution in recent years. Previously, digital advertising was limited to search and display campaigns. Today, marketers are broadening their horizons by exploring various advertising opportunities in the digital space. Many social media-based or incentive campaigns have emerged as viable options for digital advertising.
Incentivized campaigns, also known as advertisements, are those in which each action is motivated by a reward. For example, download an app and receive Rs—50 cashback.
The loophole in Incent Campaigns
Many affiliates use incentive campaigns to boost their revenue and deceive advertisers. They incentivize campaigns on messaging platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp to reach a larger audience and give advertisers the impression that their ads receive a lot of traffic.
Marketers benefit from incentive campaigns because they help them acquire more users. However, in reality, only the affiliates benefit.
How do affiliates keep you in the dark?
- Showing High Installs
The affiliates use incentive campaigns to persuade users to download the app in exchange for a reward. As a result, affiliates assist advertisers in obtaining high installs and convincing them that their campaign is effective. However, users who install the app are often more interested in the reward than the app itself.
Users frequently uninstall the app within a few days, resulting in a high uninstall rate and a low lifetime value. Finally, advertisers should connect with genuinely interested users rather than paying affiliates for installs that add no value to the business.
- Faking Events
To pique users' interest, affiliates promote offers with incorrect messaging. They frequently use enticing offers to entice customers to take action to meet the KPIs. Let's say, for instance, "Make your first transaction and get Rs. 30 instant cashback".
Based on this, the advertiser compensates affiliates based on events received. (In this case, conducting the transaction). However, the quality of users could be improved because they take action solely for the benefit.
Real Case of One of the largest private sector Bank of India;
One of India's largest private sector banks ran incentive campaigns on Telegram, luring users into downloading the app with cashback offers. Users were also asked to complete a 1 Re transaction to meet the publisher's KPI.
Some of the messages we discovered in Telegram groups:
Solution against Incentive Fraud
We at mFilterIt use our advanced Brand protection solutions to monitor platforms that run incentive campaigns. Using our AI, ML, and data science capabilities, we provide a transparent report on affiliates running incentive campaigns in Telegram and WhatsApp groups. Brands can use our report to penalize or block fraudulent affiliates.
Collaborate with confidence.
Affiliate marketing is an effective marketing channel for expanding your audience's reach. With the right partner to detect fraudulent affiliates, you can confidently steer your business growth in the right direction and reap the benefits of affiliate marketing.
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