Capitalizing on mobile shopping trends in affiliate (blogs.imediaconnection.com)

Mobile marketing is among the hottest topics in digital, so it won’t surprise you to learn that CJU offered a special session on how advertisers can capitalize on consumer engagement via phones and tablets. With recent comScore data indicating that 60% of connected consumer media time now takes place on mobile devices, it’s clear that extending the power of affiliate into this area is a big opportunity area.

The story gets even more interesting when you look more closely at Mobile. Both comScore and Nielsen say that more than 80% of consumer mobile time occurs in apps. Thus, mobile marketing must – to a large extent – be focused on in-app marketing.

A key part of the CJU discussion related to an offering called App Engagement. App Engagement allows an advertiser to track and pay commissions on publisher-driven, in-app events.  For example, a publisher includes a banner on their mobile landing page that promotes an advertiser’s free app.  A user clicks on the banner and is taken to the App/Play Store where they can download the app.  Once they download it, they can open the app.  Inside the app, the user can take any number of actions including registering their account, signing up for emails and making a purchase.

All of the actions taken in-app -- from the 1^st open (known as an active install or download) to the email sign-up and/or the sale -- can now be tracked and commissioned via CJ’s App Engagement solution.

By leveraging the pay-for-performance nature of affiliate, advertisers can use App Engagement to reap a host of benefits:

• Promoting their apps to a broad audience cost effectively
• Engaging new audiences via both iOS and Android, including many consumers who leverage mobile for most or even all of their connected activities.
• Driving app installs to grow brand awareness and engagement
• Attract new app-focused publishers to their affiliate programs
• Leverage existing affiliates to drive additional brand awareness and revenue

What’s clear is that the breadth and nature of affiliate marketing are changing just as quickly as for the total industry. More evidence that far from being a staid industry, affiliate and CJ Affiliate continue to lead in innovations.