Comments on: Scott Bourne says to avoid PPA - but he may be wrong

By: Karl

Karl — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:04:04 +0000

Don’t forget that many affiliate programs allow for return visits by using cookies. This allows for the fact the transaction may not happen right away.

By: Matt Searles

Matt Searles — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:22:21 +0000

Very interesting.

I tend to think there’s some value to the exposure… how many times do you have to be exposed to something before you recognize that it exists.. if you look at a brand as a “complex of associations” where all the points of exposure work to build that complex.. how would a payment scheme, that focused on a PPA metric, effect the way business is done? It seems like.. if it leads you away from “complex building” does that infuse a certain amount of entropy into the system?

I say this as a neophyte who knows nothing about sales or marketing, compared with where you are at..

By: Christopher S. Penn

Christopher S. Penn — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:23:13 +0000

/me plots what a GrammarGirl student loan product would look like

By: Mignon

Mignon — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:20:51 +0000

Yes, I think I would hold out for the private label brand, and I would be willing to take less for it because it is reinforcing my brand instead of theirs. Of course, I would need extremely high confidence in the quality of the product because it would be reflecting on my brand.

By: Christopher S. Penn

Christopher S. Penn — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:12:22 +0000

That begs the question - would you hold out for a white-label/private label brand?

For example, if you signed up for StudentATM, would you accept a lower payment for a private label “GrammarGirl Consolidation Loan” than for the “Student Loan Network Consolidation Loan”, assuming that you wanted to offer that product?

By: Mignon

Mignon — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:07:32 +0000

In my mind, there is a big difference between an advertiser such as the Student Loan Network and a large global brand. SLN isn’t likely to spend money on branding campaigns, but large global brands do spend money that way.

I’m concerned that PPA is just a way for large global brands to get discounted branding campaigns. I’ve always thought the Amazon affiliate program was a brilliant way for Amazon to get a lot of free publicity. I’m not complaining–I use their program–but they get an amazing amount of free exposure from the millions of websites that display that “Buy from Amazon” button and sell very few books.

The brand seeps into my consciousness, and when I think about buying a book, I go to Amazon not the website (or 100 websites) where I saw their logo.