A good account of online ads

The article “A new nail in banner advertising’s coffin” (MW February 22) sheds a positive light on the various tools which are currently being applied to “beef up” the banner’s performance.

I do, however, have one problem with the Messaging Plus formula developed by Cnet – e-businesses still have to pay an up-front tenancy fee. Sure, contextualisation is a fantastic alternative to a static banner, ensuring a targeted audience and increased click-through rate, but it is the pay-for-performance models, such as affiliate marketing, which are proving to be the most cost-effective way to market online.

Affiliate marketing provides marketing directors with an accountable marketing structure to submit to their cost-conscious managing director.

Affiliate marketing, (conceived in the US in 1996 and launched in the UK in the summer of 1999) is the leading pay-for-performance marketing technique. It provides merchants (sites which sell a product or service) and affiliates (sites which have an audience that can be converted to sales) with the ability to form revenue-sharing partnerships.

After the affiliate displays a product link (in context as an embedded or “deep link”, or as a creative button) to a merchant’s site, the affiliate earns a commission after the customer makes a purchase from the merchant. The merchant increases audience reach and sales while the affiliate gains a new revenue stream. Everyone is happy and, most importantly, everyone makes a profit.

Where is the accountability on the Messaging Plus service?

Margaret Bailey Rieger

UK marketing and communications manager, MagicButton.Net