Buy or Sell

For all its complexities the performance marketing space has only a few major pieces. Starting with the money, we have the advertisers. They pay the bills (most of the time). They come up with offers and more often than not they welcome additional distribution on a pay for performance basis. That’s where the networks come in. The best networks find the best deals which really means they  filter out those that suck and act as a central clearing house for the interaction between advertisers and the last leg of the stool, the publishers. Offers need traffic, and so that’s what the publishers provide.

Over the past number of years, the roles haven’t changed – there are advertisers, networks, and publishers – but who has played those roles has changed a bit, one becoming the other. It’s not quite an evolution. It’s almost like a see saw with people thinking the other side is greener, which in our world means more money for less work. Who doesn’t like to make more while working less? It’s practically been the motto for the performance marketing space.

• Advertiser to network – A good offer is a powerful hook. It’s also among the best lead generation tools to meet publishers. Not all advertisers want to work with publishers directly. Anyone who has tried it will tell you that it sounds a lot easier than it is. You don’t just take on the role of managing publishers casually. It also can require a new technology infrastructure in addition to the skill set of managing traffic relationships.  Yet, quite a few will make that jump. They start developing offers and move into the network role. The question for them is, do they want to start accepting other offers outside of their own.

• Network to advertiser – Just an advertiser who starts to develop more than one offer can move to become a network so too can a network become the advertisers. It is a natural extension for many reasons, one of which is the competitiveness of being a network. So often the technology is similar so it is offers that you end up differentiating on. Coming up with your own offers helps make the differentiation possible. The network’s question is how deep to get involved. Is it a white label or something more integrated.

• Publisher to network – Not surprisingly, publishers become networks too. When a publisher starts to have enough traffic, inevitably they either start to approach advertisers directly or have advertisers start to approach them. While a network who becomes an advertiser often does so for reasons outside of just margin, many times the motivation for moving from the publisher role to working directly with advertisers is simply to make more money. Many networks today started out as publishers first. It’s a great way to understand the business and there is only so much traffic that a single publisher can generate. That’s why a move to the network space is logical.

• The whole chain – Many companies will have their own offer. They will also buy traffic for it and manage third-party relationships, but very few, if any will also run third-party offers in the mix. Moving the next notch from advertiser to network or network to advertiser maintains some of the original DNA. Covering more than one notch often means being a different type of company.

We all tend to start somewhere, as either an advertiser, network or a publisher. We all know people who have moved from one to the other or who’s company has. The question is which side and which combination is best? Do you want to be a buyer or a seller. Not surprisingly there isn’t a definitive answer. The question is really what do you hate doing less. Some people don’t mind doing the dishes while other would rather take out the trash. Being an advertisers, publisher, or network all require that four letter word – work.

Advertiser – The move from network or publisher to advertiser is a big adjustment. There are a couple of different routes. The easiest path is creating a white label of someone else’s product. It doesn’t really count, though. When you start having to manage what really goes on behind the scenes – whether it is fulfillment or balancing lead buyers that is when you start to become an advertiser. It’s also why so many are happy not buying traffic, because the work of developing something that monetizes and can compete for traffic is a full time job. The first time you do it can be maddening. You look at similar offers and wonder why yours doesn’t convert as well. You get paid the same; your design looks similar; it should work. Are they doing something you aren’t? Is the money being made on a call center or some thank you offer that you can’t see. The work of being the advertiser is nothing but questions and slow tweaks. It’s not just a landing page; it’s a whole funnel…for every possible type of traffic. You have lots of control when compared to being a publisher, but the set up takes longer, and you end up operating blind for longer.

Publisher – Being a publisher can be a lot like a day trader. You don’t own the product. You just look for gaps, places you can buy cheap and monetize a higher rate of return. It looks so easy. Do a drop on an email, write some ads on Facebook. What a life. Set it and forget it; except that it’s never that way. Look the other way and you could spend a ton of money without knowing it; or, you might work amazingly hard to launch something only to find that it doesn’t have any traction. Then there are the advertisers. You don’t trust the way the pixels fire. Their site is down. They don’t convert well. For all that the publisher can do, so much ends up being out of their hands. It’s like having a lot of responsibility but not much control. It’s quicker to get started, but it’s really hard to get good. That’s why we see so many who want to be a publisher and who don’t want to invest the time to become an advertiser heading down that race to the bottom – misrepresentations.

Advertisers are from Venus and Publishers are from Mars. That might be what we learn. Maybe that makes the networks the sun?