As another inspiring Affiliate Summit drew to a close, I thought about the conversations that I had over the course of 3 days with some incredible affiliates. These businesses live and die by financing the marketing efforts of thousands of multi-channel advertisers, which begs the question: How much money are affiliates losing to in-store sales?

Untapped Opportunity in Affiliate Marketing
It’s a fairly typical story; a consumer clicks on an affiliate link to an online retailer, browses the website, and decides to go into the store to make the purchase.

In fact, the story is far more typical than most affiliates may know. Recent research suggests that 89% of consumers browse online before making a purchase (BIG Research 2007), but < 7% of retail sales actually take place online (Forrester, “The State of Retailing Online” 2007).

Another important data point is that online advertising drives $6 of in-store revenue for every $1 online (Yahoo! & comScore, “Research Online, Buy Offline” 2007). Commissions have traditionally only been earned on online revenue. Imagine what kinds of commissions could be earned by promoting in-store purchases.

What Does This Mean for Affiliates?
For most affiliates, this means that valuable time and money spent promoting a multi-channel merchant can often lead to under-compensation for affiliate marketing efforts that result in an in-store purchase.

This also means that there is a broader opportunity for affiliates to promote new categories of advertisers with in-store purchases, such as manufacturers and restaurants.

In-Store Affiliate Marketing
The inability to track online advertisements to in-store purchases has also impacted merchants, who have a need to understand the impact of online advertising on in-store sales.

Having an affiliate marketing solution would provide the transparency and tracking solution desired by most large advertisers to bridge the gap between online and in-store.

Affiliate Marketing 2.0
As online affiliate marketing continues to grow and merchants begin to break down silos between in-store and online marketing teams, we are entering Version 2.0 of affiliate marketing.

Version 2.0 means expanding from e-commerce to the 93% of retail sales that take place in-store. Version 2.0 also means expanding the affiliate community to include mobile and print affiliates.
The next generation of affiliate marketers will be developing new technology to connect online ads to in-store purchases. We should all be incredibly excited for the possibilities that this will provide for both affiliates and advertisers.

The authors are co-founders at RevTrax, a leading in-store affiliate network, and can be reached at Seth@RevTrax.com or Jonathan@RevTrax.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 3 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue3.pdf
FeedFront issue 3 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-3/