Yesterday, August 2nd, 2022, the Performance Marketing Association (PMA) officially released the results of their latest study into affiliate marketing. The PMA is a trade association which works for the affiliate marketing industry and the partnership marketing industries. This new study showed that the investment in affiliate marketing last year reached a total of $9.1 billion. This is an increase of 47% compared to the last industry report that was released back in 2018.
The Performance Marketing Association was founded in 2008 and works as a nonprofit trading association that aims to increase awareness and the reputation of performance marketing. They achieve this by conducting surveys and reports which are demonstrating to the marketing industry the value that performance marketing is bringing and the many opportunities for growth that are presented by this marketing channel. Performance marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry and the PMA is working hard to showcase the benefits of this to the wider marketing industry.
The most recent study conducted by the PMA is their Performance Marketing Industry Study which used underlying data from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). It showed a lot of positive results for the affiliate and performance marketing industries, notably that in 2021 investment in affiliate marketing resulted in a massive $71 billion in sales on eCommerce sites. As well as this, it found that there was an average of 12:1 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This means that every $1 that was invested in eCommerce ad marketing returned $12 in revenue.
Information for the Performance Marketing Industry Study was taken from seven of the biggest names in affiliate marketing: Ascend by Partnerize, Awin, Partnerize, CJ, ShareASale, LinkConnector and Rakuten Advertising. As well as this, there was a total of 16 different affiliate bodies in a range of niches and sizes which helped the study by contributing insights which allowed researchers to better understand the overall size of the market. The resulting data from the study is a reflection of industry-wide estimates and includes those platforms which participated as well as those which did not.
The Performance Marketing Industry Study showed that there are several factors involved in driving the high levels of growth that have been recorded over the last several years in the affiliate marketing channels. The first of these is that senior marketing executives are beginning to more accurately realise the quality of traffic coming from affiliate marketing. They are also beginning to be more accepting of and willing to integrate payment models such as a pay-for-performance model which rewards marketing partners with compensation only for each successful conversion or action taken by a consumer. This method opens up more marketing budget as it is only being used on successful conversions, so no money is being spent on unsuccessful marketing attempts.
As well as this, the study showed that the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in terms of purchasing patterns and consumer behaviour have led to substantial digital channel growth as well as an increase in mobile spending and mobile sales. In addition, the study showed that compared to other channels of digital marketing, affiliate marketing was showing one of the stronger examples of ROAS. Affiliate marketing has also been recently taken on by several new industries such as the Auto industry, B2B marketing and CPG.
The study as a whole shows that affiliate marketing is on the rise. The appeal in “traditional affiliates” is still clearly very strong, as displayed by the figures showing that just over half of spending went on loyalty, rewards and cashback as well as voucher, rebate and coupon publishers, which is significantly more than it has been in other years to date. Investment in subnetwork and content publishing made up 27% of investment in the channel. These types of publishers experiencing a growth in revenue are reflective of the increase in the recognition the channel is receiving at every stage of the consumer buying funnel.
In terms of marketing for brands, affiliate marketing is proving to be one of the leaders in terms of performance marketing. The Performance Marketing Industry Study has shown once again to the wider marketing industry that affiliate marketing is not something to be missed out on, and people finally appear to be taking notice. The growth in affiliate marketing investment has shown a real rise in the respect and recognition for this channel, and it looks to only be set to increase.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of affiliate marketing and how you can build and scale your affiliate marketing program to boost your business, then tune into the Affiverse talk as a part of the Performance Marketing Association conference today!
