Recently I’ve had meetings with several senior agency contacts whose description of last year will be one that I hope we can avoid for some time. “Harrowing” and “terribly ugly” have now turned to “phew” for many, as the light seems to be approaching the end of the tunnel. We’ve all been caught up in one way or another and for many the decisive actions taken throughout 2009 have ensured that we are best placed with the new-year upon us. 2009’s positive performance has now spilled over into 2010 and it has coincided with a noticeable uplift in briefs and pitches, so client’s confidence begins to return.
2010 - A more positive year?
But it’s the deployment of that budget from senior marketers that will demand accountability. Pound for pound, the ROI must stack up and for some the speed of that return will need to be quicker than ever. And so it’s a relief that we’re in online and how we look forward to the plethora of online tracking tools developed throughout the noughties accounting for the seismic shift of consumers from the high street onto our websites and applications. There’s little doubt about it, we’re well placed to deliver strategies for our client base that are tried and tested. With the 10th anniversary of the Dotcom bust in March, online has grown up now and traditional media channels are consequently suffering.
Affiliates remain to be a growth sector in online marketing. It’s been over 5 years now since it was tarnished with the “wild west” brush and how we’ve came on. Education and understanding allow merchants to make the channel profitable and weave it into long term marketing objectives. Networks have grown up too, and for many fraud prevention is only one of the many feathers in the bow of a range of impressive network tools. And affiliates themselves are professional outfits, having reacted to the demands of the corporate purse and thus securing long term meaningful partnerships, moving away from the bedroom image and brand bidding confusion.
A suitable affiliate platform?
So we’re onto the year of the mobile and don’t we know it with our friends over at Apple reporting numbers of handsets sold going through the roof. The imminent roll-out across multiple network providers will create a critical mass that will deliver the numbers to drive a successful new ecommerce platform. Payment method roll-out solutions are still to be championed and applications are to be standardised, but soon we’ll see some of these applications be as important as some of the early noughties’ new websites. Or will we?
