What effect does direct linking have on your bottom line in affiliate marketing?

Most affiliate managers and brand owners disapprove of the practice of a direct link from an affiliate marketer's search campaign to the advertiser's website.

Although it is frowned upon, the habit may simply be something you dislike and find bothersome or it may become a more significant problem that leads to unwise judgments that end up costing money either directly or indirectly. To be assured, the impact must be assessed using real, tangible numbers.

What is direct linking?

Sending traffic straight to an affiliate offer from a traffic source is known as direct linking. In order to avoid the need for a landing page, an advertisement is put on the traffic source that, when clicked, takes the user directly to the offer.

It produces a one-step conversion procedure that is seamless for the visitor. It is a straightforward but constrained approach for affiliates to set up campaigns and test out new offers.

Direct linking occurs when an affiliate uses your web site address as its display URL in search ads. The structure of the search ad consists of the following:

• Display URN is your domain
• The destination URL is an affiliate redirect link
• The final landing page is part of your domain

Many times the affiliate will also re-use your ad copy in their ads—which makes the ad appear to be you.

How does direct linking impact your bottom line :

Customers do not notice a negative impact from this strategy because they ultimately land on your website, which is where they originally intended to go.

However, your bottom line will suffer as a result. Why is this: The same display URL can only be displayed by one advertiser at a time on Google and Yahoo. That implies that while your affiliate's advertisement is served, your advertisement is not, and vice versa. Your losses from this action probably include:

Increased CPC : In essence, you and your affiliate are vying to be served in the SERPs. You need a higher CPC and/or a better quality score in order to outperform your affiliate. Your quality scores ought to be the same as the affiliate is using your ad copy text and driving traffic to your landing page. As a result, your only area of competition is cost per click. You will back and forth with your affiliates, raising the cost for each keyword.

Fewer clicks : You give up clicks to your affiliate when their advertisements are delivered and yours are not. This implies that you will see a reduced volume of clicks on phrases where you are competing against your affiliate when you run your ROI or CPA models against your keyword list.

Lower impression volume : When your affiliates’ ads are being served, and yours are not, your affiliate is generating impressions which you will not receive.

Cookie confusion : When doing research or shopping, people frequently use the same keyword in repeated searches and return to the same adverts. Your affiliate will receive cookie credit for the sale if the customer first clicks on the affiliate's version of your advertisement and receives a cookie, then shops and clicks on your advertisement and makes a purchase. In such case, you would end up paying the affiliate twice for the same buyer—once for the click and once for the commission.

Data interpretation confusion : The affiliate’s ads appearing when yours are not can cause a great deal of havoc for you when analyzing keywords for important decisions such as pruning or bidding. You may find that effected keywords have higher CPC’s, lower volumes and undesirable ROI for you.

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Hope this was helpful

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