Bevo Media Affiliate Exchange - Explanation, FAQs, Feedback - *Huge Project (20)
Bevo Media Affiliate Exchange - Explanation, FAQs, Feedback - *Huge Project
Hey guys - I am looking for some quality feedback on a huge project that we have been working on; it’s really been the ultimate vision for Bevo Media since we started it back in 2008. I've spoken with Jordan about this post and I could not think of a better community to share this with. The purpose of this post is not just for your feedback, but also for your help. We want to execute a huge vision, something that changes this industry for the better, especially for the affiliates. I'll try to break this down in the simplest form possible:
What we are launching:
Instead of trying to explain it all in this post, I'll link to a blog post which provides more in-depth detail. It is basically a real time bidding platform for affiliate traffic where you will get paid PER CLICK for your traffic as an affiliate (see post for specifics) : http://blog.bevomedia.com/2013/06/26...d-advertisers/
The Objective:
The logic behind the new Bevo platform is simple. Affiliates get paid, per click, based on their historical conversion metrics of their CPA campaign, to insert an advertiser’s offer in their proprietary affiliate "equation". The affiliate gets paid a CPC rate higher than the current EPC they are receiving from their affiliate offer. In exchange, an advertiser has access to a stream of the highly coveted affiliate's traffic, which has proven to convert, and which the advertiser would not otherwise have access to unless they owned a top converting offer in the industry.
As an affiliate YOU are the one who mastered the hardest part of any business - getting sales. The advertiser, on the other hand, is the one who is building their business and has all the flexibility on the backend (changing prices, upsells, etc). The affiliate exchange setup allows affiliates to mitigate the risk of poor performance days back to the advertisers, because as long as the affiliate’s performance is good overall, the advertiser will still pay a top EPC for that steady stream of quality traffic. This should ultimately lead to more overall $ in the affiliate marketers pocket.
How it works and the potential:
The real kicker here is the way we have this setup from the advertiser end. This is all designed to be implemented in the real time bidding (RTB) environment. What this means is that other 3rd party Demand Side Platforms (otherwise known as DSPs ), can sell this traffic without even knowing what Bevo Media is. We are in talks with a few of the biggest DSPs out there right now, and if this works the way it should, the demand for this inventory should be virtually unlimited. This means that there will be thousands of advertisers/agencies/brands out there competing and bidding on your traffic stream, which will increase your EPC's to get top dollar. Take a look at this infograph for a better idea of setup: http://bevomedia.com/images/bevo-environment.png
What we are looking for:
We've spent the past several months developing and programming the technology to handle all of this. Our platform is now ready for affiliates to dynamically “auction off” their traffic streams for the highest EPC among thousands of advertisers. Now that the technology is in place, we need you guys, the affiliates, to get on the exchange and see the benefit of increasing EPC’s all around in your traffic streams.
For being as creative as the individuals in this industry are, compared to other areas of online marketing, the technology innovation in the affiliate space is marginal at best. If anything, the recent events that went on with some of these companies has hurt the overall industry outlook even more, making the lack of innovation problem worse. I like to take swings at big ideas, but need your help to actually set the wheels in motion. This platform does not work without lot’s of successful affiliates, so we need quality affiliates integrated in the exchange, try it out, and see how well it can improve your ROI. I can tell you that your feedback would be greatly appreciated. The effort we’ve put into this project has been greater than I can even describe in words. I’m a firm believer that if you are providing true value across the board, then everything else will fall into place. I’m interested to hear thoughts, feedback, questions, comments, insults, compliments, and everything in between.
This is an absolutely awesome idea guys. I’ve heard about this through the grapevine for quite some time now. Expect an application soon 
Great post Ryan! I’ve will say publicly that I’ve been integrated with the exchange for about a month now and it has been fantastic. You really have nothing to lose by doing this - you either get paid per click MORE than you are currently converting at, or you continue promoting your old CPA offer. Really, really big potential in this!
I tested it out from the advertiser point of view after your booth at adtech. Here is my feedback:
1.) The affiliate exchange - This solves a huge problem for offer owners/advertisers who are focused on performance. The leads are there, you just have to find the affiliates, THEN convince the affiliates to run your traffic. This solves that in an easy to understand format.
2.) The display exchange - It’s about time someone made a platform that can compete with SiteScout. I love the usability and high level reporting options. Have all my remarketing set up through it.
In total, I am excited to see this come together and grow.
This is really interesting.
I was wondering, from the affiliate perspective...
When you're promoting a CPA offer. Say, a mature dating website.
You're targeting e.g. females age 40+ and telling they're gonna meet mature men on a dating website.
Would that kind of traffic work with the exchange?
I mean, that traffic would only make sense for a few select advertisers, right?
To be specific, would this help someone marketing CPA dating offers on POF?
Also, would people start running CPA with you and then after we have enough data we run by CPC? Is that how it works?
thanks!
If you get paid based on historical EPC, which I assume is based on your clicks/conversions on your original affiliate offer run with network X, could people not game your system by getting fake conversions added in? It wouldn't be technically difficult to generate extra postbacks or have an AM sneakily fire more conversions off. If it a $0.01 EPC change made a difference of $xx,xxx to revenue....
@dingdong - The exchange is broken down into niche and subniche. The breakdown gets very specific (ex: dating >> mature). We also have account managers on both the affiliate and the advertiser side to help manually connect the dots starting off.
We have CPA built into the system as well. For example, a few of our users right now got paid on a CPC basis for a few thousands dollars, until the advertiser got to see how the traffic backed out for them, then offered a CPA agreement. Of course the affiliate is must approve of the CPA offer, and doesnt need to accept if they do not want to. The advertiser also has the ability to "Offer CPA to entire industry", in which all of our partnered networks and direct affiliates get notified of the deal. This is made to solve the issue of having product owners have as much (or little) exposure as they'd like, while still giving the affiliates the ability to mitigate risk of bad days.
@zeno - we manually verify the conversions statistics for first time users. This is why we prescreen every affiliate beforehand (I have been personally talking to each affiliate to gauge). With this being said, there are 2 very powerful defense mechanisms to your point:
1.) The advertisers only know broad ranges of historical stats. Ex: 2500-5000 clicks daily, 5-10% conv rate, etc. So trying to game the stats a few conversions wont do much.
2.) The advertisers are going to test affiliates as they come in, the same way a display advertiser tests different site placements, etc. If an affiliate isnt backing out for them, they will either lower their bid price, or pull the offer. If we see the same affiliate is constantly not living up to their listing, we will either remove that affiliate or re-adjust their metrics on the ad buying platform to keep advertisers expectations realistic. Dont forget there is a manual component of this that will monitor with the advertisers to make sure all the dots are aligned.
Hope that helps!
Ryan, I still see EWA advertised in several places once logged in. This might give some users the impression that the site is no longer updated.
What i like the most about this is that i can actually do something with my old campaigns that i cant find any offers for anymore. Just applied. Let me know when I can get integrated. Thanks
@adrian - thanks for the headsup - you are correct, it appears their logo is still rotating in a spot in the classroom. I'll get the designers to update in the morning.
@styl3 - PM me the email you use to apply and I'll hit you up.
So are you a network yourself or a middle man between networks and affiliates? Or do advertiser go dreictly through you as well?
Why do networks work with you? Aren't you taking their revenue away?
We are more of a compliment to the networks. Think of it as an additional way for affiliates to monetize their traffic. Affiliates promote their affiliate CPA offers as they normally would with their network of choice, and if an advertiser comes along and thinks they can beat their current EPC, they will bid higher. At that point, the advertisers offer will instantly rotate into the affiliates tracking link, and the affiliate will begin getting paid on a CPC basis at a rate higher than their EPC. We take on the advertisers directly at the moment.
The networks themselves who are partnered are actually integrated in the Supply side (affiliate) end of this as well. So they can further monetize their affiliates traffic, then when we hook into the 3rd party DSPs, that will contribute to the demand side of everything. So we would essentially have unlimited supply from all of our partnered affiliate networks, and unlimited demand from all of our integrated DSPs. This is why Bevo was integrated with network partnerships from the start when we launched the platform in 2010, and we built our own Display DSP inside of our ad exchange as well.
Curious, will you offer popunders in the exchange. I apologize if this was already answered.
lanikai87 - can you be more specific to what you are referencing? There are 2 ways to answer you questions depending on what you are referring to:
1.) The affiliate exchange does allow affiliates who use popunders as a traffic source. The EPC's are all relative to the traffic source they are running. Likewise, you can bid on these affiliates as an advertiser.
2.) Our display exchange, which allows you to place ads on any website in the real time bidding environment, currently does not support popunders.
Hope that helps and if you have any other questions, let me know!
This sounds great. But as a cynic I have to ask the question what risks or downsides do you see for affiliates using this exchange?
@MrGreen - in all honesty, there really is no negative at all. You get integrated into the exchange listed with the EPC you need. If an advertiser comes to our ad buying platform and is willing to bid higher per click than you are receiving, you get notified and then the advertisers offer rotates into your link - now paying you on a CPC basis.
As an affiliate, you have the ability to require manually approval of all bids that come in (in case you need up update landing page/creatives), and also require a minimum commitment amount incase you want advertiser to commit larger budgets for your clicks. You even have the ability to stack commitment periods on top of each other (for example, I can accept 1 bid for $2/click and $2k commitment, then next for $2.25/click $3k commitment, and $1.90/click for $5k commitment.... you will have your next $10k of clicks locked in from multiple advertisers).
If there are no bidding advertisers, the link we give you will redirect to a default CPA offer that you input, meaning you promote as you normally would. You can also just get listed in the exchange and only switch in the Bevo link when a new bid comes in and is active (similar to just switching offers). This is really meant to be a value-added way of making more for your campaign as an affiliate. There are alot of advertisers out there who never got into the affiliate world simply because they dont understand it and/or dont want to deal with all the obstacles involved. This breaks it down in a more traditional model (CPC) that advertisers are use to, with the ultimate goal of bringing more advertiser dollars into the affiliate world.
Lastly, I will add that this has been the vision from the start of the Bevo project in 2008. There has been an unbelievable amount of thought in the best way of making this type of exchange. We've thought of all the potential issues here, and came up with solutions to every scenario. As you can imagine, working with this idea for 5 years really has alot of strategy behind every feature, and as with any technology, it is never over and will always be getting more and more supporting features integrated.
Long answer to your question, but I hope that adds a little clarity.
I'll give you credit, it's a smart idea.
Do you have functionality split the traffic between the gEPC bid and to an offer of choice? The reason I ask that is with my campaigns I keep trying to improve my EPCs. So at the start of the campaign I would be happy with lower gEPCs than I would when it is more optimized.
I'm interested to see how this plays out.
You mention "The networks themselves who are partnered are actually integrated in the Supply side (affiliate) end of this as well. So they can further monetize their affiliates traffic"
By this do you mean that the affiliate network can act just like an affiliate and optimise what offers their (affiliates) traffic goes to? In other words... send our traffic to places we didn't intend for it to go? That would get messy. Or could networks bid on affiliate traffic in the same way as an advertiser does, thus bringing in more revenue to the same or similar offer but through them instead, potentially without that affiliate being registered with them.
Still struggling to see how the affiliate networks really get a lot out of this, since they can't easily compete with the advertisers, may have more risk with affiliates they have no relationship with, might only be able to buy out the remnant traffic available and so on.
@MrGreen - Thanks for the good feedback. In regards to split testing CPC vs CPA, the way the system is setup now will support 1.) being paid per click 2.) being paid per CPA 3.) redirect to default offer. The system will show you the amount of leads you have generated for the campaign, even though you are being paid per click. This should help you measure out how much you would have made on a CPA basis. However, being that the CPC you get is based off your CPA, I'd imagine the CPC would more likely be the higher in most cases, and definitely the most predictable from the affiliate standpoint. The great part about this is this is just the beginning. We will continue to build more features as the project develops to help create a stronger marketplace. The possibilities here are endless.
@Zeno - What I mean by the networks being able to integrate into the system, is that networks can optionally broker deals to their affiliates, monetize remanent traffic, gain access to exclusive advertisers, etc. We are laying out technology into our networks platform (http://networks.bevomedia.com) to make integration into the exchange as seamless as possible for networks. At the end of the day, its all a numbers game. What the traffic is worth, regardless who is sending it, is entirely relative the advertisers needs. If the traffic you are sending is backing out, the advertiser will keep it going. If it isnt, the advertiser will either pull their budget or adjust their bid. The objective here is to create a more transparent marketplace. We can debate for days who benefits the most from the exchange, however my viewpoint is that as long as we are in position to facilitate our objective, everything else will fall into place.
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