As part of the Revenews 2008 Network Preview Series, I interviewed representatives from the four major networks to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2008. Today's interview is with Brian Littleton, President/CEO, ShareASale.

What challenges are currently facing the affiliate industry?

"I think one of the challenges for the industry is expansion," said Brian. "Affiliate marketing is a small subset of the overall marketing plan a company would base its online and offline strategy upon. As that component it should serve to bolster the advertiser's goals. Recently I have started to see a growing concern among advertisers that affiliate marketing may be cannibalizing their other efforts as opposed to supplementing their overall strategy. So from an industry perspective I think it is critical to insure the industry can maintain its expansion without supplanting the advertiser's other marketing efforts."

From his active involvement in industry forums and discussions, it has become very apparent to Brian that communication between affiliates and advertisers has enormous room for improvement industry wide. "From ShareASale's perspective most of our current initiatives revolve around trying to improve communication," stated Brian. "We want to enable advertisers to communicate with those affiliates who are participating in their program so that they can receive timely alerts and news. A lot of times we hear that important messages are being ignored or lost in a sea of unimportant messages. For example, if a publisher gets 400 newsletters in a given week they might miss the one that is talking specifically about an important policy change. Those messages are the ones we want to make sure they really get."

One of the barriers to that communication are the diverging interests of the affiliate and the advertiser. "Transparency is a buzzword that is often used in the industry and seems to be desired by advertisers," Brian explained. "And understandably so because an advertiser should be able to understand where traffic is coming from and what methods are being used generate that traffic. As I have often talked about, at ShareASale we are ultra sensitive to the privacy concern brought up by affiliates. I have heard privacy brought up as many times from the affiliate side as transparency has from the merchant side. These are two colliding but equally valid interests. As a network we have tried to carefully weigh both concerns as we develop our new communication tools."

What about the annual proclamation of the affiliate industry's demise?

The growth rate of the industry is undeniable, so Brian didn't feel demise was immanent. But he did agree that the rush for growth may have muddied the identity of what affiliate marketing is outside of our industry. He found the continual fixation on growth without concern for the direction from which that growth comes from, or whether it is central to a network's core business model, worrisome.

"Our core competency is as an affiliate network," began Brian. "We are attempting to use that core to bring an affiliate and a merchant together so they can develop a marketing relationship. When a network steps into an affiliate role, I see that as conflict of interest. Some of our competitors have taken a different approach by purchasing affiliate organizations which appear to be outside of their main core focus.

"You know me," continued Brian. "I really don't want to judge another company for what they are doing. Stepping into an affiliate role is simply not something that interests us. We are trying to build a network where affiliates and advertisers can trust our model is not there to compete with theirs. That trust should be implicit to the role of a network. When you involve yourself as an affiliate you are outside of that role and it seems like a very strange move to me"



How do you feel about the affiliate industry's health overall?

"I think the industry is changing," hypothesized Brian. "For example, a couple of years ago affiliates were much better at doing search than most merchant's marketing teams. Today that still may be true in a lot of cases but a few years ago that gap in expertise was far more evident. Things have changed a little bit. Advertisers have gotten smarter. Search engines themselves have been approaching advertisers directly. So like I talked about earlier, you have situations where affiliate marketing is directly colliding with a merchant's other marketing efforts, PPC specifically in this example."

One of the most resilient aspects of the affiliate industry is the adaptive entrepreneurial nature of affiliates themselves. Brian feels this adaptive nature will quickly turn to new growth areas like blogging, video and social media.

"I recently attended the BlogWorld Expo, as a lot of us in the industry did, and talking to bloggers was really interesting," described Brian. "Many have no knowledge of affiliate marketing or have not investigated it, either because they heard bad things or because marketing didn't fit into their reality as a blogger. Blogging and social media in general represent a huge opportunity for our industry. These are not mediums that your average advertiser is working on right now. Affiliates' ability to move quickly into new areas and create more sustainable business environments is what makes affiliate marketing unique."

In what ways is ShareASale addressing industry challenges and needs?

"Constantly improving communication is always a priority for us, but it seems we have recently put together even more projects than normal on that topic. There are several initiatives on the table for 2008 which for us will revolutionize our process. I'll leave it to the industry as a whole to decide whether those processes are actually revolutionary," quipped Brian.

"At ShareASale we have always done things a certain way," he continued. "We have always looked at communication from an affiliate to a merchant perspective and from a merchant to an affiliate perspective. We are trying to revamp that process by turning the whole thing process upside down and look at it from a different direction. Not only to help improve communication within an individual advertiser's program but to help all advertisers improve recruitment within the network. Because there are so many affiliates in our network and there are over 2000 merchants they are not necessarily always finding each other. That is something we definitely want to revolutionize at a network level."

What are ShareASale's plans and goals for 2008?

"I think you will see something similar to last year for us," predicted Brian. "Last year we ran in February the Month of the Interface. We basically took the interface and revamped one section a day for the entire month. We ended up with quite a few improvements. That is probably the time period where you will see announcements coming from us regarding new things in social, video, mobile, and more and improved widgets.

"We always try to embrace the new technologies as they become available or new trends viable," said Brain. "Take our widget platform for example. People successfully market products with widgets and we thought to ourselves 'hey we should provide some kind of platform for that'. The reason we built the widget interface is so merchants who did not have the internal team or budget to develop one had access to a widget platform.

"Once we saw the effectiveness of widgets as a marketing tool, we felt it was important to introduce a platform where everyone could get access," he continued. "We help our advertisers and our affiliates with the learning process on how to market with widgets. Helping them to understand how widgets work, what things are important when you are designing one and how to effectively distribute them is crucial. The initiative has been quite successful both from an education standpoint and as a marketing tool."

As ShareASale has grown its role as a network has grown beyond simply being a tracking solution, to include such roles as monitoring compliance, facilitating communication and building relationships. For Brian, technology is a key component of that growth. "If we are not building upon our core technology and providing tools for the advertisers and affiliates that we work with to be more efficient then we are not doing our job."

As ShareASale grows into the role of an industry leader you have managed to maintain the moniker of being 'quirky' and of having a 'friendly network with homegrown feeling'. As your growth continues and as you attract more corporate clients, how that change ShareASale as a network?



"I don't know that you will ever see ShareASale looking like a cold corporate product," Brian replied. "Part of what we do is provide something different. That was kind of the idea. We have had a lot of success by setting ourselves apart in that manner. We want to provide something which is a little more personable. As a network we want to be are more approachable.

"We are approaching a lot more corporate clients. But you might find yourself a bit surprised in terms of advertiser's reaction to these types of surface issues. They are a little less concerned about that type of thing than you would imagine. Certainly there are companies whose corporate philosophies won't mesh with ours. If a corporate client looks at our offer and just thinks it isn't right for them because it isn't 'corporate enough', I am really okay with that. I don't think we are going to be changing our core ideology which has made us successful, in order to woo that type of client.

"That's not to imply that we are saying to an individual merchant as they enter our network, 'this is the product, you will like it'. Instead we are ask them: what is your goal and what problems are you trying to solve? We will then attempt to provide a solution that fits their needs while maintaining network integrity. It is one of the things that sets us apart as a network. We are willing to make changes to the product not only on an individual basis but on a global basis for merchants who need something done.

"Yes, we are a little bit quirky as a company. I look at that as a positive. And it's possible that just reflects on my personality.

"We have grown a lot as a company. We don't ever want to fall into the trap of assuming people know who we are, what we do, and that they are supposed to look to ShareASale for a certain type of service. We are starting to look at ways to market this company better than I have, specifically, in the past. It is key to our continued growth. It is fundamental to our desire to expand our leadership role in the industry and help guide its growth."

I want to thank Brian Littleton for taking time out during this busy holiday season to take part in our 2008 Affiliate Network Preview Series. Stay tuned for the final installment.