actinic
online marketing blog
Friday, June 6, 2008
Affiliate Marketing Meets Social Networking
Affiliate marketing specialist Affiliate Window recently announced the release of a new Facebook application called Wishlist, that will enable retailers in the Affiliate Window network to promote their products through the UK's most popular social networking site:
www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=13696735276
So is this good news for retailers - and how will it be received by users?
Facebook has already shown how it intends to monetise its massive user base, by introducing discrete adverts into its pages and feeds during the course of last year. So far there has been little push-back from users, who no doubt recognise that they are getting a lot of functionality for free, and have mostly accepted the inevitable. But neither has there been much response to the ads. Recent research suggests that it is currently the least effective form of advertising in general use.
The Affiliate Window application, however, uses a more subtle approach. By enabling users to create both a wish list of their own, for friends and relatives who might like to buy them gifts, and a list of recommmendations to others,it creates a much better fit with the whole social networking ethos. The enormous growth of this medium in recent years means that it has the potential to be the next big thing in online marketing.
If you are not using Affiliate Window already, then the Facebook application alone will not repay the cost of joining - at least until it achieves critical mass. But if you are, and if you have the kind of products that young people gossip about and recommend to their social network, it may well be worth giving it a go.
# posted by Bruce Townsend @ 6:25 AM 0 Comments
