Co-registration is the new Green.

Over the last year, the online marketplace has seen a rapid decline in continuity programs. These Goliaths of the online ad spending arena have taken a huge hit and seem to be falling fast. I recently asked myself how this shift in the market would affect publishers.

The continuity model has always been an area of great success for online publishers: large CPAs, quick guaranteed payment and for the most part they were protected from chargeback’s. When I think of continuity programs the first one that comes to my mind is the Acai Berry weight loss program. This campaign exploded over the holidays and into the New Year. It seemed that everywhere you looked you saw the ads – “Lose 7 pounds in 14 days,” next to a ripped six-pack and some really good-looking fitness models. Every publisher had a version of these offers and banners; inboxes and links were being pushed out to the masses.

So how does this relate to turbulence in the marketplace? Merchants were sending out cheap free trials and then billing a large sum on the back-end. The problem with this model emerged when merchants had to pay their affiliates for traffic and sign-ups but were then hit with massive chargeback’s because everyone started cancelling their subscription to the products.

As a result, a few shifts quickly happened:

1.) Traffic from publishers was considered “questionable” due to the large quantity of chargebacks
2.) Merchants still had to pay their affiliates regardless of chargebacks
3.) Credit card companies quickly saw returns exceed 3%, causing merchant accounts to be blacklisted

What seemed liked a certain moneymaker quickly turned upside down, leaving merchants in the dark and publishers without large campaigns to consumer inventory. My next question became, “What can publishers do to make up for this loss of spending and monetize their traffic?” The immediate answer is co-registration. Co-registration is a simple ad-serving solution (usually just a line of code or an i-frame) that allows a website to monetize users after the registrations processes. The technology can allow anywhere from one to 100 “offers” or “campaigns” to be shown on the thank you page after sign up. Since the ad-server is displaying campaigns after the user has entered their registration information, it allows for extremely accurate targeting capabilities based on gender, age, address or even additional custom qualifying questions. Depending on the exact campaign, price points can range from $.25 to $25 dollars per opt in.

Although the eCPM of a coreg page may not be as high as the once mighty affiliate continuity programs, the co-registration solution is a solid, sustainable model founded upon permission-based marketing. With the ability to quickly rotate offers based on eCPM, easy campaign implementation, and complete customization, the co-reg platform is a solid revenue stream for publishers looking to make additional money on their websites. Additionally, this technology does not affect any other facet of the site, so CPM or CPA initiatives that were already in motion will not be affected in anyway. During tough economic times for website publishes who wouldn’t want an easy additional source of revenue for their site?

by Michael Gerpe
mike@ifficient.com

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »