Trends Report: Co-Registration’s Evolution in Advertising Networks
by Sam Harrelson
Registration path offers
(co-regs) have had a storied history in our industry. It
suffered from Lack of real time reporting, lack of real time
validation , and lack of transparency. What was
once primarily a broker driven market had gotten enough
traction to hit the big networks. In addtion the data points
gathered are now greatly enhanced to full lead forms that
mimic the advertisers web sites. The simple “yes/no” opt-in
platform has morphed into a very lucrative model. The leads
produced in the co-reg model are now much higher quantity
than other channels such as email, banner or pop. Whereas
many advertising networks kept registration path offers
separate from their email counterparts, many advertisers,
and publishers, are re-examining the co-reg and finding it a
very successful model.
Recently a series of events have occurred in the online
direct marketing space that have given the co-reg a greater
spotlight. Throughout last year, email marketing continued
to suffer poor results as a result of spam concerns,
deliverability issues and saturation. With the passage of
the CAN-SPAM act in December of 2003, many publishers and
advertisers began to explore other models of cost effective
lead generation in greater depth and returned to the co-reg.
With the explosion in popularity of the .50 paid per email
offers, the co-reg became a hot topic again and has become a
major component of most advertisers’ and advertising
networks’ lead generation models.
In this new environment key features for publishers are
payouts, payment terms, scrub rates and real time reporting.
To Further investigate these features, I spoke with four of
the largest advertising networks in our space who have been
dealing with or are now expanding in to co-registration
offers; Adteractive, Azoogle, Permission Data and Trancos (CoregMedia)
to get their thoughts on the continued evolution of the co-reg
model in online direct response advertising. Specifically, I
was interested in what each network had to uniquely offer to
publishers in addressing the questions of payouts and
payment terms, scrub rates, format of offer (simple yes/no
or page by page).
Laure Majcherczyk of CoregMedia immediately agreed in the
evolution of the model for networks, “Rates for
co-registrations are higher than what they used to be but at
the
same time they are much higher quality.” In terms of
uniqueness, CoregMedia had some interesting features:
“First, a co-registration
network is just as good as the publisher websites that are
in its network. We review each and every website that
applies to become a CoregMedia.com publisher. We check the
co-registration process and the user's experience to
evaluate the quality of the co-registration lead. Secondly,
CoregMedia.com offers thorough data validation filters. We
understand that the success of a campaign relies on the
ability of the marketer to contact prospects. Thirdly,
advertisers benefit from our experience: we know what works
for advertisers and we can advise them on ways to improve
their conversion rates. Fourthly, we are flexible with data
transfer (from real time post, to email files to ftp upload
etc...). Finally, advertisers appreciate the fact that we
are a one-time stop for their co-registration campaigns.
Instead of working with each individual publisher, making
IOs, setting up campaigns technically speaking etc... they
save time by letting CoregMedia.com oversee the entire
process.”
Diego Canoso of Adteractive stressed his network’s core
competency in the coreg / lead generation as a sign of their
uniqueness:
“We process over 500k
leads per month to clients across 10+ verticals -we have
been doing this for 2 years so - we have a good competency
in the lead generation space…We work with any format any
publisher wants - totally branded. Our clients are aware of
the fact that they are being placed in co reg when they are
- a lot of networks "blend" email and co reg and that's not
sustainable long term.”
Permission Data’s Lindsay
Mure stressed their ability to customize the process:
“The Permission Data
Network is comprised of sites that do not force opt-ins, do
not have opt-outs and in addition to single opt-ins we offer
"coreg plus" (Additional question custom surveys). For
example, if an advertiser requires more information on the
customers that select their offers, we will host a second
page after the initial optin which asks for all additional
information to further qualify the customer and brand the
product/service being offered. In addition to our own sites,
we can offer our advertisers additional volume on the PD
Ignite Network. The Permission Data Ignite Network's goal is
to enhance the strategies perfected by Permission Data
through expansion of their client's product reach, while
maintaining first-rate lead quality. This network enables
Permission Data to enhance any marketing effort by providing
high volumes of high-quality leads.”
Alex Zhardanovsky of
Azoogle introduced me to their recently launched product,
Coregio which is their lead generation solution for
publishers and advertisers. In terms of uniqueness, Alex
said that with Coregio,
“Advertisers are able to
generate co-reg leads in a controlled environment by setting
any specific scrub and/or verification criteria…Publishers,
are able to plug Coregio into any existing reg-path within
minutes. AzoogleAds does all the work of configuring the
regpath, providing detailed instructions on implementation.
Coregio completely mimicks the look and feel of the
publisher's regpath, so the consumer does not know that
they've ever left the original site on which they were
registering. All the design work is performed by AzoogleAds,
free of charge.”
The question of scrubs and
reporting generated interesting responses from the networks
as well.
Adteractive’s Canoso
offered up their real time
reporting
ability, “Our reporting is real time - no charge- backs.”
Permission Data’s Mure brought up their proprietary
technology TruFilter as their response to the scrub
situation,
“Every piece of data we
collect is put through a rigorous cleaning process which is
performed by our proprietary TruFilter technology. TruFilter
removes incomplete names, foreign domains, false e-mail
addresses, curse words and duplicate records, malformed
email addresses and improper phone numbers. The utilization
of TruFilter ensures that our clients receive the highest
quality data possible. TruFilter also provides gross and net
lead reporting on a daily basis.”
CoregMedia uses an in-house
solution according to Majcherczyk,
“Consumer data is passed
from the publisher to the CoregMedia.com interface for data
validation & scrubbing. If the lead passes our data
validation filters, we transfer the validated lead to the
advertiser.
Azoogle’s Coregio has a similar real time reporting ability
and also incorporates an interesting metric, RPU, according
to Zhardanovsky,
“AzoogleAds verifies all data in real time both at the point
of entry into the regpath, as well as the point of
submission to advertisers, reducing the scrub rate to almost
0. We utilize the highest standards of data verification
including full postal verification, area code, prefix, state
and zip. All data must be valid before it is submitted to
the advertiser. As with _almost_ all offers on AzoogleAds,
reporting on all revenue generated on the Coregio path is in
REAL TIME, posted directly into the publisher's AzoogleAds
account. Publishers are given even further insight into
their performance by seeing REAL TIME RPU (Revenue Per User)
that is pushed into the registration process. In addition,
the greatest benefit of Coregio is its REAL TIME
optimization of offers. Coregio will tailor itself to each
publisher's particular traffic and consumer behavior,
aligning offers so that ROI is maximized.”
The payout question is an important one for publishers to
consider when deciding on which network to use for their
offers. The networks seemed to have mostly similar answers
on this question while stressing their own unique
capabilities…
Canoso of Adteractive said, “We have the best payout metrics
in the industry. Additionally, since incentive partners are
big users of reg paths we offer the highest
payouts guaranteed on the core incentive offers (CHDVD, Vide
Prof,
Discover ETC… We pay net 15 - and can customize terms for
performance partners.”
Azoogle’s Zhardanovsky says they also pay net 15, but added
their accommodation ability, “Publishers are paid NET 15 and
payment is combined with any revenue generated on AzoogleAds.
Almost all formats can be accomodated.”
While not giving any numbers, CoregMedia’s Majcherczyk also
stressed their ability to pay high due to relationships with
advertisers,
“CoregMedia.com offers
very competitive payouts. Advertisers understand that paying
a little higher does NOT mean paying a higher rate per
conversion, on the contrary. What matters to advertisers is
their ROI. If they pay twice as much for a lead but they
convert 5 times better, they win.”
Clearly, these networks are
moving to accommodate the hot co-registration platform. Its
future growth in the industry will certainly be interesting
to observe into 2004 as advertisers look for new channels of
lead generation. It certainly seems to be a good time to be
a publisher in the co-reg space because of these healthy
developments and the competition. As a publisher, you should
evaluate each of these programs, and the other players in
the space, on your own. Specifically, look for their ability
to pay within a certain period, the types of offers they
have and their scrub rates. In this sector, transparency and
reputation are important!
Sam Harrelson is the Co-Editor of the Digital
Moses Confidential. He can be reached at
sam@digitalmoses.com
