Gurugram: Global affiliate network Admitad released its annual Affiliate Report 2020 which studies trends in the international affiliate marketing industry, identifying the global market growth drivers over the past year. The report provides an in-depth understanding of the region-wise shift to the emerging trends, where e-commerce has emerged as the most common vertical followed by the banking sector.
Coming to affiliate market trends in India, which is one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world and especially in the APAC region, the report marks the industry as decentralized in the country. The affiliate sector in India has shown a growth of 69.7% with the largest share of sales of 56% from the category of household appliances and electronics and 20.1% from the Online Supermarkets. Goods from China constitute 4.2% of the share of the total sales. Out of the total sales figure for $64.8m, the electronics segment leads with the total mobile sales of 28.5%. With traffic almost equally divided between desktop and mobile, it is expected that the mobile category shall play an even bigger role in the coming years since affiliate marketing is no longer restricted to desktop traffic. The report provides a remarkable insight for the advertisers on the need for in-app tracking features to make the most of the growing mobile trend. In-app tracking on mobiles shall cater to promising categories like blogs, finance comparison sites, cashback services, contextual advertising and loyalty programmes.
The segments that are garnering a lot of attention and funding from investors in India are Online Grocery, Gaming (Fantasy Cricket in particular) and Online Food Delivery. It is also found that affiliate programmes in the financial segment are turning more towards CPA than CPL models. Education is one of the top categories which shifted to CPA advertising. Travel remained one of the biggest categories within affiliate marketing and touched the revenue of $48 Million. The report also mentions that in 2019, the fashion industry alone made $12.5 bn—over a third of the country’s B2C sales.
The report marks the growth of Blogs and Contextual Advertising, a new trend contributing to 9% of the share of the total sales. It is revealed that many of the major brands have increased their spending on bloggers and there is a rise in influencer marketing. The new trend also indicates a rise in alternative sources like reward sites and influencers. The top sales contributors are found to be Cashback and Coupons, constituting 46% of the share.
Speaking about the findings from the report, Neha Kulwal, Country Manager, Admitad India, remarked, “We have been expecting more and more companies to move towards the CPA model in the Indian sector and 2020 the report reflects this trend to be growing. Admitad has recruited more influencers for the CPA-based cooperation and the current trends to show that the telegram platform is going to emerge as one of the strong contenders in India in the coming years, following the global trends in the subscription campaigns.”
Admitad, as an organization, promotes transparency and one of the most significant takeaways from the report for the company and for the affiliate marketing industry is the increased trust among the Indian advertisers in affiliate networking.
Covering regions from the Asia Pacific, Europe, and MENA, the Admitad Affiliate Report 2020 covers data on more than 178 million orders and target actions completed via the Admitad platform in the world on all market segments from online to financial services.
