There are often posts on forums or blogs about the future of affiliate marketing and how the industry and technology is progressing. With this in mind I thought I would talk about two advances in technology that are helping to push affiliate marketing  forward by taking it offline.

Voucher code systems

Whilst the new Paid on Results voucher code system may not be the only one out there, it’s the one that I’ll use as an example for this post.

Essentially what Paid on Results have done (and what Altogether Ads have been developing since before the POR system was announced), is to create a unique discount code system that not only helps to ensure that affiliates are credited correctly and combats the theft of exclusive codes, but also allows affiliates to advertise exclusive discounts codes in an offline environment.

To summarise, the system adds tracking to the selected merchant’s site(s); when a discount code is used it looks it up in its database and passes commission on if the code was associated to any particular affiliate. Simple enough.

So why would affiliates want to do this?

I know of an affiliate who is going to be using this system to print off a small booklet of voucher codes and distribute this at local shopping centres, via door drops and various other places. The printing and distribution costs are relatively low and with more and more people going online to shop for their Christmas presents this year, it’s the perfect time to give this kind of thing a go.

And now reward sites are going offline..

I still find the next part of this post fascinating, as it’s still all very new and could have a huge impact on the industry.

A number of cashback and reward sites will begin to work more closely with retailers next year (or maybe even later this year) and start to track offline transactions.

One such company, reward.tv, is already up and running. Owned by Gavin Dein, their chain of reward sites work with “cardless technology” and have links with merchants such as Superdrug, Halfords, Burton, Currys, Play.com and, my personal favourite, Little Chef.

There are also rumours going around the industry about some cashback/point sites making deals with the likes of Mastercard and when, not if, one of the bigger boys in this industry launch this kind of service, it could see major changes in the way that people shop.

So to sum it all up, affiliate marketing has been a success online due to the transparency of the process; now technical developments mean that the same transparency can be replicated offline which means that there are any number opportunities to grow revenues from this move.

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