Hello, readers. Welcome to AdExchanger's Trade of the Week. Today we're looking at a microcosm of affiliate marketing and e-commerce services in the form of CNN Underscored, the news company's product sales and content marketing arm.
If you thought the fourth quarter was busy, now imagine running a gift guide and store specials website. "This is our Super Bowl," said Mike Bruno, vice president of advertising for CNN Digital.
Prime Day can be like a bouquet of roses, Bruno said. But during the holiday shopping season, the big leagues reign supreme.
Bruno has run CNN Underscored, an e-commerce publishing and product review company, for nearly five years. He joins CNN from publishing and marketing at The Points Guy, a business owned by Red Ventures.
Affiliate marketing and e-commerce is the third revenue stream that many big publishers expect. For example, the New York Times acquired Wirecutter, and the Wall Street Journal launched its own version called Buy Side.
But what are the affiliate marketing income opportunities for cash-strapped news publishers? We spoke to Bruno to find out more.
AdExchanger: What are the elements of CNN's commercial offering? MIKE BRUNO: Most of the income is underlined. Here's the problem. A company has been added. We're a coupon company that helps people find discounts at the retailers they care about. When we make an offer and someone wants to use that content and license it from us, we grant a license.
Get our editor's reviews in your inbox every weekday. Third, it's a content business. We're creating sponsored content at Underscored, leveraging our social channels and increasingly using video to do it. What we have consolidated on the backend is data reporting. This means we give you very good and accurate data about the value you get from working with us.
What does it mean? First, it could be engagement-based purchase rates or effective campaign elements. Is it a social, search, video or other channel? Was it relevant to a particular trend or target group? What parts of the campaign did people engage with? Was there a clear message that worked?
What do you think are the growth opportunities for affiliate marketing and e-commerce? In general, the saturation of digital media is quite high. We regularly see a slowdown in internet user growth. We have reached a point where most people are digital. There is no flow of people coming online. But we see that there is still room in e-commerce. We are still looking for ways to grow. And part of that goes back to the brand. We trust the CNN name. Some of the new areas are also video and social. These are harder to monetize. This is not exclusive to coworking spaces.
However, we have a strong reach and presence on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. All of this means a lot to us as we pursue these opportunities.
What does "pursuing these opportunities" look like? For example, at the end of last year we hired a special video source. We will continue to produce organic videos for our website, social media and YouTube. We look at every platform our partners target because we see the potential opportunities ourselves. But in the meantime, we need to be able to communicate the value of these products to people on these platforms, just as the text and images on our websites do. What can you do on social platforms using affiliate marketing that is not currently available?
YouTube has an affiliate program that we participate in, which is news to both parties. The economics of partnerships and user traffic are slightly different from influencer brand offerings.
Affiliate networks give us a wider reach and allow us to better inform publishers about what readers want and respond to. Previously, a URL that could be an affiliate link would appear if you pasted it into your video. Alternatively, you can include your affiliate link in your account bio. However, there was no affiliate link that was displayed as part of the video by default. It is integrated organically rather than forced. Then, in terms of payment flow, it reduces the friction of having someone get there compared to an accordion setup.
We would like to see more mature trading issues on the platform. This interview has been edited and condensed.
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