Attribution and commission sharing are becoming increasingly prevalent in the affiliate channel. AvantLink offers this technology as a way to keep multiple affiliates involved in making referrals that result in sales rewarded for their efforts. And as time goes by more and more merchants have adopted this technology into their programs.
For affiliates, this may be an important factor in determining which merchants to work with. Because of this, AvantLink has updated the merchant details and discovery pages to give better insight into programs that offer commission sharing.
Affiliate-perspective Merchant Discovery Lists
After clicking on the ‘Merchants’ option in the main navigation from any affiliate account, a list of merchants will be displayed with a variety of details about their program. This now includes information on any commission sharing offered by the program.
A screenshot of the merchant overview/discovery page for affiliates. Note the new ‘Attribution Model’ column and Commission Rate column that accounts for the potential range of earned commissions.
New ‘Attribution Model’ column
- Shows all merchants using attribution and commission sharing.
- Insight into how the commission sharing is set up in the event of multiple referrals for the same sale. Clicking on the ‘Attribution Model’ link will bring up full details on how the commission sharing works with that program in a variety of scenarios.
A screenshot of the commission sharing modeling based on a number of different scenarios for a specific program.
Updated ‘Commission’ column
- Shows the high & low commission range an affiliate can receive on a sale for merchants using attribution and commission sharing.
- Takes into account: attribution model, base commission, temporary commission increases, and tag group rules.
- Does not include: item-based-commissions, new customer commission, or tiered commissions.
Affiliate-perspective Merchant Details
Attribution and commission sharing rules are explained in full on each merchant detail/description page.
The merchant program details page for each merchant now also contains information on any commission sharing rules they may offer. A new “Action Commission” line in the description shows what the range of commission payouts are based on the attribution rules. This range of commission relies on the same information used in the items above, and takes into account attribution model, base commission, temporary commission increases, and tag group rules.
Merchant-perspective Affiliate Details
Program managers now have the ability to see how their attribution and commission splitting rules affect individual affiliates. Each affiliate application management screen gives a breakdown of the range of possible commission percentage earnings. This range will take into account base commissions, temporary commission increases and any tag group rules associated with that individual affiliate.
Bigger Adoption in 2018
The majority of merchants on the AvantLink network don’t utilize attribution and commission sharing rules yet. But as the technology becomes more popular among both merchants and affiliates, the opportunity to work with programs who do offer it will only grow. 2018 will see more and more merchants moving towards commission structures that reward all affiliate referrals involved. This added insight into those programs will help affiliate make more informed decisions on who they choose to work with.