Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Marketing in Malaysia Digital Marketing

Expert Talks About History, Strategies, And Trends In Affiliate Marketing

ACCESSTRADE MY’s inaugural summit, the Performance Growth Summit 2020 was held on September 12 and successfully brought together digital and affiliate marketing experts across Asia. The summit proved to be a hit among digital marketers, content creators, and affiliate marketers in Malaysia.

In this Expert Talks series, we are going to highlight the major issues brought forward by the experts in PGS 2020.

Jerry Fujita, Managing Director of Global Business Board Director, Interspace Group talked in detail about “History, Strategies, And Trends In Affiliate Marketing”. 

ACCESSTRADE is the largest CPA affiliate marketing network in Japan and Southeast Asia operated by Interspace Co,.Ltd. since 2001. Currently operating in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia, ACCESSTRADE has over 8,500 merchants and 550,000 publishers.

As one of the leading affiliate marketing platforms in Malaysia and the region, ACCESSTRADE is also keen in educating and providing key insights to its publishers to further enhance their skills and knowledge about digital marketing.

Why is affiliate marketing important to us?

Jerry Fujita highlighted the fact that affiliate marketing is fast catching up as a highly efficient marketing tool in the South Asian region. Comparing digital marketing spending and affiliate marketing spending in SEA, he pointed out that affiliate marketing is the next big thing.

Estimated to reach USD 600,644 in 2025 in Malaysia, digital marketing spend is expected to double in seven years’ time while that of affiliate marketing is expected to increase by 20 times in the same seven years’ time span.

This remarkable shift towards affiliate marketing is brought about by three big waves namely Economy Growth, Digital Marketing Shift and Performance Marketing Shift.

This is on par with the trend of affiliate marketing in Japan. In 2020, the total amount of affiliate marketing spend is expected to reach USD 3.2 billion, making up a whopping 20% of all digital ad spending in Japan. Since 2002, affiliate marketing spend in Japan has increased by 100-fold until 2020.

According to Jerry, the publisher type has also changed remarkably over the years. In 2012, publishers focused on SEO (comparison), SEM, reward and e-mail. Moving on, the focus included display networks such as Google, Yahoo, FB and others. Currently, publishers focus on SEO (comparison content by major media), SEM, reward (lead generation using content), display networks such as Google, Yahoo, FB and others, Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), and video.

Further, Jerry also highlighted three key points to build an affiliate marketing ecosystem. The key points are transparency to maintain quality without any element of fraud, enlightening ROI and LTV to educate advertisers and develop new industries, and finally, education to provide continuous learning for new publishers.

How do affiliate marketers succeed?

Affiliate marketers cover a wide range of the spectrum. Bloggers are quite common as affiliate marketers, and case studies from Japan show that blog from a housewife that introduces fashion items earn USD 200,000 per year while a blog about gadgets that introduces IT products earns around USD 10,000 per month.

Apart from bloggers, influencers or also known as publishers are growing their following and earning commissions through affiliate marketing. For instance, YouTubers in Japan are said to earn around USD 15,000 per month while influencers in Malaysia are slowly but steadily paving their way into affiliate marketing. A well-known publisher had earned total commission of RM7,700 till date.

Price comparison websites are also making great use of affiliate marketing to earn commissions. kakaku.com in Japan and iprice.com are some examples of comparison websites that provide product database, product review and price comparison for the benefit of their audience.

Cashback and financial websites have also jumped on the bandwagon of affiliate marketing in Japan and Malaysia.

What are the new affiliate marketing trends during the Covid-19 pandemic?

According to Jerry, the upcoming three megatrends in affiliate marketing are:

1. Business Trend (Digital Shift)

2. Digital Marketing Trend (Back to Content)

3. Working Environment Trend (Work Shift)

Business trend: Refers to the digital shift that can be seen happening worldwide now. It involves the merging of online and offline platforms, also known as OMO which has been accelerated by the pandemic.

Digital Marketing Trend: The shift towards content-oriented trend will happen as 3rd party cookies become 1st party cookies, audience data become content data, and bad UX retargeting becomes good UX. This is made possible as platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Apple control the data and service on their platforms.

Working Environment: Work will become more individualised with SNS marketing and 3rd party system which includes payment, delivery and website. With the mushrooming of online businesses, people are expected to work multiple jobs anywhere and anytime with fewer restrictions compared to the traditional working environment.

Follow ACCESSTRADE MY for more insightful topics and upcoming events

As the leading affiliate marketing platform in Southeast Asia, ACCESSTADE Malaysia is committed to bring the latest information and insights to affiliate marketers and digital marketers in the region. If you have missed PGS 2020, worry not! You can watch the full session here!

If you are new to affiliate marketing, here’s how you can join ACCESSTRADE Malaysia and participate in our Annual Publisher Rally 2020!

Step 1: You need to be a publisher. A publisher is someone who owns online media such as a blog, social media accounts, or a website. Make sure your blog, website, or social media accounts do not contain any elements of pornography, gambling, and offensive religious content.

Step 2: To register as a publisher at ACCESSTRADE MY, click here: https://bit.ly/PublisherRegistration

Step 3: Select your country. Take note that this is an important step as the list of advertisers or top brands differ according to the countries.

Step 4: Select the type of publisher account you want to register. Either individual or corporation.

Step 5: After filling up all the details very carefully, click the Sign-Up button to submit. You will receive an email notification saying your registration is successful and you will be provided with an activation code. Use this activation code when you log in for the first time.

Note: The registration process may take up to 3 working days as your account will be reviewed before being approved.

Step 6: Upon receiving the confirmation email and activation code, log in to the platform and fill in your personal data as required.

Step 7: You can now start applying for campaigns in the campaign menu located on the left side of your dashboard.

Follow our Facebook page for more info about our campaigns, updates, and events!