What is a sub-network on Avelon and how do publishers work with them?
What are sub-networks?
An affiliate sub-network is a company that ingests affiliate product feeds from multiple affiliate networks and surfaces corresponding links that match to the exact product that is being reviewed. Tech wise, it’s incredibly advanced and involves millions of database calls an hour, but for merchants looking to work with publishers, it couldn’t be simpler.
Imagine you’re a publisher (magazine) that’s reviewing a cycling jersey from Tri-Fit Athletic. You have seven pages where you can potentially link from your website to a retailer which stocks Tri-Fit (including Tri-Fit themselves). You don’t have time to be continuously scouring the internet for the best price on that specific product, making sure it’s in stock and updating the links.
Imagine having to update links on product reviews, buyers guides, best of’s and even round up articles. It’d be one persons entire job.
That’s where sub-networks come in.
Sub-networks take all the affiliate product feeds (like a Google Shopping feed, but for affiliate marketing) and amalgamate them into one place by grouping the products by their matching GTIN/EAN.
The publisher then injects a piece of JavaScript/HTML into their article and the sub-network programatically updates the list of products in that space to ensure the publisher is linking to a site where the product is in-stock, has the best price and offers the best commission.
You can tell what publishers work through sub-networks by the yellow triangle icon next to their name. This means the publisher is technically part of Avelon, but they solely work through their sub-network. You cannot directly speak to this publisher as their workflow is 100% automated through our sub-network integrations. More on this below.
One example of how publishers work with a sub-network is through the price comparison widget:
Another example of this are single link outs, whereby the sub-network notes the name of the retailer that stocks the product and the price:
Auto single link generation is a more refined version of the price comparison widget and allows the publisher to select to only show one link to their preferred retailer. They may make this choice based on a variety of factors such as commission rate on that product, previous conversion rates, URL validity, stock availability or even personal relationship with that retailer. To be included in price comparison widgets you must have EAN/UPC/GTIN data available in your product feed.
How can I work with a publisher through a sub-network?
Publishers who are working through a sub-network will not respond to your messages on Avelon. They are technically ‘part of’ Avelon but we work with their sub-network to surface them on our platform, so they never have to log in and they don’t respond to messages.
You can invite a publisher who is provided through our sub-network to your program and our system will automatically accept your invitation on behalf of the sub-network.
From the moment they are accepted into your program, we will generate their unique product feed and provide that to the sub-network. You don’t have to do anything.
How are affiliate product feeds generated?
Affiliate product feeds start life as an automatically updated CSV, XML or JSON file that contains all of your product information from your eCommerce store (like a Google Shopping feed). Affiliate networks (like us) then ingest this product information and add their own affiliate tracking links instead of you standard URLs, then provide the feed to the sub-networks.
Sub-networks use these feeds to programatically serve product recommendations to customers in the form of price comparison widgets and links to websites, depending on the price, stock availability and the quality of information provided in the feed.
A workflow of how this works is below:
- Brand/retailer provides product feed to network
- Network rewrites feed, takes out any unnecessary information and adds affiliate URL’s
- Network passes feed to publisher/sub-network
Top tips to ensure your affiliate product feed is shown to all publishers
Unlike META and Google, we don’t keep trade secrets to getting your feed shown to all publishers. There’s some pretty basic steps you need to take to ensure your feed gets shown to all publishers.
- Keep your product information as detailed as possible. This is the most important thing and we recommend adding your EAN/UPC/GTIN to every single product in your inventory, or at least the ones you definitely want shown. Some publishers won’t even show your products in their articles if you don’t have these added.
- Make sure you’re offering a good level of commission across the board. Publishers, like everyone else, are in the game of making money. If you’re offering 1-2% commission whilst another brand is offering 5-6% on the same product, the publishers system will automatically link to the other retailer over you.
- If you’re not working with automatic feeds, then update your stock and price availability to match what’s on the system. Reliable data is the name of the game with affiliate product feeds, so get everything matching and you’ll be winning.