We talk frequently about happenings in the performance space – sifting through the daily stream of digital marketing news, pondering repercussions for brands and marketers that take a ‘performance-based’ approach with their promotional activity.
In recent years, looking into debates from a ‘performance’ perspective may have caused the assessor to ride on a slightly different train of thought to the one present today. The consensus is that performance was borne out of smart marketing; the ‘pay on results‘ model that made small fortunes for affiliate publishers in the 2000s, thrusting metrics such as cost per sale and cost per click into advertiser and agency spectrum.
A greater need for return and measurability from media buyers has caused the idea of paying on performance to branch out of its early beginnings in affiliate and into the marketing mainstream.
Nowadays it’s common for a brand’s ‘head of performance’ to have a task list that encompasses so much more than keeping an eye on publisher activity.
The role entails management of paid media on social networks. Traces of performance ‘trading’ can be found in retargeting, on display, while the pay-per-click ad services from search giants such as Google and Bing cover the fundamentals of what, for many, performance marketing is all about.
We all have our own opinions of which channels and techniques should be worthy of a mention in an article pondering the definition of performance marketing.
Seeing the need to investigate further, and in the lead up to a Performance Marketing Insights session on the same matter, we asked our industry experts to dissect the obvious: why are we here; which areas do we focus on; what the hell is performance marketing?
Read more here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-hell-performance-marketing-chris-johnson