I work at a Major media agency, one that covers TVC, print and even radio and online design, marketing and branding. In any case the affiliate department and even the Responsed based marketing department are understaffed and (this is a big gripe I have) not respected by the design and branding side of teh company, maybe this is because they handle accounts that are worth several millions or maybe its because ’sales is a dirty word’, but lets look at this realistically for a second, Facebook isn’t considered work, youtube watching doesn’t constitute as produictive time, and when it comes down to accountability and productive time, I think they’ll find that the performance and results based format of Affiliate marketing and response based marketing are clear indicators that we should get a little more respect, just cuase our budgets are smaller and our teams are smaller, I’d like to see if any other media channel can offer the same amount of accountability, the same depth of stats and performace result and the same level of  efficency that response based marketing delivers.

Now I’m not poo pooing the idea of high end above the line branding and PR but I’m saying that there is a space for response based marketing and the products offered (ie. totally accountable and trackable results), not only that but because we can offer such a depth of insight into how a campaign performs it has a wider appeal to brand managers, sales managers and ultimately this means that they can make decisions based on actual results instead of finger in the air blue sky thinking.