Online businesses essentially the ones that generally leads / conversions through a mix of traffic sources, are particularly harsh towards “low quality” affiliate traffic. Now, let’s define what is considered to be “low quality” for these businesses.

Low quality traffic could be -

1. The traffic that doesn’t convert well
2. The traffic that generates invalid / bad leads

Now, I’d agree that #2 type of traffic should be avoided as it’ll definitely save time in verifying the leads. Sources that generate invalid or bad leads pose a risk : You end-up paying for the invalid leads if those aren’t detected, and even if the invalid leads are detected well, the very process definitely adds an overhead.

The traffic which we should just love is the #1 type of affiliate traffic. Marketing teams generally rush to the affiliate agency as soon as they detect that the traffic from one of the affiliates isn’t converting well. This is because, the low conversion rate of a high traffic affiliate would adversely impact the  overall conversion rate of the site – and hence showing up bad on the reports!

But wait.. Assuming that your site doesn’t get practically slowed down by this traffic, I don’t see anything wrong with the traffic to get rejected! Well, with affiliate traffic – you pay only for the conversions. So, essentially the non-converting traffic you get is all a bonus. Plus, affiliates usually run on 30/45 day cookie. So, if even a small percent of the huge non-converting traffic is converting after the 45 days, you don’t pay for the conversion. More bonus!

Let’s take a use-case. I plan to fly abroad 6 months from now. I come across this ad for a cheap flight booking site through an affiliate ad. I simply bookmark the site. I come back after 3 months and complete my booking with the site. How often do we do this?

Why do marketers forget the product / brand awareness created by the campaign, which could lead to long-term gains? Too much focus on only conversions, isn’t a good thing!