Success of the Automated Offer Feed

Prior to the launch of the Automated Offer Feed, advertisers within regulated industries—or those with offer sensitivities—needed a better mechanism to distribute current offers and creative content.

CJ Affiliate Account Director Chrissy Cadoret, explained the advertiser experience before the Automated Offer Feed as one that required extreme diligence, was time consuming, and left a lot of room for human error. “Previously, the process was managed entirely through email communications and Excel spreadsheet attachments. There was significant back-and-forth for advertisers to communicate new content details and timing, and for publishers to confirm receipt and execution of the updates.

“Of greatest concern was the opportunity for something to go wrong in translating the product content from an Excel spreadsheet into a publisher’s site content,” Chrissy continued. “The Automated Offer Feed sparked an evolution in how financial services advertisers manage essential product information and distribute those details to their affiliate partners.”

We wanted to get an idea of what this looked like for the publishers pre-Automated Offer Feeds, so we brought Publisher Development Director Keith Bolton into the conversation. “To manage accurate content on a site can be a daunting process for any publisher, and in the highly regulated finance space it’s only amplified. Publishers want to make sure they are marketing products and offers correctly, so having technology that help mitigate inaccuracies is a huge benefit.”

Benefits for Advertisers and Publishers

It was clear there was a need in the marketplace, and in response CJ Affiliate launched the Automated Offer Feed. This solution standardizes financial product offerings across issuers while minimizing compliance risk allowing real-time updates. This tool allows advertisers to easily upload, distribute, and control the content of their products via the CJ platform, where our team can then standardize, automate, and distribute the content to publishers for compliance, scale, and accuracy.  The Automated Offer Feed is designed to work with a publisher's Content Management System (CMS) to allow for easily refreshed updates to existing content, and ultimately avoid compliance issues and concerns.

CJ Affiliate was able to take what was once a very manual, error prone process and help streamline and automate for our advertisers and publishers. Once the Automated Offer Feed was launched, we saw an enormous reduction in errors on our publishers’ sites. This tool also has a built-in monitoring component to identify links and update timestamps so that our Network Quality teams can take immediate action when needed. This reduces both publisher AND advertiser compliance risk.

Met with Rave Reviews

We were certain that both advertisers and publishers would be thrilled with the Automated Offer Feed. But we also knew that the proof would be in the pudding. So we checked back in with Keith and Chrissy on user response.

“Publishers told us that once integrated with the Automated Offer Feed, their management of advertiser content has been much easier and there’s been much less anxiety about having the wrong product specs publicly listed on their site,” remarked Keith. “The Automated Offer Feed has made the exchange of content much more streamlined allowing publishers to spend more time optimizing products and offers as opposed to managing them. Some publishers have even asked us to help get more advertisers to use the Automated Offer Feed. This speaks volumes to the confidence publishers have in this tool and the investments CJ Affiliate has made to make their business more effective.”

Chrissy noted a similar positive reaction on the advertiser side. “Not long ago, it was difficult to visualize a world where financial product content could be automated as quickly as traditional retail and travel product catalogs, but it’s now a reality,” she exclaimed. “Our advertisers are just as excited as publishers about completing the cycle of moving to practically real-time product updates. The Automated Offer Feed has made the process exponentially faster to support the transformation occurring across the industry.”

To add some power to the punch, our Compliance Specialist Marian Van Der Kar Davis emphasized just how important this tool is from a regulatory perspective. “The Automated Offer Feed helps CJ control the content provided to publishers, verbatim on behalf of the issuers; the result is correct, consistent content, therefore, minimizing regulatory concerns.”

Future Enhancements

The Automated Offer Feed is already seeing great traction and adoption—but we’re not stopping there. Stay tuned as we announce future enhancements to this solution.

Have you found success with the Automated Offer Feed? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.