Affiliate Marketing – The Lockdown Winners And Losers

Lockdown has impacted every aspect of life as we know it, from the way we work to the way we do that awkward half shuffle, half shimmy past people in a desperate attempt to try and get your hands on the rarest, most fought over, and the most precious item that the supermarket has to offer….

However, it has also changed what we spend our money on and where we spend it. A well-known example is Amazon, they had a solid year in 2020 with making $386 billion in sales which is an 84% increase in net profit. The majority of people can probably agree that they have ordered more from Amazon since the beginning of lockdown than they did in 2019 (unless you are a professional shopaholic). This example is a well-known shift in customer behaviour but what about the smaller changes in the world of affiliate marketing that may have slipped under the radar?

Since March 2019 we have seen some offers and verticals explode during lockdown. The most notable is the Gambling vertical.

Our top example is our exclusive offers ‘123Casinos’ – it has been a very strong offer in previous years and always been in the top 3 in terms of yearly revenue. From March 2020 – December 2020, 123Casinos saw a record-breaking increase in comparison to 2019. Now it’s not just that offer that seen an uplift, the vertical as a whole has been very popular during lockdown across all geo’s. The reason for this could be because sport betting offers were virtually non-existent over the summer and people picked up casino CPL’s/CPA’s as a replacement. The trend seems to have continued since various sporting events around the world have started back up which suggests casino offers will continue to do very well in 2021.

The food and drink market has done exceptionally well during lockdown. Our SimplyCook offer in 2020 also saw a massive revenue increase . When restaurants are closed and going out to eat was only allowed in certain parts of the country, people decided they would use it as an opportunity to explore making different types of food at home. With bars and pubs being closed, alcohol delivery services also saw a massive boom during the summer months, for example, Beer52 by the end of 2020 saw a four-fold increase in comparison to 2019. Depending on what restrictions are in place this summer could mean another very strong year for these types of offers.

Following unprecedented amounts of redundancies, finance offers as a whole have also seen an uplift since 2019 but not the ones you might expect. Short-term loan offers have seen slight decreases in revenue in 2020. This could be because people are in the market for a longer-term loan in times of uncertainty, or since more than one-fifth of usual household spending has been prevented by the lockdown. As a result of increased amounts of disposable income, investment offers have seen some incredible growth. Across the network, investment offers in 2020 brought in which is an astonishing five-fold increase in revenue during some of the most unstable times we have faced in many years.

To sum up, consumer trends and behaviour has adapted to various restrictions around the world and at this moment in time, the verticals mentioned above are still doing well going into 2021 and have the potential to continue as 2021 progresses because between good food, alcohol and making some passive income there is an opportunity for publishers with various types of traffic to capitalise

Reference- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/expenditure/articles/morethanonefifthofusualhouseholdspendinghasbeenlargelypreventedduringlockdown/2020-06-11