Amazon.com’s decision to end commission payments to affiliates who drive traffic directly through paid search is a good example of what brands should be doing during the recession. Analysing all channels in depth, even those which are traditionally accepted as the most efficient and strongest performing and understanding what’s really driving incremental sales is one of the most valuable exercises any advertiser can perform. It will go further than any other activity to ensure the business emerges leaner, fitter and stronger than the competition when those fabled green shoots of recovery inevitably appear.

In Amazon’s case it’s about understanding whether their affiliates are symbiotic and therefore driving incremental sales against the companies own direct PPC campaign or whether they’re parasitic and simply an unnecessary middle man in the process. This should be the yardstick for any affiliate program. Does it add incremental sales and is it a positive experience from a brand and a user’s point of view?

Understanding this question requires accurate tracking and de-duplication of sales across all digital channels, combined with the resource to analyse this data so it can be used to inform the strategy going forward. This all sounds pretty obvious doesn’t it? But it’s amazing how many advertisers with very large digital budgets don’t have such a process in place.

Forty percent of companies surveyed in a recent industry wide poll by a tracking company said between 11% and 20% of commissions paid to affiliates were duplicate payments. Almost 20% said that between 21% and 30% were duplicated. Bearing in mind companies tend to play down the extent of these issues we can assume it’s regularly higher than this. Of course it’s not just an affiliate issue. There is overlap between all digital channels but especially between all ‘search sourced’ media – PPC, SEO, affiliate and aggregators. Many online marketing managers I speak to are aware that this is an issue but rely on the ad serving based tracking solutions from their media agency to do a job they’re not designed to do. But there is a lack of technical understanding as to what exactly is missing and how easy it can be to resolve.

In the exciting and fast moving world of digital marketing it’s easy to overlook the fundamentals. There’s always something new to consider as part of the digital strategy, whether that’s mobile, video or social media. But in these challenging times, investing in understanding what really works, before doing anything else, is the strategy which will deliver the greatest return, especially as we move into a world where brands with the most effective data driven strategy will be the outright winners.