Affiliate marketing – what is that?
What is the first thing a website operator in Germany does when he wants to place banner ads for his website? Correct: He registers in the affiliate networks The biggest advantage of affiliate marketing for the advertiser (advertiser) is the freedom to determine remuneration models and the amount of the commission themselves. After all, everyone wants to pay for advertising only if it is successful, and even then only a reasonable price.

Thus, affiliate networks offer above all the possibility to pay according to success. Success has several definitions, depending on the goals of the advertiser. For one, one click and visit to his website is enough (CPC=Cost per Click), the other wants to pay only if a certain action has been carried out by the user: registration, participation in a raffle (CPL=Cost per Lead) or purchase (CPO=Cost per Order).

What is the situation with affiliate marketing in Russia?
Short answer: Rather bad. Why? This may have several reasons:

Legal restrictions

There are some legal restrictions concerning pure affiliate networks. Currently, the law states that every banner ad placed on your own website that generates revenue requires a separate contract. Publishers have to sign 20 separate contracts to display 20 banners from the affiliate network on their own site. This is far too much work for all sites and brings with it legal risk, i.e. partner programs – yes, but affiliate networks – no.

So the original purpose of affiliate programs – to pay according to success (CPC/CPL/CPO) – is hardly an option for publishers anyway. Only few Russian advertisers are interested in the CPC/CPL/CPO remuneration models offered in an affiliate network. Consequently, such an affiliate network is not much use to the advertiser if his banner ads are not displayed anywhere. A vicious circle…

Price transparency

Price transparency has never been desired on the Russian markets. And with affiliate programs, the commission is usually fixed and visible to all. So everyone knows what a particular advertising company’s advertising is worth to a particular advertiser. In Russia such information is handled too cautiously.
Are there affiliate networks in Russia?
Yes and no… At least not in the sense we know them from Germany. For years beispiеlsweise affiliate.ru exists. However, the website does nothing else than listing offers or partner programs of individual companies. So far the network has only about 800 entries, of which only about one third are current, and thousands of spam comments.

An alternative for online shops, however, are marketplaces such as MixMarket and GdeSlon. There the merchants or the online shop operators can upload their products via interfaces and have them distributed by an affiliate network. Remuneration models for publishers are quite different, usually expressed as a percentage of sales.

How else does banner advertising work in Russia?
Direct marketing through agencies that own a network of websites is very common. But also such networks like Google’s Dobleklick are of course a good altrenative.

We recommend you the best strategy to place banner advertising in Russia!