Problem - iTunes Affiliate Program

The iTunes Store exists in nearly 30 countries in Europe alone, across North, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. In addition, the App Store exists in over 120 countries around the world. The recent additions of the iBookstore and the Mac App Store have also shown great geographical growth potential.

There are also 45 storefront specific affiliate programs that pay commission on sales from a varying combination of the iTunes Store, the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iBookstore. These affiliate programs are supported by four separate affiliate networks, each using their own proprietary tracking and reporting.

The combination of a global brand name, unique storefronts and multiple affiliate programs creates three specific challenges for website publishers and app developers wishing to capitalize on referring sales for music, movies, TV shows, iOS apps, Mac apps, audiobooks, ebooks, and music videos. These include having a poor user experience for international traffic, losing out on possible commissions and a lack of centralized reporting.

Poor User Experience

"Your request could not be completed." This is not how you want your visitors to be greeted after clicking an affiliate link from your site. Unfortunately, it is the first thing most of your international users will see after exiting your site or app to enter iTunes.

Differences in the product catalog between countries means that a deep link for one store will typically not work in another.

For example, these are both links to the Metallica song "Enter Sandman" from their self-titled album.

• U.S. - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/enter-sandman/id278116714?i=278116740
  
• U.K. - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/enter-sandman/id167430938?i=167430940
  

Reduced Conversion Rates

When a consumer clicks a link on one of your properties and lands at the main page of iTunes instead of the desired item, conversion rates are reduced. Differences in the ID-ing of the product catalogs for storefronts prevent many international users from arriving at the desired item in the iTunes store.

The table below shows the rate of link failure for US iTunes store links in across a sampling of countries and media types. This data was built by examining the top 300 items per the RSS feed.

Check the international availability of the link above or any iTunes link with the iTunes Availability Tool (beta).

Lost Commissions

It's very common for website publishers and app developers to be missing out on possible international affiliate commissions. There are separate affiliate programs for each country and each program will typically only pay commissions on sales from their specific storefront.

The US, Mexico and Canada programs use LinkShare as their affiliate network. LinkShare Japan administers the program for Japan. DGM Pro is the affiliate network for working with Australia and New Zealand programs. TradeDoubler manages all affiliate programs for Europe (29) and Latin America (10). The European and Latin American programs are unique as one European account and one Latin American account can be used to earn commissions in all European and Latin American programs, respectively. However, there is one exception: the Brazilian Affiliate Program requires a separate affiliate program account.

Flowchart: International Users and the iTunes Affiliate Program

1. 1. A user visits your website or app.
2. 2. As it's the largest and easiest to access the affiliate link provided was a US/LinkShare link.
3. 3. The user is redirected through click.linksynergy.com with the appropriate cookies being set.
4. 4. The click lands the user on the iTunes Preview page for the intended item.
5. 1.    A. If the user is actually from the United States then the intended item is shown in the store.
   2.    B. Any subsequent sales in the next 72 hours will result in a commission. This is the ideal experience.
6. 5. The user is actually from outside the United States. The user experience now depends on if the ID in the orignal link matches any content in the user's storefront. There is, however, no longer any chance of a commission.
7. 1.    A. If the ID in the original link does match up to an item in the user's storefront the user will be brought to that item in the storefront. However, any subsequent sales will not result in commissions.
   2.    B. If the ID in the original link does not match any content in the user's storefront the user is presented with an error, similar to the error above. Again, any subsequent sales from the user will not result in commissions.

 

Lack of Centralized Reporting

While LinkShare and LinkShare Japan are separate affiliate networks they do share a similar dashboard and reports. However, this is the only similarity found among the reporting engine or tracking infrastructures in the affiliate networks.

Learn about the GeoRiot Solution to these issues.