The “agency or in house” question is a pretty common one for brands evaluating who should run the bulk of their advertising campaigns. We’re no strangers to that question on the DMi affiliate team; in fact, there are a number of us who have spent time on the in-house side, so we’ve got plenty of perspective on the pros and cons of each.

With that said, I’ll stack up the results we drive against the best brand teams around (and any agency competitors, for that matter). There are a number of factors working in our favor:

Agencies in general have several huge advantages over any in-house team;

Affiliate marketing agencies in particular can offer growth opportunities to clients that they couldn’t find themselves;

At the risk of sounding immodest, DMi’s affiliate team’s people-first approach results in unique partnership initiatives that have driven value time and again.

Let’s break down each of those claims, with some specific examples included.

Agency vs. In-house: Advantages of Scale

Hiring an affiliate marketing agency gives brands broader and deeper resources than they’d have with an in-house team. This means brands can save on salaries and/or inefficiencies created by asking members of their internal teams to wear multiple hats (some of them possibly ill-fitting).

Affiliate marketing agencies also come with a wealth of experience. What might be a brand marketing team’s first time doing a project would be the agency’s 10th; agencies have done the “trial and error” so their clients can benefit.

Speaking of experience, agencies have tons of perspective on what works and doesn’t work for brands; they have an entire portfolio to reference for informed decisions and recommendations on what will drive success.

The last major universal agency attribution I’ll mention is flexibility. Whether you’re talking about needing more resources during highly seasonal periods like Q4 or bringing in talent to stand up specific initiatives, agencies provide incredible ad hoc resources that can save you the time and costs involved with hiring talent internally.

The Advantages of Affiliate Marketing Agencies

Affiliate marketing agencies add to the above list with channel-specific advantages that brands should be aware of in deciding whether to run their own campaigns

Particularly because the affiliate landscape is relatively complicated and fragmented, agencies with a network of pre-built relationships can get things going far quicker – and more effectively – than brands starting programs from scratch.

On the relationship side, affiliate marketing agencies can often connect directly with sought-after partners in every affiliate category, from coupons to loyalty to deal sites to content partners. Many of these affiliate partners, in fact, prefer to work with agencies over single brands because it allows them to access many brands with fewer points of contact. This affords brands more placement opportunities than they would discover on their own. On the network side, agencies build deep and meaningful partnerships that grant them access to early beta tests, deals, and promotions that individual brands can’t touch.

Many brands have questioned, over the years, whether agencies provide enough value to offset their fees. Brands that work with affiliate marketing agencies get immediate cost offsets through agency-exclusive placement pricing tiers and lower network and technology fees. Moreover, agencies can include their clients in discounted placement bundles that offer extra revenue opportunities at efficient costs.

The last, important benefit of affiliate marketing agencies is a broad base of data that enables strategic decisions. Affiliate-only agencies can provide competitive insights across their client base and benchmarking data on KPIs and placement performance. Full-service agencies with affiliate services can provide that as well, along with an objective perspective on affiliate’s interplay with other marketing channels and concrete insights on affiliate’s incremental impact on a brand’s business.

DMi’s Affiliate Advantages

At DMi, our approach to partnership-building leans heavily on our people-powered philosophy. One differentiator that benefits clients and publisher partners is that each of our affiliate partners has a dedicated account manager.

Along with providing one consistent point of contact for each publisher (which gives that publisher an easy point of access for our entire brand portfolio), our partnership team works to establish win-win relationships for our clients and publishers alike. Another unique attribute of DMi’s affiliate service is that we have vertical-specific publisher managers – experts in loyalty, experts in coupon and deal sites, experts in content sites, experts in influencer, etc.

The deep publisher relationships this has helped us build have provided incredible, exclusive placements for our brand portfolio, with added perks of deep discounts, premium content placements, and dedicated shopping events featuring a roundup of DMi clients for a price that’s much lower than a brand would get on its own.

Additionally, we work closely with major industry players across all affiliate partner categories to help develop and test new opportunities that remain exclusive to our brands during the beta testing phase. Most recently, we’ve worked closely with a leading loyalty partner to develop targeted placements in a new region of interest for them, in addition to helping a leading social app test the affiliate space. Helping partners unearth new growth pockets almost always leads to exclusive opportunities for our clients down the road.

An example of our relationship-building coming to fruition was a recent “Desksides” initiative, in the summer of 2023. Our content team traveled to Manhattan to meet with over 40 commerce and editorial contacts at NBC Universal, which owns NBC, the Today Show, Today.com, and many other premier media outlets.

We brought physical products from our brands and walked the NBC team through key differentiators, product features, and new product releases; the NBC team then submitted requests for product gifts. The initiative got our clients a lot of cool coverage and product awareness, and it brought our relationship with our contacts at NBC to another level.

Ultimately, our goal is to act as an extension of our clients and to keep commissions and fees as low as possible for our portfolio – all while providing value to the affiliate partners we work with.

The affiliate landscape, more than most marketing channels, is a bit retrograde in its fragmentation. Affiliate marketing agencies give brands accelerated access to affiliate’s low-risk revenue potential – and best-in-class agencies like DMi will work hand-in-hand with brands to leverage their partnership and network reach across strategic campaigns customized to blow away brands’ business goals.

So, if you want to learn more about how our full-service digital marketing agency can add value to your brand’s advertising campaign, reach out to start a conversation.