What’s the secret to a successful initial coin offering (ICO)? It is not uncommon to see a big crowd turn up for the ICO of Blockchain startups with only a business concept, while others attract only a trickle of investment. A company may have the most advanced technology in the market, but if its Internet advertising does not reach its target market, potential investors and clients may not show up for the ICO party.
Performance marketing has been identified as the best way to optimize lead generation efforts, but its implementation has been flawed. Any incentivization of advertisers and publishers by paying by click or sale is lowered by costs which, owing to inefficiencies, eat up 40 percent or more of revenues in affiliate networks. The Blockchain is coming to its own rescue. New Internet marketing platforms on the Blockchain are increasing the accountability, speed and reach of digital advertising while lowering the cost of lead generation.
Paying for clicks is costly
Historically, affiliate marketing has helped to lower marketing costs. The ability to pay only for clicks and conversions has significantly reduced marketing budgets. Today’s businesses, however, are built on Internet economics and the return on investment in affiliate marketing is declining for many businesses.
A brand’s website is its most powerful online advertising vehicle. The process of attracting customers to a site through online advertising mechanisms is full of inefficiencies. Transaction losses erode 40 percent of affiliate network income. Advertisers can easily waste advertising dollars because their activity is difficult to track. An affiliate may be channeling some ads through porn sites because they are highly trafficked. The increase in inappropriately targeted ads has led to an increase in ad block software and email spam filters. Click fraud, a persistent challenge is adding to marketing costs. Search engines are cracking down on click fraud but are far from quashing it.
What if you could only pay for advertising that generated revenue?
The CPA model reinvented
The cost per action (CPA) online advertising model addresses many of these inefficiencies. By paying only for conversions, both the advertiser and publisher are incentivized to produce high-quality traffic. A revenue-sharing payment model compensates affiliate network members for cooperative rather than competing strategies. Until the arrival of the smart contract on the Blockchain, no system had the functionality to fully support the CPA model.
Bitcomo, a large affiliate network with 150,000 affiliate members and webmasters, quickly saw the advantages of Blockchain technology. The smart contract provides a solution to accountability and cost issues in affiliate networks. The advertiser and publisher can stipulate any commercial terms in the smart contract, and any actions and outcomes can be tracked through the tamper-proof contract. Examples of actions are making a product/service purchase, website registration or deposit. A fixed price is associated with specific actions. The smart contract makes each of these actions transparent to all parties. The underlying technology—the Ethereum Blockchain—allows any asset and action to be linked to the smart contract. The advertiser pays only when conversion occurs.
The contract can be expeditiously executed because all actions in the network (linked to the smart contract) are transparent to both parties. The tracking of all clicks and actions in the network eliminates click fraud and the costs associated with policing it. If fraudulent clicks are coming from the same IP address, this activity would be revealed to the network. Web affiliate program giants like Amazon, which is expected to announce the acceptance of Bitcoin soon, are exploring Blockchain applications, aware that they could be replaced by a more efficient, lower cost Blockchain network.
Smart contracts address payment problems of former affiliate marketing models. Affiliate marketers face the persistent issue of late and unpaid advertising revenue while advertisers were at a disadvantage with the upfront payment model. Bitcomo’s solution is an escrow account and instant payments executed via the smart contract. Smart contracts release money as soon as the agreed upon action(s) have been fulfilled, signified by both parties digitally signing off on the contract. The payment is then immediately released. The contract holds the funds of the advertiser in escrow. Publishers are paid by Bitcomo tokens. The more business advertisers and affiliates do, the more tokens they will acquire to pay for more leads.
Paying per action
Bitcomo is creating an affiliate marketing ecosystem in which Bitcomo tokens are the currency.
It is the first Affiliate CPA network in which all related marketing data is stored in a Blockchain. Advertisers no longer have to wait for a publisher to release a performance report; all data is readily accessible in real time. Data accessibility addresses another concern regarding Internet marketing intermediaries; they are increasingly controlling the data—including exclusive rights to buyer identities in some cases—and thereby gaining more marketing leverage assisted by big data analysis techniques. In the Bitcomo affiliate network, the open source code enables users to link to a ‘BACK’ node to track their transactions and access data in real time for analysis purposes. The brand maintains control over its user data.
Bitcomo sees an opportunity to bring Blockchain companies preparing for an ICO into its large affiliate advertising network. In a market in which both good and bad ICOs are getting funded, improving digital advertising effectiveness is critical to generating targeted leads. Token networks provide anti-fraud protection by preventing hacking and phishing. Bitcomo screens its publishers through KYC (Know-Your-Client) process to ensure it knows whom it is doing business with.
To promote products and services in the Bitcomo affiliate network, integration with the network is accomplished by providing a link with a post back script. Token holders can sell their tokens at any time, or maintain them and use them on existing and new services as the network expands.
Like in all token economies, the potential exists for the value of the tokens to grow as the affiliate network and token usage grows. Bitcomo is already an established affiliate marketer with revenues, generated through 150,000 affiliates and webmasters. The executives of some of its successful projects sit on its advisory board, including Constantin Gorshkov of AdCombo.com, Glen Nikitin of MediaSniper, Oleg Donovan of AD.ru, and Maksim Mukhorrtov of AdNow.
Bitcomo Token (BM) Sale
The best way to assess Bitcomo’s Internet marketing platform is to follow its ICO and launch. The pre-ICO runs for 30 days starting on Nov. 20. The main ICO runs from Jan. 16 to Feb. 16, 2018.
The token allocation is Bounty and Bonus Program (8 percent), token sale (72 percent), advisers (9 percent), and the team (11 percent). Members of the affiliate network can acquire bounty tokens during the ICO period. In total, 170 mln tokens will be offered at $0.30 with a hard cap of $51 mln. An early bird offer will sell 27.2 mln tokens at a 10-25 percent discount. During the ICO period, a 20 percent bonus will be offered on 30 percent of the remaining 108.8 mln tokens.
The main platform will go into alpha mode in January when future users can participate in the development of the exchange. Users will be able to vote on features. The official platform release is in March.
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