In the performance marketing industry, real-time data can mean the difference between a successful partnership and a lost opportunity. Yet too many brands still pair business intelligence tools with delayed or incomplete data, hindering their optimization efforts at best — and completely derailing them at worst.  

In this post, we’ll explain why real-time data is a must-have for performance marketers, how TUNE Firehose addresses this need, and how customers use our solution to combine streaming data with business tools to make truly intelligent decisions. 

Business Intelligence Is Booming 

The emergence of business intelligence (BI) tools, big data, and data scientists in modern business have allowed brands to bring various departments together to see and understand their data. Just in the last 10 years, amazing strides have been made to better collect, clean, store, and display various data sets. Delegating these tasks to specialized tools and services has allowed brands to remain agile, where previously this was not possible. 

Marketers especially stand to benefit from BI tools that enable them to make data-driven decisions in high-stakes situations — for example, when optimizing and scaling million-dollar campaigns. Previously, this data was stuck in silos and distributed into multiple interfaces for consumption. This left too many marketers with gaps in their data, and no choice but to make ill-informed decisions (or their best guess) with only data assumptions to guide them. 

A Unique Opportunity in Partner Marketing 

Throughout the past few years, traditional media buys have become saturated and increasingly competitive. Facebook is full of fake posts and AI-generated images, Google SERPs are increasingly based on content created for AI, and Twitter (or X, as it’s now known) is shedding advertisers. As a result, more businesses are discovering partner marketing as an efficient, cost-effective channel for growth.  

Unfortunately, brands looking to add data-driven methodologies to their partner programs have seen limited innovation from the traditional affiliate network model.

In this model, each network dictates its own data sharing and collection policies. These policies often limit the level of granularity provided to customers and make real-time access to data difficult. And since they have the final say on who actually “owns” the data, it’s not uncommon to see networks hide or aggregate data from brands and use it for their own gain.  

While most marketing channels have data sharing and analysis tools built in (think Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.), the partner marketing channel has lagged. Marketing dashboards usually have limited data integrity for this channel. Brands now expect real-time data across their marketing mix; lacking it here is a limiting factor in true optimization of this profitable channel. 

TUNE’s Real-time Data Solution 

Today, all the traditional affiliate networks in the industry simply provide an API call for pulling data out of their platforms. Brands that want to access this data have had to use costly development resources to build and run extract, transform, load (ETL) scripts, which pull data out of one system and convert it for analysis and storage in another.  

The problem with this one-way approach is that it can only provide a historical view, as you are basically running a script that pulls data at a set cadence (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.). Pinging a network’s API more frequently can quickly increase server costs, which is why many brands settle for once-a-day API calls in exchange for lower server bills. This process requires constant monitoring and makes it nearly impossible to get real-time data access. 

In 2016, we took a look at how TUNE customers were using our industry-known two-way API. What we found was hundreds of customers running ETL scripts non-stop, 365 days a year. We knew there had to be a more efficient approach, so we did what we normally do when confronted with a challenge: We innovated. 

Enter TUNE Firehose, our proprietary data streaming platform, where customers can enable TUNE to automatically push every impression, click, conversion, and adjustment directly to a customer-owned database, in real time. Firehose makes it possible for TUNE to essentially create a carbon copy of every data field and event collected for this channel and deliver it to your business intelligence solution as it occurs. No waiting for results, no incomplete datasets from your growing partner marketing channel. 

TUNE Firehose Use Cases 

Firehose has been a pivotal feature for TUNE customers over the last five years. In that time, we’ve seen them employ this data streaming technology for a variety of use cases. 

After moving to Firehose, brands on TUNE can receive every data field from every impression, click, and conversion in real time. This results in more accurate insights into the channel, and no lag between digital activities and reporting reflection. 

While some brands may use Firehose for simple data warehousing and dashboarding, other customers are using this data stream to enable real-time optimization and automation. These use cases include deploying artificial intelligence to look for anomalies and automatically making changes to campaigns in real-time. 

Because the TUNE platform provides more than 90 data fields on every impression, click, and conversion, other customers choose to use this data to monitor each partner and sub-partner to power automated fraud detection and dig further into this channel than ever before. 

In Conclusion 

Traditionally, brands in the partner marketing space have had to piece together limited data and access to their network’s reporting API, resulting in delayed results in internal reporting and incomplete data models. But modern marketers don’t want their data to be held hostage; they want to quickly and easily access more datapoints than ever.   

To do that, they need a partner marketing platform that complements their BI strategy just like TUNE does. Every TUNE customer owns 100% of their data on our platform, and we don’t hide, limit, use, or aggregate this data for our own gain. Instead, we provide solutions like Firehose to empower marketers to access their data in real time and use it to the fullest of their capabilities in business intelligence tools, custom integrated solutions, and their owned and operated databases.   

If you’re a TUNE customer and would like to add Firehose to your account, reach out to your dedicated success manager or email support@tune.com.

Most people get uncomfortable when talking about finance, budgets, and retirement — but not at FinCon. There, attendees eat, sleep, and breathe personal finance. Each year, hundreds of self-proclaimed “finance nerds” make the pilgrimage to a new city for FinCon and meet with like-minded colleagues to learn, share, and grow their obsession. Attendees include podcasters, bloggers, app builders, financial consultants, TikTokers, authors, and YouTubers who are all looking for new ways to promote their personal finance vision and expand their reach to consumers who are looking for advice. 

This year, FinCon was hosted in New Orleans, which brought a whole new flavor to the event. The FinCon staff hosted dinner groups, networking events, and even brought in a live jazz band during the conference. Fitting, as the event was hosted right near the world-famous French Quarter. 

Top Trends at FinCon 2023 

Keynotes this year focused heavily on increasingly popular topics for financial publishers, such as the emergence of AI, work-life balance, and innovative ways to monetize content. Every keynote was packed with hundreds of passionate individuals who came ready to engage, learn, and take ideas home with their keynote takeaways. 

One of the major ways these content creators have been monetizing their digital footprint is by teaming up with financial services companies as sponsors. Brands attending FinCon are looking for unique influencers to join their affiliate programs, especially those who have a captive audience in the brand’s target market. Once they‘re teamed up, financial companies and their affiliates can work more closely on what promotional activities have the best chance of success and on how these individuals can be fairly compensated for their efforts. 

Each day, all of the brand booths were flooded with passionate financial content creators, who were busy pitching their product offering and figuring out how they could work together with a mutually beneficial affiliate relationship. Most brands attending FinCon have purpose-built affiliate management platforms in place to be able to efficiently onboard, track, report, and pay content creators, while other brands were busy loading spreadsheets with names and manually generating UTM strings plus promo codes to properly attribute their newly found affiliate partners. 

Why TUNE Attends FinCon 

We head to trade shows like FinCon every year to connect with financial publishers to include in the TUNE Marketplace so we can facilitate introductions to our clients in the financial vertical. We also go to meet brands looking for more efficient tools to manage their growing affiliate programs and new ways to discover partnerships that will stand the test of time. 

FinCon continues to be an amazing yearly conference for personal finance nerds and fintech brands alike — and for companies like TUNE to meet new people and build out partnerships. Each year, FinCon selects a new city for the next conference. My first FinCon was in Austin, last year was in Orlando, and this year was New Orleans; next year, FinCon will be going to Atlanta. Time to block off October 23–26, 2024 to come see what all the hype is about at FinCon ‘24 in Atlanta! 

What was once a technology used to power dark web purchases and other off-grid transactions, cryptocurrency has gone mainstream, and the utility of the blockchain is just beginning to be realized. From the emergence of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins to the current revolution around DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the concept of decentralized reconciliation on the blockchain has been taking the world by storm. 

As this technology has expanded, thousands of businesses have emerged to address a wider audience and provide education and utility in the space. While there is still plenty of uncertainty and volatility in this market, consumers are becoming more educated – and are very interested in what is coming next. 

Cryptocurrency and Affiliate Marketing 

Traditionally, developing industries have leaned into partnerships and affiliate marketing to scale user acquisition. This trend is most obvious with new products or technologies that require a bit of education as consumers navigate their funnels.  

This has been especially true in the crypto industry, where finding the niche audience who will be receptive to these new technologies can be difficult and traditional marketing channels are highly competitive. 

Brands in this emerging market are activating influencers, content publications, bloggers, podcasts, brand partnerships, and other partner types. They are compensating these traffic sources on favorable events like crypto or NFT purchases, which minimizes the risk traditionally seen with cost-per-click or pay-per-post.  

Using Blockchain to Track Affiliate Programs 

Performance marketing has for years relied on client-side tracking methodologies to track user sessions and attribute purchases back to the correct partner. As this channel has evolved, brands have continuously moved the conversion point further and further down the funnel. When it comes to cryptocurrency, that means brands are waiting for the blockchain to confirm a conversion event before compensating the partner. 

TUNE’s roots in the mobile industry make us uniquely equipped for these tracking and verticalized changes. Our platform enables brands to move completely to server-side tracking, a methodology known for bypassing client-side limitations like web browsers and cookies. (We even invented the term “postback” over 10 years ago, which is the common terminology used for this tracking format.) 

This allows us to attribute conversion events outside of a web browser or mobile session, which opens up the ability for brands to offer payouts on events that happen weeks, months, or even years after the initial click session was initiated. This approach has been pivotal for brands in the fintech space. This same approach has become especially important for those in crypto. 

Luckily, TUNE’s Connect ecosystem includes some of the largest financial publishers in the industry, and many (if not all) of them are leaning into the crypto revolution. Our reputation as a trusted, unbiased SaaS provider in the performance space has allowed these new programs to get instant introductions to kick off this channel for success. 

Leading the Crypto Revolution 

Today, TUNE powers this channel for notable financial services and insurance brands. One of our fastest-growing segments is in the cryptocurrency space, and we offer a unique perspective compared to traditional affiliate network solutions. 

Blockchain.com is one of the most popular places to securely buy, store, and trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top cryptocurrencies, and they run their partner marketing channel on TUNE. They chose TUNE for our expansive background in their industry and our future-proof tracking methodologies, which enable them to offer a wide variety of performance-based payouts to their partners. 

Trezor provides a hardware wallet to safely and securely store cryptocurrencies, allowing consumers to transfer their coins offline and take ownership over their portfolio. Trezor is another crypto brand that uses TUNE to power their partner marketing channel, as we allow them to get direct access to the biggest financial publishers in the industry. 

Innovating for the Future 

As new industries evolve, naturally, some partner management vendors have been left scrambling to keep up. Meanwhile, TUNE has been building a foundation of scalable technology that’s years ahead of the rest of the industry. We became the solution of choice for the most innovative, technology-savvy networks and advertisers during the emergence of mobile over 10 years ago. Today, we’re doing the same for the cryptocurrency industry. And we welcome you to join in. 

Ready to hear more about how TUNE can support your crypto business, or connect you to like-minded brands? Get in touch with us at sales@tune.com.

Interested in affiliates, but don’t know where to start? Download our Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing to learn more.

2019 Update: HasOffers has rebranded to TUNE! The TUNE Partner Marketing Platform is the same great technology behind HasOffers, now enhanced with new tools and features for networks and advertisers. Read the rebrand announcement here or head to our homepage to learn more.

In the world of performance marketing, showing the return on ad dollars spent and reliable attribution are among the biggest challenges. Companies like Innervate use HasOffers to solve these issues, and build on top of the platform to enhance their product further.

We asked Adam Lieb, CEO of Innervate, a technology business that builds tools such as Gamesight exclusively for game companies, to tell us how he uses HasOffers. He has spent 18 years building communities, products, and services in the gaming industry. Innervate’s mission is to help game developers build, understand, and engage their fan base in order to foster success for their games and bring joy to their gamers.

Tell us about yourself and Innervate.

Adam: Personally, I’ve been been building products and services in and around games for nearly 20 years. I started my first gaming website when I was 11, built a multimillion-dollar gaming network in my teens, and founded Duxter in my early 20s. For the last few years I’ve been focused on building Innervate. We build a suite of tools to help game developers grow their games and build their communities.

First off, congrats on the launch of Gamesight, a marketing platform that allows game companies to promote their titles to social influencers. What types of customers is this product created for?

Adam: Gamesight is built for games and gaming brands trying to authentically engage gamers. The product is primarily tailored to marketers, community managers, social media managers, and PR managers.

When developing the Gamesight product, what differentiates your offering from others in the influencer marketing space?

Adam: We built Gamesight to be the fastest and easiest platform on the internet. I think we do a pretty good job of living up to that promise. The most consistent feedback we heard from brands and games, as we built out the product, was how complicated and messy influencer marketing can be. We do everything we can to take all that “mess” on ourselves and make it dead simple for our customers.

With quite a few sharp engineers at Innervate, why did you decide to build on top of a platform like HasOffers instead of starting from scratch?

Adam: It all comes down to attribution! One of the biggest challenges with influencer marketing is showing ROI and attribution. That is why we decided to partner with HasOffers by TUNE; to ensure that every campaign we run is fully trackable.

What kind of capabilities did you build on top of HasOffers and what was the building process like?

Adam: The single biggest issue early Gamesight customers had was install-level attribution with Steam games (a digital distribution platform for games). By working closely with HasOffers, and a few amazing customers, we built full Steam attribution. We are now able to provide Gamesight customers with install attribution for Steam games, as well as all the analytics bells and whistles HasOffers has to offer.

I also see you are using our Firehose functionality to receive real-time data. How does this additional data service help your team?

Adam: Firehose is mission critical for our ability to provide Steam attribution. We are collecting and matching A LOT of data and Firehose always keeps up. We use Firehose for our Track product (which is built into the influencer product as well). We use it to do our own custom attribution events (necessary for Steam games).

What are some of the evolving trends in the gaming influencer space that we should keep a close eye on?

Adam: We are definitely seeing a trend toward longer-term engagements rather than “one-and-done” deals. I think both influencers and brands have wanted this for a while but nobody really knew how to make it happen. Overall, I think this is a really encouraging trend as it is leading to more sustainable and less folks getting burned.

Thanks again for your insight. If any our our followers are interested in learning more about Innervate and Gamesight, what is the best way to get in touch?

Adam: I’m fairly easy to find on the internet (not sure if that is a good thing). Twitter is usually best for me personally: @adamslieb. You can check out Gamesight directly on our website. Like just about every other tech company out there, you can chat with us through our little Intercom chat bubble in the bottom corner of the site. We monitor that thing like crazy, so it is a legitimately good way to get in touch with us.

Try HasOffers for yourself

This is one of many ways to use the HasOffers platform. For a free 30-day trial, visit the HasOffers website.

The playing field for lead generation is changing. For lead networks, improving the quality of leads has taken precedence over quantity, and even over increase of sales revenue. Not only do advertisers expect their leads to be high quality, but they expect to get them quickly.

For networks to keep up with the ever changing world of lead gen, here are three suggestions for improving the relationship with advertisers and publishers.

1. Provide transparency.

• Have open communication. By being available to discuss data and campaigns for leads, networks can make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding the best parameters for lead gen.
• Share as much data as possible. Something as simple as providing sub ID data back to publishers helps them tweak their campaigns. And, as technology gets more advanced, this includes real-time lead scoring and lead return details. The more data that publishers and advertisers have to work with, the better they can optimize their campaigns.
• Provide data and feedback as close to real time as possible. Giving advertisers, traffic sources, and publishers instant feedback gives them the opportunity to make adjustments to their campaigns. The more optimization they get, the more revenue publishers get and the higher the quality of leads for advertisers. (Hint: Happy advertisers stick around longer.)

What happens if you don’t share data? The longer publishers have to wait to know how their traffic is doing, the less chance they have to cut off poorly-performing campaigns or tweak them to perform better.

2. Have a system for automation or programmatic buying and selling of leads.

• The longer the time between when a lead fills out a form to when the advertiser calls them, the smaller the chance of closing the sale. Programmatic buying and selling closes that time gap, increasing the chance for conversion.
• Having a programmatic buying and selling process minimizes workflow and lowers operating costs for networks. Instead of having to manually sort leads, networks can score them through parameters set by the advertisers. Those leads that fit the parameters are then sent to the correct buyer. Cha-ching.

Example: An insurance agent who is looking to purchase leads from a lead network would set specific filters for which lead parameters they are looking for and at what price. So this agent could be looking for someone within a 100-mile radius, who owns a home, and who is currently enrolled with a competing insurance company. Each filter includes their minimum and maximum bid price to assure they are getting qualified leads at the price they are comfortable with paying. Those leads who fill out the form and fulfill these categories will then be automatically sent to the insurance agency.

3. Be tuned into verification and scoring methods to cut down on returned leads. (Networks’ fancy way of saying, “Just do your job.”)

• Make sure to score and verify the leads. Networks have to step in between the publisher and advertiser to confirm that the lead they are sending to the advertiser is what they are asking for. Leads not up to the advertiser’s standards could cheapen the trust previously built up with the network.
• When scoring a lead, look to verification services like Neustar, eBureau, and Briteverify, but also make sure to analyze the user behavior in the form. User behavior measures the user’s habits, like their eagerness to fill out the form. If the average time to fill out a form is 20 seconds and it says the user completed the form in 2 seconds, that will show who real users are and red flags for potential fraud.
• Have the lead verified, primed, and ready to go. Disappointed advertisers are not likely to rebuy if you don’t fulfill their criteria and could move to another network.
• With all the competition in the lead gen industry, the advertiser now has the power. Make yourself stand out by being thorough and providing quality leads.
• Offer a returned lead program for leads that are not up to the expectations of the buyers. Although this may hit the initial lead revenue, it will show to buyers that you stand behind your network brand and are always striving to give them the best possible leads.

Questions about leads, networks, or lead generation? Reach out to Connor Silva at connor@tune.com.

Email sales@tune.com for more information about how TUNE (formerly HasOffers) can help with your lead gen efforts.

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