A New Advertising Frontier for Affiliate Marketers: TV Ads?
May 19th, 2010
Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager
In the ultra-competitive affiliate marketing landscape, it’s a good idea to always be on the lookout for new and innovative ways to promote products. Somewhat ironically, a great new space for affiliate promotions is actually an advertising medium that’s been around a long time: television.
Up to now, advertising on TV was far too expensive and complicated for the average marketer. However, Google recently introduced Google TV, which allows practically anyone to create TV spots within their AdWords account and run them on national cable TV. One of the most amazing parts is the low cost- as low as $20 for an ad spot!
Considering the huge potential reach of television, this can be a great way to advertise your own product or separate yourself from other affiliates who are promoting the same product. And considering how powerful and relatively inexpensive video creation tools and software packages are today, it’s reasonable for almost anyone to create a simple TV ad they can test out.
If you’re not sure you’re capable of creating an effective TV ad, check out this Copyblogger post on the topic. It’s written from the perspective of promoting a blog, but the same idea applies to ClickBank products or affiliate websites. It has some great advice on making your ad compelling to viewers.
One important thing to remember is that if you’re an affiliate who’s using this service, you shouldn’t try to promote a basic HopLink, since advertising on TV requires that viewers be able to remember the website so they can type it in. HopLink URLs are too complicated for this purpose, so your best bet is to send traffic to an affiliate landing page, such as a review site, blog, or other content-based site, where you then recommend one or more ClickBank products to your visitors. Try to keep the URL of your site as simple and memorable as possible. If you’re a vendor and want to send traffic to your own site, you can just send people directly to your Pitch Page URL.
If you’ve been struggling to make AdWords work for you due to the level of competition or pricing, it’s worth checking out Google TV to see if it could be an effective new way to promote products. Some of the best strategies for affiliate marketing success are testing out new promotional techniques and being an early entrant into new marketing spaces before they get overcrowded and too competitive. Who knows- you could end up being the next advertising mogul!
Do you think TV ads could work for your promotional efforts? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
About Beau BlackwellBeau is the Client Knowledge Guru for ClickBank and covers the latest trends, tips and techniques for building profitable Internet marketing businesses.
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Posted in Affiliate Tips, Strategies for Success, Vendor Tips | 
Tags: advertising, adwords, google, television, tv
What a world! A TV spot for $20?! I have no idea if it will work for me or not – I’ve never remotely considered TV – but with an entry price that low, it sounds like it’s worth checking out. If nothing else, a marketer could use the spot as a YouTube submission.
I went to spotmixer and created an ad but either I’m missing something or I’ve missed a coupon code??? Because to download the video in the form of a TV ad cost $299.00!!! I about fell off my chair! lol! So I got into Adwords to see for sure if it had to be in that form and it does. Also, I couldn’t seem to find the $20 ad. What I saw was cost per day, just like the regular adwords? I did search the internet for a coupon promotional code for spotmixer but I failed to locate one. Maybe someone else has had better luck??? By the way, if we can figure this out, it was super easy to make a video. I have never done this for fear of no video skills but I did it with no problems and even did my own voice over with a microphone from my kid’s wii game set. lol! So be brave, you can do it!
how do you get this av spot for 20.00. how long does this spot run/days/weeks/months or etc.
Delbert,
To get more info about the pricing and runtime for ads, you’ll have to find that directly from Google itself. Based on the way their other advertising works, my guess is that being able to get an ad that only costs $20 totally depends on your niche, the time/day when you want to run the ad, etc. Running ads in competitive niches or at prime times will likely cost significantly more.
Michelle,
I’ll look into the spotmixer thing. Something there doesn’t sound right, but I haven’t looked very closely at the actual technical ad requirements yet. There may be a way to produce the video yourself in an acceptable format. I’ll look into it and post what I find out here.
Ok, thanks for looking into it. I really appreciate it!
I am currently enquiring from a local producer about the cost of making a 20 second commercial to place on google. Im hoping its not gonna cost too much. I will then take your advsie and approach Google TV. Thanks for the great Info.
Micheal Angelo
I believe the $20 dollars for example only gets you the ad spot itself. You also need to have your own ad to run. There is a link to a TV ad market place type of deal where you can view samples of ads and how much they run. A car ad, for example, can cost upwards of $6000 dollars just to make. Now I suppose you could make your own ad, but I’m sure a level of professionalism must go into it in order for Google to approve it. The whole process is a little strange to be honest, I’m still not sure exactly how it works.
Incredible, I just implemented something similar today by using youtube and other video sites!
I am really looking to see how this shakes out. $20 just seems way to low for any type of prime TV spot. Then again, for $20 being on TV at all seems to be a great deal!
I read where it say don’t send hoplinks because they are to difficult to understand, and to send them to a landing page or a blog or a review site. Well I don’t understand because the hoplink is created when I click on promote and how can I make it something easy to remember or make it short?
@myrtle taylor: You could buy a new domain and then redirect this to your generated hoplink.