Scandinavia is recognized as one of the world’s most advanced markets in terms of Internet usage and on-line behaviour. The combination of a developed infrastructure, educated population and high mobile/Internet penetration makes Scandinavia the ideal testing ground for many new on-line applications and services.
Nevertheless, despite an uptick in on-line market communication (marcom) spend across all segments, there is still a complete lack of affiliate partners (and cost per sales options) for advertisers targeting the small and medium business (SMB) market space. Whereas the United Kingdom is the most developed European market in terms of allocation of advertising spend – Scandinavia (as well as several other regions) are lagging.
Today, the consumer-side affiliate industry offers a real alternative to cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM) advertising models (upfront payment with advertisers bearing much of the risk). In the SMB space however, the lack of an effective network, coupled with the intricacies of reaching a quasi consumer type segment in Small Office Home Office (SoHo) and really small businesses, makes SMB affiliate programmes very limited in scope.
If I were an entrepreneur I would probably work to create a pure SoHo/Small business targetted site and develop my affiliations. If successful, visit frequency and behaviour will be high (similar to Consumer) but spend and average order values will be skewed upwards. Most advertisers will be willing to pay 2x for an SMB customer vs. a consumer so there should be an attractive business opportunity here.
