It is no secret that I really like Advaliant and everything they are about. I got the chance to interview Mr. Jivan Manhas, who is the President of Advaliant. Here is a little background info taken from Advaliant.com:

“Jivan Manhas is a Founder, and President of Advaliant, Inc., MediaTrust’s performance affiliate network. Both a seasoned executive and experienced entrepreneur, Mr. Manhas possesses diverse business experience, a fundamental understanding of how to leverage cutting-edge technologies within online media, and valuable strategic and operational experience in creating new ventures. Prior to co-founding Advaliant, Mr. Manhas was a co-founder of three Internet consulting companies, ViaCentrix, Digital Bytes and Consultica.“

Thanks again to Mr. Manhas, and my AM Geofferson for helping me get this set up!

Could you explain what initially got you started in the affiliate marketing business?
[Manhas] In late ’98 I was hired as the ecommerce Marketing Manager for a company called MGI Software based in Toronto.  As part of my responsibilities, I was to look into the best affiliate marketing program to partner up with and the two main choices were Commission Junction and Be Free.  As I started doing my research into this relatively young online marketing method it peaked my curiosity and interest in the field.
 
What do you think sets Advaliant apart from the rest of the CPA networks out there?
[Manhas] Besides the usual jargon espoused by most other networks (high payouts, timely payments, etc.) we really pride ourselves on making honesty, integrity and great customer service a part of our company culture.  As one of our team members likes to say, “ask us why we’re the same and you’ll understand why we’re different.”
 
Were you surprised at all by winning Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign of 2007 at ad:Tech San Francisco last year?
[Manhas] We were confident that we had built a strong campaign with Playphone but we were up against a number of brands that had been in the marketplace longer than Advaliant and Playphone so making top three for us was a great achievement.  Winning was amazing and validated the approach we take with our advertisers which is centered around long term relationships built upon honesty, integrity and very much of an agency approach.  Our approach with advertisers is to work with them to make their campaign as successful as possible within the Advaliant affiliate network.  That includes using our experience as well as affiliate feedback and our technology to make their campaign not only successful for the advertiser but for our affiliates and publishers as well.   We worked very closely with Playphone to understand their long term strategic business goals and built a program to help them achieve them.  Winning the Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign of 2007 was a great validation of our core strengths of building relationships based upon honesty and integrity in helping our clients achieve their goals. 
 

I have heard of a new tracking system being released for Advaliant soon, could you explain more about it?
[Manhas] Without giving away too much detail (we need to keep some things a surprise for the launch), we are currently developing out a new Advaliant affiliate marketing technology that will put us in a leadership position amongst performance marketing networks.  We are taking advantage of various different social feature sets, semantic A.I. programming as well as a large amount of feedback from our affiliates and advertisers to build out a cutting edge, industry leading technology that will allow us to evolve into the premier online brand for performance marketing.  I realize that is a bold statement but unfortunately affiliate marketing is seen as the ugly step child of the marketing world by many companies and if we want to survive as an industry we all need to take our industry up a few notches and start attracting the big dollars from the Fortune 100 companies.  This is our intent and as we continue to grow as an organization we’ve been fortunate enough to attract some top industry talent which will allow us grow our network in a direction that is consistent with our core beliefs.
 
From a CEO’s standpoint, where do you see affiliate marketing in 5 years?
[Manhas] As stated earlier, the industry as a whole needs to evolve and grow beyond where it is today.  I believe a handful of performance networks will have positioned themselves as Tier 1 brand networks to attract the Fortune 100 ad budgets, will rule the industry.  These networks will be more than just CPA networks and will have integrated ecosystems that offer various performance services across various different platforms such as web, search video, WAP, as well as offline.  More importantly, these networks will have taken a very professional,  ethical and transparent approach to  the way they do business and will also incorporate a strong “human element” into their business model to ensure their clients get the best service possible.  Those networks that do not have proprietary technology with strong professional and creative services teams will either have gone out of business, or fight over a smaller piece of the CPA pie.  I also believe some of the larger agencies will start acquiring some of the more successful performance networks over the course of the next few years in order to compete in the digital marketplace.  Keep in mind that even though performance or affiliate marketing has been around for quite a few years, it has never been the “hot” buzzword amongst venture capitalists and once it does, it will result in a lot of investment money coming into our space, a wave of consolidation and as stated above, a lift for the entire industry in a positive way.  Those with the bigger vision will build the bigger networks, bigger brands and become the industry leaders.

If you are not with Advaliant yet, get signed up! Click on one of the banners/links here and I will help you get approved ASAP.

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