The key to any affiliate or advertising network’s success is the relationship it has with existing publishers and it’s ability to recruit new publishers.

Advertising.com, a seeming giant in the affiliate and online ad inventory space, is going personal with its new campaign to recruit new affiliates and build better relationships with existing ones.  They are offering 10 million impressions as a sweepstakes for new signups.  According to the promotion site, the 10MM impressions are high quality, etc.  However, the motivations behind the outreach to new affiliates, and what that says about Advertising.com’s company narrative, is the most compelling part of this campaign.

When companies ask me how they can get more exposure or involvement in the affiliate marketing world, I always point to the power of personality and company narrative.  Companies such as ShareASale have done a very good job of creating and sustaining that narrative as a public face and has helped its growth and industry reputation on both the publisher and advertiser sides of things.

Advertising.com (and all networks or even merchants in the affiliate space) has the potential to tell their narratives and present a story of their company that will aid in recruitment and sustainability of a corp of dedicated publishers.

What is the most compelling about Ad.com’s new outreach, in my mind, is the position that Advertising.com’s CPL affiliate program has in the realm of the larger AOL Time Warner universe.

In some ways, Advertising.com’s team is like a small company operating inside of a mega corp.  They are beginning to create a public face based around charismatic team members like Missy Barnstein and Amy Ely.  Success in this marketplace depends on relationships and if you don’t put a public face on your company, as Advertising.com is beginning to do, publishers will create one for you on the forums and discussion lists… and not always in the most flattering way if your public persona is murky or vague.

In other words, combine these sorts of promotions with a voice, face and personality… blog, have a Facebook presence and even learn to like Twitter… those places pay dividends because that is where the early influencers live and interact.

On an industry level, Advertising.com’s participation in each of the last 3 affiliate summits (booth and/or tables at meet and greet) and this most recent promotion shows that even the largest companies are willing to (re)invest in the affiliate channel.  Instead of going full on into this channel, I see the Time Warner/Advertising.com paradigm as a much more profitable and interesting positioning.

I’m much more likely to work with you if I interact with you at conferences, on Facebook, on Twitter or in some way that allows me to learn about your personality.  First impressions are great, but it’s the second, third and one hundredth impression of a person that tells me if I want to continue working with them.  So, I’m glad to see a company with a seemingly established persona like Advertising.com putting it’s face and voice into the public.  The moral of this story?  Tell me your story and give me incentive to invest myself in a relationship with your company.