This document discusses the shifts needed in affiliate marketing to adapt to personalized experiences and mobile commerce. It highlights the importance of audience targeting and personalized experiences. It also promotes moving beyond last-click attribution to more innovative multi-touch commissioning models. Finally, it emphasizes that the Asia-Pacific market is mobile-first and stresses the importance of proper mobile tracking and optimization for publishers and advertisers.
4. 4
Leading Priorities vs Most Challenging Barriers for Companies Worldwide in Developing
Hyper-Personalization Strategy
% of respondents, Nov 2018
Applying data to decision making is one of the top
priorities and biggest barriers for personalization
60%
51%
41%
37%
32%
29%
26%
34%
53%
35%
33%
22%
40%
38%
IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
APPLYING DATA INSIGHTS TO DECISIONS
UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMERS BETTER
IMPROVING ALL CONTENT PERFORMANCE
GAINING A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
USING MORE AI
ATTRIBUTING REVENUE TO MARKETING
Most Challenging Barrier Leading Priorities
Source: eMarketer
6. Audience Data for Publishers
N E W
C U S T O M E R
R E T U R N I N G
C U S T O M E R
Detect
if consumers belong
to one or more
high-value audiences
Personalize
the creative and offer
depending on the
customer type
8. TOTAL VOLUME OF TRANSACTIONS (GMV)
Moving Away from Last Click
Source: skimlinks
AVERAGE CPA FOR CONTENT PUBLISHERS
Volume of
transactions tripled in
2.5 years
Content
publishers get
rewarded
more fairly
9. Content Commerce, Becomes Mainstream
Jun. 24, 2019
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries
“How E-Commerce Sites Manipulate You Into Buying
You May Not Want”
Apr. 25, 2019
Max Willens
“Why Meredith is Serving Up More Shoppable Content
on Its Food Sites”
Feb. 8, 2019
Sara Guagalone
“Dotdash Revenue Increases 32% in Q4, Ad and Affiliate
Businesses Show Growth”
Jul. 10, 2019
Lenore Fedow
“Condé Nast Pulls $300M Investment in E-Commerce Site”
Jun. 18, 2019
Aditi Sangal
“Hearst’s Troy Young: Access to data drives
organizational change”
Feb. 5, 2019
Priya Rao
“Vogue Melds Editorial and E-Commerce with Launch of New
Sub-Brand VogueWorld”
10. 10
AD V E R T I S E R S
A One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Commissioning
is No Longer Viable in Today’s Digital Landscape
P U B L I S H E R S
• Develop data-driven commissioning strategies
• Motivate and incentivise Publishers to drive specific
product sales from certain customer types
• Deliver higher value customer types
• View advertiser commissioning offers and rules
with complete transparency
• Receive insight into building revenue earnings through
advertiser objectives and variable commissioning
payouts on offers
• Make strategic decisions about what to promote
11. 11
Drive New Sales and Encourage Repeat Sales
with Multi-Touch Commissioning
Content
Publisher
Email
Campaign
PPC Click
Cashback
Publisher
Sale
100%
CREDIT
Sale
Content
Publisher
Email
Campaign
PPC Click
Cashback
Publisher
50%
CREDIT
50%
CREDIT
12. 12
Dynamic Commissioning lets advertisers create
commissioning rules on a variety of data points
rakutenmarketing.com
Reward Publishers
for High Value Customers
based on status, score, or segmentation
Control Costs on Low Margin Items
by commissioning on category, brand,
or discount
Incentivize Sales
to Optimize Performance
by using order amount, item amount,
and profit margin
15. 15
AD V E R T I S E R S
Mobile Best Practices
P U B L I S H E R S
Prioritise Mobile
Tracking &
Dev Requirements
Prioritise
Mobile!
Understand
Advertiser
Capabilities
Properly
Configured
SDK Tracking
Mobile Site
Optimization
16. SUMMARY
Audience targeting
and personalization
in affiliate is here!
Think beyond
the last click
There are more innovative
ways to reward and optimize
affiliates, throughout
the funnel
APAC is a
mobile first market
Are you covered?
AFFILIATE
CONSUMER GRAPH
For Hyper-personalization
DYNAMIC &
MULTI TOUCH
COMMISSIONING
ADOPT & INTEGRATE
THE RIGHT
TRACKING METHODS
Editor's Notes
Welcome (1 min)
VP Publisher Partnerships International – My job means I get to spend a lot of time on a plane, and in regional markets (Add more… Pub Advisory/Role of)
My second time in Singapore, my first was July. Asia/SEA/APAC, is an exciting region due to some of the technological advancements – hope to do today’s session justice, knowing this
Changes are occurring in our industry, and collectively - and as Rakuten Marketing - we’re responding.
Privacy concerns and poor ad experiences
Demand from advertisers for more sophisticated performance levers
Underutilisation of mobile marketing tactics to mirror user behaviour
In response to these industry challenges, we want to talk about ways to set yourself up for success:
How to create personalised experiences customers love
How tech and tracking innovation is broadening affiliate
Mobile tracking needs to better align with consumer behaviour
The affiliate channel is not immune from wider industry pressures and challenges, and as such is vulnerable to the ‘personalisation gap’.
It’s a bit of a catch-22. In a post GDPR world, with elevated concerns around privacy and consumer control, consumers are hesitant to give consent for their data use. But on the other hand, they’re likely to punish or desert brands that can’t deliver a personalised or relevant ad experience. NEED TO ADD IN SOME STATS HERE?
While it’s previously been a channel that hasn’t allowed for audience targeting or personalisation, this is changing for affiliate. Again, this is a major shift in affiliate technology that is driving the industry and channel forward.
So, how can you personalise experiences for consumers?
According to eMarketer, applying data to decision making is one of the top priorities and biggest barriers for personalization. Additionally, one of the barriers that we’ve found is that many publishers either don’t have the tech sophistication to do anything with data, or don’t want to make that investment.
Via Rakuten Marketing’s Consumer Graph technology, we’re providing a solution to these challenges. Via Consumer Graph, we’re providing publishers with access to a suite of APIs that are connected to our Rakuten Marketing database systems. These systems contain transaction and engagement data tracked by Rakuten Marketing and CRM/audience data for advertisers that have on-boarded their CRM/audience data to Rakuten Marketing. When a consumer visits a publisher site they can request data via the Consumer Graph API. Requested data is then provided to the publisher so they can personalise the consumers experience in real time.
Real Example: An advertiser might agree to pay a higher commission for new customers. The publisher thinks, ”the extra incentive is nice, but how I am going to get better at acquiring new customers?" The advertiser and publisher then use Rakuten Marketing’s consumer graph tool to drive tailored messaging for new customers and boost that side of their program. In this example, both Dynamic Commissioning (which we’ll talk to in more detail shortly) and Consumer Graph work together to provide the best possible experience for customers.
I’ve just spoken about how affiliate is adapting to consumer demands, but it’s also broadening based on advertiser demands.
Advertisers want more out of their affiliate partners, and the tech that supports those partnerships, and this is driving change and innovation.
Going to touch on three areas and examples of the broadening capabilities of the affiliate channel.
A focus on upper funnel partners, and a shift away from last click
More flexibility around commissioning with our commissioning suite
Extended reach
Affiliate marketing is no longer dominated by lower funnel activity.
New players are entering, and this is being assisted by innovation and changes in tracking.
The emergence of content and commerce is a great example of this. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the growing trend of content, commerce and deal personalisation across some of the world’s biggest publishers.
Most of are aware of multi-touch commissioning, and I know there’s some fear in the eyes of our last click publishers, but the reality is that Advertisers are placing increasing value and putting more and more spend towards top of funnel discovery publishers.
Changes in tracking and the technology powering affiliate have allowed us to better reward all publishers within the path to purchase, and this is creating new opportunities for both brands and pubs.
Dynamic Commissioning is all about flexibility, and driving affiliate forward to align with retailers business goals. This is a major update to Rakuten Marketing's commissioning technology suite.
The reality is an advertiser cant give 20% off on everything in their store, but could get 80% on one product they want to get out the door. Or maybe you get a $50 bounty instead of a 2% commission for a new customer in the shoe category.
Better incentivize publishers by offering complete transparency on how they might build their commission.
Really wanted to use the example of content publishers and changes to tracking and tech, particularly around commissioning, that is driving innovation in the affiliate space.
We’ve touched on the growth of content and non-last click partners, as well as the commissioning tools that are supporting this shift. But advertisers are also looking for increased scale in their affiliate activity.
Historically, finding new affiliate partners that allowed you to tap into new audiences was a manual process that limited the scale of an advertiser’s network.
Rakuten Marketing is invested in changing that, and we’ve put a lot of investment and resource in building AI powered affiliate products, that enable advertisers to discover new partners that match your business goals, ideal audience and overall budget.
Our matchmaking tool is now in BETA, and we think this signals a real transformation in the ability for affiliate to scale, and the transformations that are occurring in affiliate technology .