In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Kerry Curran is joined by Max Willens, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, to dive into the future of digital commerce and affiliate marketing.

Drawing from exclusive eMarketer research, Max uncovers how emerging trends, including the rise of retail media, shifting consumer behaviors, and the integration of AI, are transforming the landscape.

Max explains the growing importance of first-party data, the impact of Google’s changes on publishers, and how affiliate marketing continues to evolve as a key driver of business growth. With expert projections and in-depth analysis, this episode offers valuable insights for brands looking to stay ahead in the competitive digital space.

Podcast transcript

 

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.702)

So welcome, Max. Please introduce yourself and share a bit of your background experience and the exciting data you have to share with us today.

 

Max Willens (00:13.032)

Thanks, Kerry. It's nice to be here. Yeah, so I am a senior analyst on the ads and media desk at eMarketer, where I cover a bunch of different things, including retail media, paid social advertising, web publisher, monetization, and affiliate marketing. This is my, I guess, third year at eMarketer. And before I joined eMarketer, I was a reporter for about 10 years, most of my time was spent covering media and technology. I worked for Digiday. I worked for Newsweek.

 

I interned at Ad Age for a while and, you know, spent most of the time that I worked at Digiday covering publishers. And while I was there, I got really into affiliate as a coverage area. This was around the time that you started to see, I guess you would, affiliate folks call them the content people. You know, folks like Vox Media and Dotdash and Buzzfeed really kind of look around and go, wait, this actually might be kind of a big growth area for us. And so I covered that pretty intently. And one of the first things I did when I joined the eMarketer was write a report on the affiliate space. This is going to wind up being my third, one that's publishing this week. And for reasons that are still not super clear to me, they gave me the first that your marketer had done in quite a while. But we have ramped our coverage up since I joined. I think the key reason, frankly, is just subscriber interest. We're a business that generates revenue in lots of different ways, but the foundation of it is a big, big subscriber base, and we're responsive to their interests. they certainly could have read the first one I wrote, which I think is interesting, and said, eh, interesting, that's fine next, but you know, the interest has grown and grown and so they have me working on it more and more as the years went on.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:18.99)

Yeah, no, definitely. I think that's one thing we've talked about. We share that interest in the fact that there is so much opportunity and potential. Like you're saying, the publishers generate revenue, but also for brands and marketers to get in front of such a broader audience through affiliate. Yet, it's still kind of, even though it's been around for 20 plus years, it's still trying to get a seat at the table.

As I often say, get a seat at the media planning table to carve out more of that budget from a prioritization perspective. So I love all sorts of data and research that supports, well, all research. I should love all data and research around marketing perspectives, what consumers are engaging with, what marketers and how marketers are planning and aligning their strategies and budgets.


But, we've talked about how the affiliate has so much potential. So the more data we have to help marketers recognize that this is something that really can drive revenue and growth, the better. So, or the fact that it proves that thesis, I should say. So with that, tell me a bit more about the goal of your trend report and what you know, kind of what the thesis was going into this, especially kind of based on your past two papers.

 

Max Willens (03:47.752)

For sure. Yeah, mean, to start with sort of the goal of it, I mean, it's not dissimilar to the rest of the work that I do where, you know, I think I and the rest of my colleagues sort of fundamentally see ourselves as sort of synthesizers of information where my goal is to sort of demystify or clarify, you know, a brand or a publisher's view of a particular market. 

And that's for this report as it has been for the past ones. It's kind of a unique challenge relative to my other coverage areas because as everybody listening to this podcast knows, this is a very kind of diffuse but also very siloed ecosystem where there aren't lots of sources of data. So in a way, it's nice because it reminds me and hearkens back to what I did as a reporter where there are things that I cover where there's so much data that were I inclined to do so I could basically write my entire report just by kind of sifting through Excel spreadsheets and plucking out interesting facts and figures.

But for this report, I have to put my reporting shoes back on and talk to people. I think I spoke to something like 20 different executives to put this report together. And as far as the thesis, a lot of it was about sort of checking in on and looking at how far certain trends I'd noticed last year were progressing. Things like what is happening to the publishing side of this business as it gets more competitive, as it gets more crowded, not just because of more content folks getting in, but also influencers continuing to funnel in. But also looking at it from the consumer side, too. I mean, one of the things that I noticed. 

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:36.694)

All right.

 

Max Willens (05:44.392)

I'm not actually sure it wound up in my 2023 report, but it was something that came up in a presentation that I did for a client actually, that gave me the sense that consumers are getting a lot savvier in a way that at a high level, I think is quite good for affiliate because affiliate is a platform and a channel that's really kind of sustained by savvy consumers, people who want to do a lot of research, want to find trusted expertise, want to find the best deal they can on a good or a service. So that, that raising that increased savvy is fundamentally a good thing, but it's also, I think based on the data that I was able to find also starting to have a bit of a cost to the publishers and the brands as well, where, you know, where once upon a time, a well-written, thoughtful written out recommendation of a product would be good enough.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:22.157)

Yeah. Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (06:40.36)

You know, now a consumer is reading that and going, that's nice. I'd also like a 20% coupon or, you know, something to sort of sweeten the deal. so looking at how that's shaped everything. And then fundamentally, this was not something that was on my radar quite as much as maybe it should have been, but just, did spend a bunch of time on this report, trying to sort of wrap my head around the ramifications of Google's changes, because everybody listening to this show knows that that's been a defining storyline for both buyers and sellers and affiliate. And I wanted to kind of get to the bottom of, you know, its impact.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:17.42)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You bring up a lot of good points there as well, like getting into, think, just finding that connection between what's going to be valuable to the market, to whether it's the brands, the publishers and how they can use this to kind of prioritize their budgets and strategies going forward.


And I think to your point, two things, one is when the research that I did last year found that the affiliate publishers were part of the consumer journey at every stage, which I found so interesting because even though it was a smaller percentage, the coupon data or coupon sites and the kind of the cash back sites, a lot of consumers will go to those for their inspiration and upper funnel kind of where I need to buy something or I just want to see what's out there. 

I mean, if it's a good deal, I'll buy it to your point all the way up to the publishers. The content publishers were the number one after social and then influencer. The kind of mass media publishers like you're mentioning like the Dotdash Merediths, the Conde Nast and Hearst, that those content providers, were actually more consumers were using them at a higher percentage than Google and marketplaces to get that inspiration. Whether they were kind of specifically looking for something or just wanted to be inspired. So it just reiterates the importance of the affiliate, different publisher types in the consumer journey. And all of your data kind of helps with that kind of give them more factual support to those investments. And then also to your point on Google at Affiliate Summit East on the commerce and content stage, that was just all the publishers were talking about. And so to your point, and as you're going to get into, was a big impact. And it does signal a need for real strategy changes and prioritization.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:38.348)

With that, I'd love for you to kind of dive into your findings and data, share with us what you found.

 

Max Willens (09:46.672)

Yeah, sure. I mean, one thing that was a very pleasant surprise, and I think this again speaks to the, you know, interest that we've been fielding from our customers in this space is this report for the first time includes one of our own forecasts. So we have an entirely separate team that does forecasts and we decided to, you know, invest the time and resources needed to do an affiliate forecast for the first time.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:00.898)

Hm-mm.

 

Max Willens (10:16.38)

You know, I can speak to it at a high level. You know, I didn't bring my whiteboard with me today, but the, you know, at a high level, we were able to sort of, you know, draw on data that we already have about sort of rising retail e-commerce activity, which is, you know, one of the kind of main engines of this space. We were able to draw on and synthesize a lot of third party data, which is kind of a hallmark of all the forecasts that we build.

And then again, also the same thing of just sort of speaking to folks at agencies to get a feel for what it is that they see coming. And the big, I guess, headline number is that we expect that spending on affiliates in the United States is going to approach $11 billion this year. I think 10 .72 is the number that's in there. And then it will be ...

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:54.147)

Hm-mm.

 

Max Willens (11:13.16)

… just shy of 12 billion in 2025. And this is, I think, for folks that have spent the time and energy to sort of find affiliate forecasts. They kind of appear on the radar screen every once in a while. Our forecast sees something that's not dissimilar to what they see where, thanks to sort of steadily rising...

Ecom activity per digital buyer, thanks to more and more agencies getting more and more interested in, you know, driving sales online. Those are all, you know, really steady and solid tailwinds behind this space that, you know, are not going to stop blowing for maybe, you know, forever until we're literally only buying things on the internet, I guess. But, you know, that's, that's a ways away. I would imagine. But …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:06.486)

Yeah, that's really interesting, the growth is definitely an important or very valuable projection, right? Like us, it just reiterates like what we were saying about that there's growth here, that there's value from the publishers and the brands and people are using it. Not to put you on the spot with this one, how does that compare to other channels? Other or like a meta or search kind of forecast.

 

Max Willens (12:41.874)

So there's definitely a lot of different directions you could take it, right? So search, it's growing faster than search as a spend category. is growing not as quickly as social, but it's in that general vicinity of sort of mid or excuse me, low double digit growth. It's quite a bit slower than retail media.

As a point of comparison, almost everything is quite a bit slower than retail media. I just finished a forecast there and I think we're expecting something like 25 % growth a year for the next five years or something crazy like that. But it is, you know, for a channel that, to your point, has been around for 20 years, which in digital is, you know, might as well be 500 years.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:11.31)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Max Willens (13:37.69)

It's growing in a way that I think is really quite healthy relative to its age. And I think a lot of the reason for that is how, I guess, dynamic and kind of, as I said before, diffuse is where you can spend or use affiliates as the investment mechanism to reach people on CTV. You can use it to reach people on a website that you as an advertiser might own and operate yourself. You can use it to reach people …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:41.709)

Yeah.

 

Max Willens (14:06.208)

… on some of the pages of some of the most visible publishers in the world. You can use it to reach people when their heads are down and they're just trying to get their back to school shopping done. If you are open-minded about the channel, you can use it to reach people almost anywhere. And I think that flexibility is a main reason why growth is as healthy as we see it to be.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:32.398)

Yeah, definitely. And one more question on the data. So I know when you're talking about the dollar amount, 12 billion might not, you know, I come from the media buying world, 12 billion, well, should feel like a really large number to the average person. To media buyers, planners, the big holding companies that's actually not, that's a drop in the bucket.


But do you think it's fair to say that it shouldn't actually be compared to search or social budgets or other media budgets because affiliate budgets tend to be paper performance primarily. So you're not actually spending a lot of money on impressions that aren't or, you know, media flights that aren't driving conversions and revenue. What's your thought on that?

 

Max Willens (15:22.12)

You know, that's a really interesting observation. I think it's maybe even something that's worth kind of exploring in a subsequent report, because to your point, you know, you can kind of do a lot. And this is, think even manifest in the research that I know you did last year and that other folks have examined where, you know, if you go in and maybe do a, an affiliate campaign with an influencer, for example, and you know, the KPIs or the sort of structure of the deal is such that the influencer is only getting paid when someone visits your site and converts. There's still potentially tens of thousands of people who are getting exposed to your brand for the first time and potentially looking at it in a new light. And maybe if that TikTok post or that Instagram reel doesn't drive them to convert right away, maybe they reach for your product.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:06.893)

Okay.

 

Max Willens (16:19.688)

You know, more readily the next time they encounter it in the wild. And that's not really, again, represented in, the, you know, let's call it 4% of people that convert or whatever it happens to be. so, I think a lot of the really savvy advertisers have kind of done that math and figured out that the, you know, effective value of the transactions is, is different from, you know, the actual amount of money changing hands and that's going to differ.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:22.798)

Mm-mm. Right.

 

Max Willens (16:49.18)

Depending on the buyer, I think that's really a savvy observation.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:53.708)

Yeah, well, I mean, that just reiterates that what I keep saying over and over again is that affiliates should have a more prominent seat at that media planning table just because from a dollar perspective, it feels smaller. From a tier point, from an impact perspective, there's so much more. So yeah, the revenue growth is definitely a big number and something that all of us in this space should be excited about. So what else? What were your other findings?

 

Max Willens (17:26.226)

So the one thing that really leapt out at me and struck me as really interesting was when I first went into writing, when I started my research for the year, one thing that I knew I was going to have to start to figure out was the extent to which retail media and affiliate marketing intersect or don't because, you know, as we've already talked about on this podcast, retail media is this kind of freight train that's plowing through media as a whole.

If you look at it from a certain vantage point, you can see a lot of ways in which affiliates could wind up being really valuable to a retail media network. I mean, obviously, Amazon's advertising business would not be what it is without the years and years and years of Amazon Associates driving people to their O&Os.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:00.003)

Mm-mm. Yeah.

 

Max Willens (18:24.998)

You know, above and beyond that, there were, you know, things like, buttons figuring out a way to sort of create off site inventory for commerce publishers, things like that. But as I was doing that research, I found something that I wasn't really expecting, which is this notion that this is a channel that is, think, about to enter an era of what I call data stratification, where for publishers that that sit on and have effectively corralled the first party data that they that they're generating from affiliate and that they have on their audiences. They are going to start playing a fundamentally different game and enjoying a fundamentally different relationship with advertisers than the folks that don't have it. You know, if you're a publisher who can, you know, use the data that you sit on to, you know, dial up or dial down a discount level to.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:59.853)

Okay.

 

Max Willens (19:22.95)

You know, get a better conversion if you're able to, you know, target the content that you generate only at a specific cohort of your audience. That's, you know, in a way that's going to drive better conversions. Or if you can even, you know, if an advertiser comes to you and says, we want you to reach everybody except these people. And if you can turn around and say, sure, we can do that. All of a sudden, you are, you know, …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:25.974)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Max Willens (19:53.136)

… entering into a space of trust and strategic importance that another publisher that doesn't have those same capabilities just isn't going to be offering. I'm not saying that the people in that latter camp are doomed or should turn the lights off or anything, but we are going to start seeing different kinds of relationships and different kinds of tactics deployed as …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:07.874)

Mm-hmm.

 

Max Willens (20:21.402)

… more and more publishers start to leverage the data. And also frankly, as more advertisers start to get savvy about this too. So, you talked a bit during this conversation about how a lot of the challenge here is that, you know, affiliates don't always get a seat at the media planning table. And that's because the people on the buy side who are handling affiliates are, you know, in some dusty corner on the third floor of the office.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:30.029)

Mm-hmm.

 

Max Willens (20:51.012)

And if the parent company maybe has first party data that they want to bring into a clean room or use to model out who they want to see, it's not a given that the affiliate team is going to even have access to that stuff or know how to use it. So there's kind of evolution that needs to happen on both sides, but I think we can see the beginnings of it happening already.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:13.324)

Yeah, no, actually I love that idea of the data stratification and how, I mean, it just reminds me of some of the programmatic media buying strategies, but in programmatic you're talking about a single ad placement where you're kind of taking it from the whole, I'm getting correctly, based on what we know about the visitor, you're gonna serve them the whole page, the whole like content they're going to receive is going to be much more customized versus just the individual ad, which is very smart.

But to your point, you need the data scientists that the programmatic team or the team within the organization that's thinking that way to pull in the affiliate marketer and planner. I think the other piece when it comes to first party data that you know, I would say, I've spoken to a lot is that with retail media, they're converting on somebody else's site. So somebody else owns that data. You know, I just had an industry leader on for a future episode. talked a lot about with Amazon, if you're super savvy, you can use Amazon marketing cloud to actually use that data. But for the other big retailers, you don't get access to that data.

But when you're using an affiliate strategy, platform publishers, and they come to your site and convert, you now own that customer. You own that data. Now that cookies aren't going away, that's, now, when cookies are going away, that was even more important, but it's still extremely important. So it just, again, when it comes to affiliate versus retail media, I think you just want to reiterate that you get to own your customer and build that relationship through so many other avenues. it's your email, now you can target them on social, now you can target, so there's so much more you can do. So again, getting that data part of it helps marketers and brands be so much smarter and efficient with how they're engaging their prospects and customers. Yeah, yeah. So, and then, so what else? Keep going. I know there's so much great data in here.

 

Max Willens (23:25.846)

Absolutely.

Yeah, there was a I've sort of I've alluded to a couple of times already, but just to sort of foreground it. The one thing that I was expecting was to sort of reckon with or engage a lot with the notion that this space is just getting really competitive from the sell side, where, you know, there's obviously been legacy players that have had a big influence over the channel for quite some time. But, know, …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:38.616)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (24:02.28)

If you rewind, let's call it eight years ago, 10 years ago, there was a sense, especially among certain kinds of publishers, know, the editorial guys, even the, you know, tech providers, definitely the earlier influencers that were playing in this game, that there was a kind of a green fields feel to this channel. That's pretty much gone now. This is now very, very competitive.

Space and when you, you know, sprinkle in or I guess drop in the substantial audience distribution disruption that came from Google, you wind up with some pretty tough results through the start of the year. And this was born out by, you know, data that I got from a bunch of different networks and also just talking to folks. And what's so interesting to me about this is that.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:47.8)

Right.

 

Max Willens (25:00.956)

You know, I mentioned before that before I joined eMarketer, I worked as a reporter at DigiDay and I covered publishers and there was constantly this conversation around, well, we got to really, you know, make sure we don't get too reliant on Google or we got to make sure we don't get too reliant on, you know, Facebook for traffic. And this year, talking to folks for this report was the first time that those conversations felt different to me.

It wasn't a kind of like, boy, you know, this really is kind of important. It was more of a like, I've got to figure something out. OK, you know, I cannot be in a position where I am, you know, at risk of having my traffic fall by 90 percent because this partner that, you know, in many respects behaves as though they are completely indifferent to me, decides to, you know, turn a knob in their office and.

You know imperil my business. It's not clear to me that there is a you know an easy alternative sitting there, but seeing how quickly and how energetic people are looking for alternatives is really interesting and it's also too. I mean like with all things affiliate. It's it's led to certain kinds of partners really taking off

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:00.397)
Yeah.

 

Max Willens (26:25.948)

You know, last year when I wrote this report, I wrote about folks like Lavanta, and they wounded up my section on them wound up on the cutting room floor because there's just enough space for it. But you know, this year, the others like them are doing great because publishers everywhere are going, I got to, I got to find a way to, you help myself here and they're a perfect opportunity.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:40.686)

Yeah. Yeah. No, actually I was, I was thinking about Lavanta when you were talking about Amazon, in retail media in relation to, affiliate, because as soon as I learned they're, they're only a two, two year olds, or almost two year old brand. I've spoken with Rob a few times and it's so fascinating to me coming from Amazon, e-commerce, you know, I've spent years researching and building strategies for brands on e-comm and retail media. So I watched that evolution firsthand and then saw Lavanta and what they're capable of so smart. And I immediately wanted to call every DTC or every brand selling on Amazon and say, you've got to do this.

What we saw was that Interpoint, definitely impacted revenue growth for the publishers because back when I was at the agency, on the agency side, the publishers were quicker to pick up content to promote when they could send client shoppers to Amazon because they knew shoppers felt more, what we saw in the data, shoppers felt more comfortable.

Clicking through to an Amazon, then to brand.com to make the purchase. And I've done the same thing. One, you know what you're gonna get shipping, it's gonna be easier to return. In most cases, I can just go to my Whole Foods or UPS store versus something more complicated with a direct brand, et cetera. So I do think Lavanta is such a smart overlap of the e-commerce, retail media strategy and affiliates. I'm glad you mentioned them and I'm very glad they didn't make sure that they did not hit the cutting room floor this year. So yeah.

 

Max Willens (28:56.624)

Yeah, I mean, I think what's so, it's really hard to overstate how much that kind of trust in the retailer matters. I mean, this kind of factored so much into what I mentioned earlier that I wrote a report that came out earlier this year about the retail media space and we just see Amazon's …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:08.982)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (29:21.672) 

Growth continuing to be as robust as it is. And really at the heart of that is Amazon Prime. I don't think it's an accident that, you know, TikTok shops offer fulfillment. And that's one of the main reasons why I think they're going to be one to watch very, very carefully. I talked a little bit about that was one of the other things that I looked at a little bit. was a little bit surprised by … 

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:27.128)

Mm-hmm. Right.

 

Max Willens (29:52.306)

How much I didn't find, but one of the sort of theses that I've had for quite a while now is that social is going to sort of start becoming more instrumental and play more of a direct role in this space. They, Instagram kind of tiptoed into it and then retreated a while back. YouTube has kind of waxed and waned, but seeing what's happened with TikTok Shop, where TikTok has basically said, …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:02.498)

Yeah.

 

Max Willens (30:19.28)

… almost anybody can be an affiliate on our platform. I think the cutoff now is a thousand followers. So if you are in this kind of game at all, that's a pretty easy mark to clear. Obviously for certain verticals, TikTok Shop is kind of a non -intuitive fit. But if you are into fashion and beauty and home goods, it's...

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:24.992)

Mm-mm.

Max Willens (30:48.337)

You've got you've probably got at least a little bit of your brain focused on the TikTok shop and how to make that affiliate business work for you as well.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:58.092)

Yeah, I agree. And again, some upcoming episodes with other marketers who are one that has really leaned into a brand that is really a consumer brand has really leaned into TikTok shops. And she's talked about the importance of including that in the strategy. Then I also spoke with a TikTok shop agency and they're just talking about how it's actually to your point, it's very easy to get in and involved and they're like, you just, you really need to just start talking to the camera.

So, I agree, and that's exciting to see that grow. And to point about Google, these are the other avenues that even publishers can engage with to drive their customers. I think one thing I kept thinking about, again, back on the commerce and content stage for Affiliate Summit East, and based on your data, is the publishers got comfortable doubling down on SEO or tripling down, which as a, started my career in SEO, so I loved that. But to your point, they put all their eggs in their basket. Publishers today need to think like the brands do and do their own marketing strategy and their own awareness and demand and called action strategy to drive customers to their websites, not just hope that their legacy brand awareness will do it for them or the Google results.

 

Max Willens (32:36.552)

And there's real upside to doing that too, right? It's not just a defense, I've had my organic traffic, you know, kick down a flight of stairs. So now let me start buying it. It's, you know, if you can build a brand around the advice or research or, you know, deals that, you offer, you know, developing the people who, who find value in that tend to be quite sticky and, you know, stickiness in a …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (33:01.312)

Yeah.

 

Max Willens (33:04.998)

… space like an affiliate. I mean, it's valuable in most any corner of digital media if you're a publisher, but if in this space in particular where, know, stickiness is also synonymous with trust, which leads to higher conversion, which, you know, leads to potentially better commissions from advertisers, it's really an immensely powerful and important thing to aspire to get. And so if you can just devote as much mental energy as you can to figuring out how to make yourself …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (33:12.141)

Yeah.

 

Max Willens (33:35.176)

… trusted component of a consumer's buying journey. That just pays dividends on dividends on dividends.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (33:41.134)

Right. Yeah. And publishers can use influencers. it's, you know, it's like publishers looking at themselves like a brand, like the brands that they partner with and kind of take some best practices from their playbook. Great. so, you know, it's so much great insight in data, Max. What else do you have for us?

 

Max Willens (34:03.964)

Well, I would say those are the things that leapt out at me the most. I guess the final thing is that I wanted to explore a little bit more and will probably have more opportunities once commerce media becomes a bit more established, but really kind of looking at the link and kind of upside potential between commerce media and retail media.

 

I imagine everybody listening to this knows the difference between commerce media and retail media, but I'll just quickly kind of go through it. You know, with retail media, the basic idea is that those are advertisements that's advertising that's been, you know, facilitated using a retailer's, you know, first party data. It often, though, though not always, you know, is designed to have a closed loop measurement aspect where you're, you know, …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (34:39.416)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (35:02.844)

… driving someone back to Amazon or Walmart or Target or whatever it happens to be. And commerce media is similar, but different in that the first party data is typically brought to the table by a brand that's not a retailer. Maybe they're adjacent to it. They're like a financial services company, like a PayPal or a Chase. Maybe they are in a completely different vertical, like Marriott, like Planet Fitness.
 

And it's the same idea where you have very robust first party data. You have in some cases pretty decent, you know, digital scale in terms of, you know, audiences that you can reach and. And an emphasis in many respects on, you know, driving conversions. If I look at sort of the earliest players in this space, something like a chase media solution, I think it's called.

 

And when I look at the actual offering, go, that's an affiliate business. And I think there's a world in which the visibility of commerce media and the results that commerce media drives is a gigantic win for affiliates because it just shows CMOs across the media landscape that this kind of pay-per-performance model is inside of a trusted partner.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (36:05.069)

Right, right. Mm.

 

Max Willens (36:28.389)

The ecosystem is actually really valuable and probably something that I should be spending more time focusing on. And that inevitably becomes a rising tide that lifts affiliates up. There's another version of the story where it just becomes one more, hose sucking away the incremental dollars that might've gone to affiliates and pulling them somewhere else.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (36:53.422)

Mm-hmm.

 

Max Willens (36:53.624)

And I think it's too early to say how that's going to shake out. But I think watching how those things unfold over the next year is going to be really, really interesting.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (37:00.962)

Yeah, do you mean from the perspective of like for the chase media solutions that would pull from affiliates?

 

Max Willens (37:07.72) 

Correct. So there's a possibility that that business goes gangbusters and a bunch of other folks spin up things like it. And the affiliates that might have been able to tap into that incremental budget are sort of left out in the cold. But the opposite could happen.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (37:17.73)

Mm-mm.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (37:25.122)

Got it. Yeah. But from a, so from a brand perspective, they might be looking at that as another publisher, but you're saying, so it's shifting to new publisher solutions versus like, so like the, an affiliate manager would still be managing both, but more just shifting from more traditional affiliate publishers. Yeah. Like a brand side or agency side affiliate manager.

 

Max Willens (37:46.694)

Yeah, I suppose that's right.

That's right. Although there's also a possibility too where, you know, maybe there's a brand side person and they touch a portion of their retail media budget and they maybe get a bit of incremental dollars to sprinkle onto a commerce media solution like a chase or like a planet fitness. And so instead of that incremental dollar going to the affiliate manager, the retail media guy just takes it and spends it on …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (38:04.62)

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Max Willens (38:22.76)

… a business that effectively offers a kind of affiliate solution, but it goes into their spreadsheet as something else, which ...

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (38:30.87)

Yeah, that makes sense. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, because my first instinct is, this is great. It brings a little bit more elevation to a little bit more shine to an affiliate strategy to get the attention. But your point, then it becomes who gets to manage it. I think you're spot on as well because

 

Max Willens (38:49.126)

Exactly.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (38:56.142)

I remember seeing a promotion, maybe it was for Chase and it was a big promotion that we now do this. And I'm like, that's actually nothing new. just like, you're doing some PR for something that affiliates have been doing for a long time with the Card Linked offers. it's, but to your point, it's growing and it's working and it's a trusted space. yeah. Great. No, the...

All of this data, Max, as we're talking about, it just reiterates even more to the brand, the executives who are holding the purse strings on where to allocate budget for really driving that revenue in business growth and customer acquisition and reach all the things that go into revenue growth can be found through the affiliate. A couple of things.

I guess, as this serves as ideally a tool for brand marketers to go to their CMOs and say, like, look at this data, we need to look at this as an investment. Are there specific values for a publisher versus a brand emerging technology that kind of come to light here?

 

Max Willens (40:17.874)

So I think that there's, you I hope that, you know, anybody that's interested in this space, be they buy or sell, can get something interesting out of the data. I think that if I'm a publisher and I'm reading my report, I think one thing that is probably most valuable is to sort of level set on how everyone else is doing, you know, to the point that you made about affiliate summities rather than just talking to publishers.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (40:45.848)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (40:47.258)

Everybody is kind of feeling pinched by things that Google did and kind of discount prevalence, but getting a feel for how that looks, I think, would be valuable to them. And also too, to just sort of get a feel for what the upside is for investing more in first party data. If I'm an advertiser, I always try to write my reports in a way that will be useful for folks that are investing in the space and for folks that are maybe considering investing in the space. I think having the, not just the kind of top line data of the growth that we project, but also having a feel for who is going, you know, who is doing really well. What are the kinds of big picture platform movers and shakers that are going to influence …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (41:24.846)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (41:46.748)

You know, how savvy investment will play out in the space is going to be valuable. And then I think, you know, to that specific carve out for technology providers, mean, I would imagine that anybody that that considers them one of those is probably feeling pretty positive because they as a group, I would say also have a pretty robust and differentiated kind of first party data that they can bring to the table, which is going to stand them in good stead as this space moves forward.

And especially also too, because even though people have been buying things on the internet now for decades, the kind of expectation and norms around where and how we transact are always kind of fluid. This is why people are endlessly hopeful about live stream shopping, for example, which I personally happen to be sort of bearish about, but it's a brand new thing that ...

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (42:33.218)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (42:46.444)

… might catch fire, it's always impossible to tell. And for the technology providers who, you know, if there's a through line between them all, kind of commonality to them, it's that they are kind of innovating the shopping experience. You know, what we see in the data and from talking to people is that people are amenable to something new if it delivers value. And that's the tech provider, you know pub vertical to it in a nutshell for affiliates.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (43:17.42) 

Yeah, no, definitely. Again, there's so many more opportunities for advertisers to leverage a variety of different publishers, everything from like you're saying content to buy now pay later to card linked offers. It's a lot. this has been, I love hearing about all the data and insights and Max, thank you for your research to kind of bring that strength to the affiliate industry.

 

Max Willens (43:25.96)

100%.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (43:47.694)

Can you give us your projection for kind of the, you talked about the industry growth to, I would say 12 billion in 2025, but what else is your, in your crystal ball?

 

Max Willens (44:03.656)

The part where I prognosticate wildly and irresponsibly. I'm kidding. yeah, I mean, I think so it's easy to do this is just to go, you know, if we're talking about, you know, going from 10 .7 to, you know, just shy of 12, how do we get there? I do think it's, you know, increasing that again, the kind of backbone of it is, is increased retail econ penetration. But I think that what we're going to see is a lot more, …

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (44:08.558)
You. Hmm.

 

Max Willens (44:33.384)

Growth from the sort of provider vertical, frankly. So there was one piece of data that I got from a network that I thought was really interesting that sort of showed the share of actions taken across its network and separated out by publisher vertical. coupon, cashback, and loyalty all had their share drop.
 

Through H1 of last year. And some of that is just down to the kind of tonnage that comes from creators, but it's also because more and more people are embracing new ways of shopping. And that means more commerce on social media. It means more commerce in novel spaces like BNPLs, like marketplace apps.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (45:06.243)

Yeah.

 

Max Willens (45:32.352)

And like, think to a lesser extent, offers created by folks like PayPal and like Chase. So I think that things like post-sale are going to continue to really bloom because there's so much buy-in from, especially from brands, I think, and so much interest in finding ways to improve their margins. So it's going to be a space where … 

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (45:58.2)

Mm-mm.

 

Max Willens (46:02.152)

I think there's going to be a lot of upside in kind of looking at the emerging areas of space going into 2025, because they're, I think, going to do really well for themselves.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (46:11.394)
Yeah, and that's exciting. That's getting more ways to shop, more ways to connect with prospects and grow your reach. So Max, thank you so much. This was great. I always loved talking about data and kind of projections with you. So thank you for joining us and hopefully we can have you on again soon.

 

Max Willens (46:33.064)

It's my pleasure, Kerry, I enjoyed it, thank you.

 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (46:34.862)
Thank you.