In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, host Kerry Curran welcomes Adam Weiss, President of AWIN North America, to discuss how affiliate marketing has evolved into a strategic powerhouse for driving revenue growth.

Learn how to balance reach, attribution, and ROI as Adam shares insights on leveraging diverse publisher types, influencer marketing, and cutting-edge tech partnerships.

If you're a business executive looking to optimize your marketing strategy and unlock explosive growth, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you succeed. Don’t miss it!

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.134)

And welcome Adam Weiss. So tell us a bit about yourself and your background and area of expertise.

Adam Weiss (00:08.682)

Awesome. Hey, Kerry, thanks for having me. So yes, my name's Adam Weiss. I am the president of A -Win North America. So I'm responsible for the entire North American affiliate marketing business for A -Win. And I've been in the affiliate space for a little bit over 20 years now. Worked at another network for a very long time and I did some consulting for about five and a half or so years on the publisher side of our business. So a lot of affiliate experience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:39.258)

Yeah, for sure. so, Adam Weiss, let's talk a bit about just the affiliate space and kind of how perception and use of the kind of not a channel has evolved these days.

Adam Weiss (00:54.1)

Sure, I think affiliate is ever evolving and I think that's driven by a few things. It's driven by the technology that sort of plays as the intermediary in the affiliate ecosystem, which A1 provides, but it's also driven a lot by the publishers in our space and the evolution of those publishers, the value that they bring to consumers and the value that they drive for their advertiser partners as …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:25.946)

Yeah, and we talked a bit about that where the research we did last year showed that every affiliate publisher type plays a role in both inspiration and research and consideration. So even those, like you're saying, that used to be considered bottom of the funnel can really introduce a customer to a new brand or new product. So it's definitely beyond just the perceived bottom of the funnel.

Adam Weiss (01:56.788)

Yeah, absolutely. I think of affiliate rather than being a channel as a platform. And within that platform, you have multiple sub channels, loyalty, coupons, deals. And it's always worth saying coupons and deals are different, right? They drive different behaviors. And then you have content. Even within content, you have subcategories of product reviews and editorial write-ups …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:04.709)

Yeah. We're.

Adam Weiss (02:26.844)

… evergreen type reviews and all different types of things that experts in a particular category might want to write about. So as an advertiser, you leverage each of those differently, which is what I think makes the channel really powerful as well if you're an advertiser working in it. I caught myself as I was saying.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:42.202)

Yeah. Or the nada channel. Yeah. Right. No, and it's so true because even across other media strategies, reach is always such a key component, whether it's TV, linear TV, or programmatic display, video, even out of home, reach is one of the key goals. so what you've talked about is like with the different publisher types, it really drives that reach for brand distribution.

Adam Weiss (03:19.498)

Yeah, and how they leverage that reach through each of these partners within the affiliate platform, but how they leverage each of those partners really forces you to be strategic with each of them as well to figure out how you want to turn those dials and the levers you want to pull, depending on what you're trying to do as a brand or a retailer. Also, I mean, you mentioned other channels, but you said things … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:27.099)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Weiss (03:48.094)

… TV and even certain display placements. Some of those things now even exist within the affiliate …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:54.48)

Right, right, right. No, that's so true. And that's kind of part of the evolution that we've seen from the types of publishers. So what are some of the biggest changes you've seen just in the last …

Adam Weiss (04:10.154)

There's always a lot of changes and like I said earlier, a lot of it is driven by the publishers that are playing in the space and how they are leveraging the channel. And I think as the publishers get more sophisticated, so do the advertisers and how the advertisers leverage them for particular strategies. So for example, like you were referencing, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:18.148)

Yeah.

Adam Weiss (04:37.106)

… affiliate historically might have been thought of as just the bottom of the funnel. But if I'm an advertiser and I'm releasing a new product, there's a whole subset of publishers that I could work with that can create brand awareness for me, that could educate the consumer on the product, them comfortable with it, know about the release when it's coming and their third party independent you know, partners to the advertisers, also to provide this unbiased opinion and in a lot of cases to the consumer as well. So I think that that's sort of changing how advertisers look at the channel and how they use the channel and how they allocate budget to the channel as well. Again, not just at the bottom of the funnel, but I could theoretically put brand dollars there. could leverage product marketing dollars there if I want to.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:10.501)

Yeah right.

Adam Weiss (05:32.04)

As well because there's a new product coming out. Well, how do I educate consumers about it? There are affiliate partners that could do it for you. So I think that's a pretty big change. And I think one of the other big things I've seen is how publishers are thinking about customer acquisition. It's becoming a lot more challenging with changes happening at Google. All of …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:51.194)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Adam Weiss (05:59.19)

the AI results that are starting to show up as well. And I think it's just a forcing function for publishers to think about how to create diversified customer acquisition strategies, whether it's leaning in on newsletters or additional paid channels or building brands themselves as … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:02.17)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right, no, you're so spot on with that. So the publishers that used to rely on traffic primarily from Google, they need to diversify their own media mix and their own brand strategy to continue to drive the volume to their content to then drive the affiliate engagement. it's, yeah, there's a lot of layers and lots of strategy that goes into each customer touch point for sure.

In another area we were talking about from an evolution perspective is the data. So like the card linked offers where the credit cards can use their customer data, you know, to match offers with shopping behavior and getting just smarter with kind of the connection to get closer to a target audience.

Adam Weiss (07:18.054)

Yeah, it's another one of the partnerships within the platform that you can leverage as an advertiser. CardLink is just one example and we continue to see this evolution, And the publishers themselves, to your point, as they build consumer bases or have built-in consumer bases, learn buying behavior and really can help the consumer. They can help recommend products, time to purchase, things like that, and really provide, like I was saying earlier, this sort of third party unbiased opinion about a particular product or a brand so they're becoming strong when it comes to the data they have access to to leverage.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:03.377)

Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:09.038)

Right, right. And so, you know, it ties to the consumer journey getting more nonlinear and more fragmented so that you need more of those touch points. You need that diversification of publisher types. And a customer that might be drawn to offers through their credit card might not be the same customer that is reading, you know, Brad's deals or, you know, one of the kind of deal sites.

Are you seeing across A -Win different publisher types becoming more prominent or is it still kind of a diverse mix?

Adam Weiss (08:48.206)

So there's always new and interesting stuff and everyone has a different, you know, angle on how they're going to capture new customers. I would say from an A -win perspective, what I've really been impressed with in my time here is that A -win has really learned on what we call tech partners. So partners who plug in, on the e-commerce backend of a brand or a retailer and can help with things through the affiliate platform and tracking, but can help with things like referring, know, like products or similar products based on what you already have in the cart, exit traffic, monetization, post checkout conversion opportunities, even referral programs. These can all happen through easy integration with what we call our master tag. The publishers are plugged into it. The advertisers are plugged into it.

Really easy for them to plug into the e-commerce component of a brand or a retailer's site. So I think that's something I've been pretty excited about. But generally speaking, we're always pushing for diversification because to your point, everyone shops differently. And to what we talked about earlier, every advertiser has their own flavor in terms of the strategy and how they're approaching leveraging ...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:06.458)

All.

Adam Weiss (10:15.742)

… affiliate. So you want to have diverse backgrounds. Some people might do a Google search and say, what are the five best running shoes? And then just purchase straight from the site. Some people might read a few of those sites. Some people might do a, you know, look at it, look at an email in between. Some people might make that decision based on how much cash back they're going to get if they make that purchase. Right. So everyone's a little bit different. And I think consumers generally are becoming a lot … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:24.997)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Weiss (10:46.056)

… and smarter in terms of how they shop online as well. So if you're not present on a particular publisher site, you might actually be losing a customer as again, they're becoming savvier and starting to look around more in terms of where the best opportunity is.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:01.198)

Right. Right. Or especially if your competitor is there or offering a comparable product. Yeah, no, for sure. And so another kind of big evolution in the past year or two is kind of the influencer and affiliate marketing kind of connection. So how are you seeing that influencer and affiliate overlap forming?

Adam Weiss (11:28.094)

Yeah, there's a clear Venn diagram between influencer and affiliate. Influencers, at the end of the day, are publishers or distribution, if you're looking at it from an advertiser perspective. And as you think about those different sub-channels within affiliates, that is one of them, because they drive different types of behaviors. Again, people shop differently. Some people see an influencer, whether it's a huge influencer or a micro influencer … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:31.182)

Yeah.

Adam Weiss (11:58.11)

… that recommends a product or a place to go eat or a hotel to stay at. And that becomes part of your mix as an advertiser. So I think I look at it in sort of two broader buckets. The influencers, there are a bunch of influencer networks that plug in the affiliate platforms like A -Win and we partner with all of them. And there's always … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:17.712)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adam Weiss (12:27.838)

… component to that. They're part of a brand's program. They find influencers and I'm an influencer and I'm going to write about brand XYZ and I grab a link that's powered by A -Win's influencer platform. And then there are other examples, which is something else that A -Win does where it's more campaign driven. So I have a specific goal as a brand. I need a hundred influencers to talk about the launch of this new product or a new hotel that's opening whatever the case may be. And I need those influencers to do X, Y, and Z and be on this platform. And I have this budget and it has to run at this time and meet these certain editorial standards. And that to me is more pain driven. So it's almost a good hybrid of some type of flat fee and then the additional affiliate CPA as well. And it really plugs in very nicely with the affiliate channel as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:13.328)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right.

Adam Weiss (13:23.646)

… because of the tracking, reporting components and most importantly the scale you get from all the brand relationships.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:30.0)

Yeah. Well, and that too is that when you get more tracking, then you can really optimize and see which influencers really are impacting your sales or engagement and kind of continue to build stronger relationships or double down on those that are really driving that brand relationship with new customers.

Adam Weiss (13:52.446)

Yep, that's totally right. And affiliate also, in case you couldn't tell, totally, I'm all in on affiliate. But I also think if you think about it, we talked about earlier about all these different types of publishers, you have really large publishers, but you do have a long tail. And with influencers too, like we just said, you have these huge influencers with millions and millions of followers, you have micro or nano influencers, and it's not easy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:00.623)

Yeah.

Adam Weiss (14:20.082)

In some cases to build relationships with large brands and retailers. Imagine, think about some affiliate programs that have thousands of distribution partners. Imagine trying to call a brand to get a thousand calls. I want to partner with you. I want to partner with you. I want to do this. I want to do that. Affiliate brings scale to that operation. I think that's a really important part of the channel that we tend to overlook or neglect.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:20.634)

No, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Adam Weiss (14:49.788)

Sometimes because there is a manual component. Here's my strategy, right? Here's how I operate. And we have to kind of come together and make that happen. But the actual development of a partnership and the management of a partnership affiliate gives that real scale. And so if you're a brand, the ability to find these publishers and these influencers. It's a lot easier when you're partnered with a large affiliate … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:22.574)

Yeah, no, definitely. And again, it goes back to the data, being able to see which publishers are driving that engagement or sale. The challenge there when you get into attribution with measurement is that there's the touch points that are introducers, and then there's the touch points that are converters. And how do you make sure you're still valuing the introducers because you need that upper funnel?
 

Are you seeing more conversations around attribution and measurement and kind how is that affecting channel mix and publisher relationships?

Adam Weiss (16:05.716)

Yeah, brands and retailers are thinking about this and it's important for the publishers too because they know, some of them know that they're driving the top of the funnel. So the ability to layer in attribution based reporting which A1 supports gives you as an advertiser the ability to determine here are the economics I want to set up with this type of partner versus this type of partner. And so to … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:29.488)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Weiss (16:31.978)

… your original or earlier point about the bottom of the funnel. That's not always the case now. You could create different types of offer structures based on the partner that you're working with, based on the historical attribution data that you've looked at. I know this type of partner is an introducer versus a converter. So I want to give this one a certain economic relationship different from another one as well. So it's becoming.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:36.378)

Yeah,

Adam Weiss (16:58.162)

… really important and helps brands better, brands and retailers better understand their publisher partners and how best to optimize with them as … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:05.934)

Right. Yeah, because I think too, if you are only leaning into the converters, you're going to miss the introducers and you're just going to minimize your reach and your potential. So I think that's always kind of a watch out that I've seen with affiliate programs is that you can't, just because it's not driving that direct sale, you have to be able to measure that touch point and know that it's kind of propelling your customer down the funnel, maybe it's just not right away.

Adam Weiss (17:37.854)

Yeah. And like I said earlier, sometimes it might not matter. Conversion might not matter. I it matters at the end of the day, but you might have, again, a new product launch and what matters right now is just getting reach. Or set up economics appropriately for that. But right now, the importance there might not be immediate conversion, but it's that introduction of the product, its reach and the fact … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:57.286)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adam Weiss (18:06.652)

… some of these publishers, like we're talking about, have enormous audiences that you could eyeball from, this is the opportunity to take care of that through the affiliate …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:11.502)

Yeah, yeah, right.

Definitely, because it's the same thing. It's like they might be purchasing offline. They might be purchasing on Amazon versus the direct site. it's, yeah. I fear that there's often a decrease in prioritization of the non -converter drivers. But to your point, it needs to align with the publisher and where the goal is for that consumer journey. So for sure.

Adam Weiss (18:45.566)

Yeah, and I've said this before too. I think the other thing to keep in mind is sort of the evolution and maturity of the publishers in the sense that they are big. Some of them are bigger than average publishers. And again, I've said this before, but just having been in the industry for so long, the fact that you can sit on your couch watching TV and there are ads on television from large affiliate publishers, the fact that there are large affiliate publishers …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:54.0)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Weiss (19:13.076)

… their logo on an NBA jersey. I mean, that's mind blowing, right? And the point is they're building an audience. And so as an advertiser, have an opportunity to leverage it in multiple ways.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:23.748)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so obviously you and I know the importance and value of affiliate from a broader media mix, but how can we kind of help affiliates get more attention from the executives that aren't quite sold.

Adam Weiss (19:41.94)

Yeah, it's a common question that I hear. I think it is getting attention. I think the reality is it's not just a one and done situation. It's an ongoing narrative. It's an ongoing storyline that we need to create about, like we've been talking about, the publishers are, the flexibility that you have … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:57.264)

Yeah.

Adam Weiss (20:11.614)

… within an affiliate platform. It's not just like there is full funnel attribution data. There's flexibility around economics, the scale it brings you. If you think about, I talked about earlier, what it entails in the overhead, just create one partnership, right? Think about it, drop that into your affiliate platform. There's a lot that could be achieved there … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:29.35)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, right, right.

Adam Weiss (20:39.722)

… having a solid business case around what it is that you're trying to do with what partner, I think that goes a long way. And ultimately, the affiliate channel is a, or the affiliate platforms, they're your strategic partners. And I think that you can really get attention at the executive level with these strategic partnerships at scale, but it's gotta be an ongoing … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:56.87)

Right, right.

Adam Weiss (21:08.902)

… narrative and also I think we don't talk a lot about the great return it gets.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:14.992)

Right, right. Yeah. And also just the testing that you can roll out a comprehensive testing program that you can prove the A -B value or like comparing when something is in market versus not. It's just the business case that is the key part. And I think the more the affiliate leads within organizations can kind of beat that drum. Hopefully it will, the affiliate will someday get the respect it deserves.

Adam Weiss (21:50.314)

And I think you hit on a key point to carry about testing. I talked earlier about, you know, A1 leaning into these tech partners. From my experience, I've never worked at a brand or a retailer directly, but it seems to me it's complex to do. If you're going to install something onto the e -commerce backend, right? That's complex. But with affiliate, you could turn it on.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:54.789)

Yeah. Very complex.

Adam Weiss (22:18.484)

I'm pretty confident it works, but if it doesn't, we're talking about something like exit traffic monetization or something like that that I mentioned earlier, you could turn it on through it. And if it's not working, you turn it off. But turning it on, you can test it with minimal overhead, relatively speaking. And I think that that's really important. And that goes for any partner as well, even if it's just, you … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:29.829)

Right. Right.

Adam Weiss (22:44.066)

… a third party distribution partner, a content site, an influencer, a loyalty site. It's really easy to test. It's really to look at data, to look at the conversion data, look at intent data, and then figure out, is this working for me? Yes, no. Because a lot of times what I've seen is, for example, I'll see retailers, maybe they're a little nervous about loyalty and cash back. So they turn on one partner and that partner works. And then they say, that's right. A couple more of these that we could.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:13.658)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it works. Yeah. Yeah. And the ROI is there. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. No. And Adam Weiss gave us so many good points for brand marketers to think about and to build that business case.

Adam Weiss (23:13.694)

You know, right? It never fails. It really works. Yeah. Correct, yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

What are key factors for success in affiliate marketing?

Adam Weiss 

So it's a good question. I think the bottom line is thinking of this as a strategic partnership channel. Each publisher, as a brand or a retailer, publishers are your strategic partners. You're going to have a diversified group of partners to work with. And also you don't want to just throw out the lasso and bring in a bunch of publishers. You want to be able to work with them and figure out what the give and the get is. What can they provide to you? And then what do you need to provide to them? 

In turn to have a successful partnership, understand each other, understand what the opportunity is from a consumer perspective. And that's where I think you can really build value and obviously leverage a great platform like went to make it

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Excellent. Thank you, Adam.