To stay ahead of the curve and meet customers’ ever-growing expectations, many brands are beginning to re-think how they measure the success of their campaigns by looking inwards at their own internal measurement frameworks.

However, there may be a cause for concern. According to a new report from McKinsey ‘Prediction: The Future of CX’, only 6% of leaders revealed they are actually confident that their current measurement system ‘enables both strategic and tactical decision-making’. 

In principle, it’s very simple. Without clear measurement of the correct metrics, you’re unable to see how far (or not) you’ve come. This can then risk falling short of the brand’s vision, as well as ultimately threatening the overall success of the business. However, when done correctly, measurement can be a powerful driver of change across an entire organisation. 

As part of our 2022 Customer Experience Imperatives, we explored how brands can create a more effective measurement framework, from focusing on what you can measure, to what you should measure. And, how this in turn, can make the world of difference for those brands competing for the top spot. 

The importance of a measurement framework

An effective measurement framework is not about reporting or dashboards. Instead, it provides a solid foundation for understanding what activities are meaningful to the business, and how teams should prioritise them. This then allows brands to easily identify the core focus areas for the business and ensures everyone within the organisation is working towards clearly defined goals that are tied to a common purpose.

Unifying a brand’s vision is not only important for both customers and employees, but it also breaks down business silos, rather than reinforcing them. If for example, one team is working towards a set of goals that differs from another team’s, employees may feel a lack of direction from higher management. This can also cause disjointed brand interactions for consumers and could be just the thing to drive a once loyal customer into the arms of a competitor. 

A clear measurement framework, however, enables brands to deliver more seamless, cohesive, and relevant experiences to their customers, and ensure employees stay on track by translating the CEO’s vision into concrete actions. 

A four-pronged approach

Ensuring that the core business objectives tie into a brand’s business purpose, is an important first step. Once the above is in place, brands will need to develop a framework that will effectively track whether activities and inputs are driving positive movement towards these objectives. There are four phases to that process: align, access, analyse and evolve.

1. Align

Measurement, like many other elements of business, changes and matures as time goes on. Even if an organisation’s strategic objectives set the course and direction the business wants to take, often its KPIs and measurements do not align with those objectives. 

The first step for brands is to create a unified strategy that aligns strategic objectives to measurable outcomes, and to the actions and decisions needed to drive results. Brands should then benchmark how the business is performing and understand what capabilities it has to deliver those measurements. 

2. Access

Successful measurement requires mature capabilities, application, and adoption. Therefore, brands should benchmark how and what they are measuring, as well as the capabilities needed to successfully define, develop, and utilise measurements. 

However, benchmarking is an ongoing process. It’s important for brands to revisit benchmarking to ensure they are seeing continuous improvements as this allows businesses to track progress against valuable comparison points in the market (for example, the competition, customer spend, or an adjacent industry’s products/services).  Finally, brands should assess capabilities to measure, build the measurements aligned to the business’ outcomes, as well as define the primary measurement KPIs that support the actions needed to run the business. 

3. Analyse

Once a brand’s measurement maturity is understood, it’s important to define KPIs and map them against the measurements that are already currently in place. At this stage, it’s valuable to note all potential data limitations that could hinder achieving your objectives, including details around people, processes, and technology. 

Here, it is important to identify where and how a brand needs to expand measurement to track its performance. As you define KPIs, they should be strategically linked, actionable, and goal orientated, otherwise it cannot be considered a metric for measurement. This can put the business at risk of investing time and resources into measuring data that does not hold value. 

4. Evolve

For long-term measurement success, this requires charting a course for change that evolves over time. Therefore, brands must continuously evaluate their business objectives to ensure everything still aligns and gauge the effectiveness of KPIs, to link actions to outcomes. Once outputs are determined, brands can then begin to prioritise recommendations to improve long-term measurement, with near-term wins.

Finally, it’s time to define the measurement roadmap with key workstreams, dependencies, milestones, and timelines. As well as defining the steps needed to address data, reporting, and underlying technology initiatives to bring the KPI framework to life. 

No two businesses are ever the same, so there’s no such thing as a one-size fits all measurement framework. Instead, the key is to identify short, medium, and long-term plans to develop a bespoke structure that fits around a brand’s individual and unique needs. 

We’re now living in a highly competitive and fast-changing world and keeping up and keeping ahead can be a constant challenge. By building an effective framework, measurement can be used as a very powerful catalyst for change and can improve the effectiveness of customer experiences in new and innovative ways today, and as a business evolves in the future.

The post Using Measurement as a Catalyst for Change appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Now it’s official. Those who missed out in July will have a second shot at savings, with the retailer adding two additional Prime Days on the 11th and 12th October. Amazon has said that the additional days are a chance for consumers to get ahead of their Christmas shopping. And it’s a smart move. One that is very reactive to changes in the market and consumer behaviour.

Early holiday shopping or “holiday creep” is a growing trend. Gartner found that nearly half (48%) of consumers will start to shop in October or November this year, with 16% now shopping year-round for holiday gifts. But it’s fair to argue there is more to shifts in shopping habits than early festive cheer.

Surging energy prices and food costs weigh heavily on the economy. The cost of living crisis is affecting everyone, and as Amazon’s President told Reuters, this “macroeconomic environment” consumers are facing is further rationale behind the second Amazon Prime Day.

From the brand perspective, serving up big discounts for Prime Day isn’t as easy as it sounds for several reasons, including declining profit margins and supply chain issues. A survey of brands for the July event found that 22% planned to discount less than last year. There is no doubt that the extent to which inflation pressures shoppers will be weighing on the minds of brands this October as well.

It’s a lot to contend with, retail brands and marketers will need to think outside the box to balance the bottom line. Especially considering the intense competition for the shrinking disposable income of the average consumer. There is no single prescription for planning how to approach the event. Still, depending on where their challenges fall, there is much to consider around margins and inventory when capitalising on Amazon Prime Day 2.

It’s all about the margins

The problem in 2021 was getting inventory into warehouses, but understandably, it’s all about the margins this year. While all brands should conduct an extensive study on product margins and pricing, those with tighter margins – due to either higher cost of raw materials or inflation – must know their pricing structure like the back of their hand.

Prime Day can feel like an opportunity to go in all guns blazing. However, a conservative approach to bargains offered is a much smarter option for brands with tighter margins. Discounting just one or a couple of products could be a way of minimising the margin squeeze.

Consumer choice is not a bad thing, but in the busiest sales periods, retailers mustn’t overwhelm their customers to the point of checkout paralysis. There’s no need to. Instead, focus on getting the right products in front of the right people. With this in mind, choosing which products to discount should be based on a data-driven approach. Analyse your historical sales – which products are the best sellers? Where do you have an inventory surplus?

Bring to life dead inventory

For some brands, lack of inventory is still very much not the problem due to a slowdown in E-commerce sales last year and the ongoing supply chain issues. While historically, sellers have viewed Prime Days as a sale to jump-start new products, for many, this will be a “clear the excess” type of sale. As such, this is a huge opportunity to take advantage of the ability to apply deeper discounts for the readily-engaged consumer. But, before deciding on a promotional strategy, brands must understand their stock levels across their portfolio. This is crucial because promoting such products might not stand out if other best-selling products are discounted.

The percentage discount is obviously pivotal in every Prime Day sale – consumers will not be incentivised to buy if the deal isn’t appealing enough. Amazon instructs a minimum discount of 20% off. This is why with those struggling with profit margins, pouring promotional efforts into one or two products, as mentioned, will be more effective than a full portfolio approach. Whereas in the case of inventory, brands will need to either be selective and only discount products with high inventory levels or have a more aggressive discount on those products.

How to tackle advertising spend to maximise Amazon’s potential

It might sound like a lot of homework. But a study on Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) for advertising campaigns and a set target to work towards on Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) will benefit all brands. For those with excess inventory, it would be wise to delve even deeper, expanding on analysis and having a target ROAS by-product depending on stock levels. This will enable advertisers to understand how aggressive they can be with their strategy, identifying different paths to maximise sales while still making sense compared to the cost of the product and/ or holding inventory.

Mastering margins and inventory, as well as your advertising investment in relation to each respective challenge, is absolutely worth it. Only those who understand how their business is affected by internal and external barriers will be able to remain efficient. But, the benefits for successful brands are vast – this October and further afield.

Prime Days, or indeed any event that offers a good bargain – are the perfect time to attract and engage new customers. But Amazon specifically provides a really good shot at future customer acquisition. For example, three out of four customers use Amazon to discover new products.

But for that to matter, planning must consider how to successfully entice those customers outside of these branded discount days and understand that while conversions happen on Amazon, they are driven by many media channels. An omnichannel approach that includes video and image content will maximise outcomes for Prime Day and beyond.

The post Amazon Prime Day 2: This Time, It’s Personal appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Both traditional affiliate programmes and influencer marketing campaigns strive to build brand authority and drive conversions based on your goals, whether that be clicks, downloads, sales, or something else that can be achieved by engaging consumers. The two industries, affiliate and influencer marketing – which arguably both sit under the industry umbrella of partnership marketing – are converging now more than ever. This is because as the influencer space matures, affiliate marketers are realising how it can be viewed and utilised through a performance-based lens. 

When worlds collide

Global affiliate marketing agency, Acceleration Partners, has been putting a heavy focus on developing an influencer programme management service. AP believes that investment in the maturing channel is essential for top-of-funnel brand exposure across paid and owned channels, which is discussed in detail in its latest report. 

impact.com, is also among the big industry names that are dedicating teams and resources to elevate their influencer marketing offerings. For the second year in a row, impact.com is a partner of the Influencer Marketing Show London, as well as PI LIVE London. The team will be raising conversations about how their multifaceted approach to elevated partnership programmes benefits from the implementation of influencers. San Sareen, impact.com’s Director of Influencers and Creators, will be taking to the IMS stage specifically to hone into how to correctly compensate your influencers to beat the competition.

What about trackable metrics? 

SaaS and tech are also becoming increasingly more prominent in the influencer marketing space, with similar tools becoming available to those that have been harnessed and solidified in the affiliate space for many years. Platforms such as LTK and Metapic allow brands and influencer affiliates to earn an income from sharing fashion recommendations, and the likes of Captiv8 and Influencity allow brands and affiliates to identify content partners and seamlessly run end to end campaigns. 

The growth of SaaS and tech platforms in the influencer space that provide services similar to their traditional affiliate counterparts such as Afise and Partnerize shows that influencer marketing isn’t just posing with a product on Instagram, but is a channel that can be tracked and measured efficiently. 

Ultimately, putting a focus on influencer marketing as a part of your affiliate programme is a great way to expand the type of audiences you can reach, therefore escalating your potential for excellent outcomes. Affiliate marketers, it’s time to invest time and energy into understanding the true value of a creator’s influence.

The post The Increasing Focus on Influencer Marketing from Affiliate Marketing Companies appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The past five years have been a strange and unsettling period for marketing. There’s been hyperinflation in some of the biggest marketing channels; martech stacks piled so high they’re close to toppling; the death of third-party data; the pandemic. Now the recession has pushed marketing to a pivotal point. The status quo isn’t working. To survive in the times ahead, businesses must now rethink their approach and adapt.

That starts with turning to your most valuable (and often overlooked) asset: your customers.

Turn customers into brand advocates

In the current economic climate, your customers represent the greatest source of untapped growth potential. 

Consumers trust referrals from friends or relatives more than any advertising. They’re much more likely to listen to – and act on – the glowing recommendation of a friend, than that of an influencer or targeted search ad. 

If you’ve built a great brand that offers quality products and service, there’s a good chance customers are already talking about you.  Effectively engaging with these brand fans will create a powerful community of advocates who market your business better than you ever could. 

As well as increasing the quantity of your customers, this word-of-mouth marketing will also enhance their quality. Compared to the average customer, referred customers have double the lifetime value and are 5x more likely to refer onwards – creating a powerful cycle of sustainable growth.

Putting customers at the heart of your growth strategy isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s imperative to the long-term success of your business. Referral can fundamentally transform the economics of your business. It offers lower acquisition costs alongside high lifetime value customers, driving organic growth directly from your core. 

That’s the holy grail of marketing – and the reason that thought leaders, including the creator of NPS Fred Reichheld, are now talking about how driving referrals and thinking advocacy-first is the secret to future-proofing growth. 

A sustainable competitive advantage

As well as a high-performing acquisition channel in its own right, referral generates uniquely rich first-party data that gives you a sustainable competitive advantage. 

Referral data tells you who your best customers are today. That’s not your biggest spenders. It’s your brand advocates – those customers actively introducing high-quality new customers to your business. 

With this data, you can optimise performance across your marketing channels. Social media is a compelling example of this. Despite being one of the modern marketer’s most invested in channels, the death of third-party cookies has seen this channel deliver fluctuating returns that can be near-impossible to predict. 

With first-party referral data, however, brands can target referrer lookalike audiences that are highly likely to convert and have high lifetime value – scaling their businesses whilst reducing their CPAs. Menswear trouser SPOKE is one example of a brand using this to great effect. By using referral data to build audiences on paid social, it’s driving 30% higher ROAS and 12% lower CPA.

You can even start to segment customers based on how likely they are to refer, and target them accordingly. By encouraging customers with a high propensity to refer to share the brand with friends, Moss Bros increased share rates in this segment by 6x. And by offering low propensity customers a discount on next order instead, it increased repeat purchase rates by 23%.

Become a winning business

In the tough times ahead, marketing teams cannot simply plough on with the same strategies and hope to survive. Maximising value from all your assets and channels is now mission critical. Referrals help you make this ambition a reality.

In the words of Fred Reichheld, referrals aren’t the icing on the cake; they’re an essential ingredient for sustainable growth. Harness referral and advocacy for your business, and you’ll optimise marketing performance, beat your competitors and win in the recession. All while earning trust that keeps customers coming back and bringing their friends, long after this challenging period is behind us.

The post How to Future-Proof Growth Through Customer Advocacy – in a Recession and Beyond appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The last several years have posed extremely challenging circumstances for everyone. Consumers and businesses have faced a series of unforeseen curveballs ranging from a global pandemic, lockdown regulations, supply chain issues, a regional war and accompanying sanctions, not to mention a cost-of-living crisis at a time of extreme inflation. 

With so many uncontrollable macro factors at play, the success of a business right now is largely down to its ability to adapt to these turbulent times. Change doesn’t have to be scary though. For the most agile companies, from giant corporations to rising entrepreneurs, these shifting sands have been an opportunity to grow at the expense of their slower moving competitors. 

And with the affiliate channel witnessing an explosion in partner types over the course of the last couple of years, covering every conceivable online media touchpoint, advertisers can use the channel in a highly adaptive manner. Today’s affiliate industry represents a galaxy of marketing options that can hit any range of KPIs, from brand awareness to new customer acquisition.

Combined with its heritage as a low-risk ad model where spend is tied to tangible outcomes like sales and revenue, and where the ROI returns are consistently high, it’s easy to see why advertisers have turned to affiliate partnerships in these difficult circumstances.

But to make the most of this new choice of options, a proactive and experimental approach is required. Advertisers that actively diversify their publisher base in the current climate are the most likely to see incremental growth. Those that are complacent, and who rely on just a small, unvaried programme of partners for growth are unlikely to see it in the long term, and risk becoming over-reliant on them.

Don’t just take our word for it though. We grouped a selection of current Awin advertisers into two distinct categories that aligned with these two approaches to illustrate the distinct difference in outcomes.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

Awin works with thousands of brands, of many sizes, across every sector. Taking a sample group of large brands with defined strategies, we analysed two approaches to managing an affiliate programme. 

Group 1 – Armchair Advertisers: The first group of brands has a very passive marketing approach, focused on a couple of core partner types, and running a traditional programme strategy without room or budget for testing or trying more varied partnerships.

Group 2 – Adventure Advertisers: The second group of brands strive for a diverse programme mix, with set budgets available for adapting to market changes, and regularly welcome new partner types on board to support this strategy. 

Diversity of partners fuels increases in traffic 

When comparing both groups year-on-year Armchair Advertisers saw a 6% decrease in traffic mostly impacted by traffic drops from core publisher types, including discount (-8%), loyalty (-9%) and cashback (-29%). 

Adventure Advertisers however, benefited from audience diversity through their varied partner mix and saw traffic increase 29% for the same period. This growth was driven by a variety of the less conventional partners welcomed to the affiliate channel in more recent years, including SEM affiliates seeing 162% traffic growth on the previous year and CSS partners up 76%. 

A diverse affiliate partner mix drives sales performance too

Traffic increases don’t necessarily equate to valuable business growth though. However, looking at sales performance year-on-year presents a similar picture. Armchair Advertiser programmes saw a credible 16% increase in sales, but Adventure Advertisers still exceeded this seeing an impressive 33% sales increase. Again, a mix of newer affiliate types were responsible for this significant sales growth. SEM partners were up +217%, influencers +73% and CSS partners +58% YoY.

Diversity of partners mitigates AOV impact from one partner type 

Increase in average order spend is another common KPI for an effective affiliate programme. Armchair Advertisers witnessed a 2% growth in AOV over the last 12 months, whereas Adventure Advertisers saw a 9% increase in AOV through the different partner types that they could leverage. 

Delving deeper into this disparity, we tracked a significant 12% drop in AOV from just one partner type which impacted growth for Armchair Advertisers who were reliant on this type of affiliate for driving almost half of their sales performance. Despite working with the same partner type themselves, Adventure Advertisers were insulated from this sudden decline thanks to the range of other partner types they worked with. 

Conversion Rate still strong at 4.76% 

Sharp-eyed readers will note the one metric Armchair Advertisers won out by in comparison to Adventure Advertisers was on conversion rates. This is not totally unexpected though. Traffic volumes, as we’ve already established, were significantly higher for the latter group. The diverse nature of their programmes means their programmes influence customer journeys across a much wider segment of the marketing funnel, further from the traditional conversion spaces which last-click attribution metrics focus on.

While this means their average conversion rates were lower (though a close-to-5% conversion rate is still strong), it also means that their partners are likely reaching customers at much earlier phases in their shopping journey. These are by no means wasted interactions. Instead, they can help drive vital brand awareness goals for Adventure Advertisers, keeping their brand in mind when that shopper does eventually decide to buy.   

“If life were predictable it would cease to be life and be without flavour.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

So, we’ve outlined the benefits of building a more diverse affiliate programme across a variety of important business goals. But who are these emerging partnership types helping our Adventure Advertisers?  

Influencers 

Influencer marketing is becoming an integral part of brand affiliate marketing strategy. We are increasingly seeing separate budget pots, KPIs, and success measures for them. In fact, over the past two years we have seen content creators and influencers go from driving 5% to 8% of all network traffic. The number of influencers actively driving sales has also increased 8% over this time period, with 112,095 sales-driving influencers live on the Awin platform in 2022. 

Feel Unique partnered with Sellers Alley via Awin to diversify its existing influencer activity outside of established social platforms to hit a new audience on TikTok. Using a test budget and focusing on UGC-inspired ads, this activation saw search volumes grow 27%, new user engagement up 84%, and delivered 15k sessions on TikTok. Feel Unique impressions reached far beyond the TikTok community with brand followers growing across multiple social platforms too, and increased searches on site for products featured in the TikTok campaign. 

CSS (Comparison Shopping Service partners)

In 2017, Google Shopping welcomed third-party CSS providers into their shopping ad auction. Whilst CSS isn’t necessarily brand new to the overall marketing mix, we are increasingly seeing brands wanting to partner with one or more CSS partner via their affiliate programme, allowing for quick campaign testing, running on risk-free CPA-based commercials, and aligned tracking and measurement alongside other partner types.

Awin has highlighted CSS growth over the last few years, and these partner types have proved no exception in 2022. In 2020, Awin tracked performance through 20 different CSS partners, however in 2022 we now have 304 different partners active in this space driving sales for brands. Investment in CSS partners from brands has increased 57% and CSS partners are now responsible for driving 4% of total network sales. 

Technology Partners 

Technology partners are an exciting way to diversify your programme, but it’s also worth noting the amount of diversity within the umbrella term ‘technology partners’. There are 109 technology partners live on Awin, and a different partner available to meet every objective. If, like many retailers at the moment, the current cost-of-living crisis is impacting the number of items consumers are purchasing per shop, an on-site bundling partner such as Increasingly or Particular Audience might be the partner of choice to support you in boosting this goal. Or, if your business changes tack on what stock to shift and when, a partner such as RevLifter focused on personalised offers, or intent.ly’s on-site overlay technology might be the best choice to interact with consumers during their shopping journey and incentivise specific purchase decisions. Technology partners allow you to accelerate your own in-house innovation, removing traditional martech barriers around allocating development resource and costs. Year-to-date, our technology partners have driven over £160m in sales revenue for our brands globally. 

Brand Partnerships 

Another impressive recent partner success story at Awin has been that of brand-to-brand partnerships. Advertisers are increasingly partnering with complementary, non-competing brands to reach a potential new audience with similar values. Brands can co-promote each other and enter a reciprocal partnership, or follow a more traditional affiliate partnership model with one promoting the other. 

So far this year, Awin UK has tracked over 450 active brand partnerships driving £1.7 million in revenue. 

Awin have also launched partnerships with two providers who specialise in creating bespoke reward portals that brands can feature on their own sites. These offer a seamless, quick and effective white-label solution to fast-track your own customer reward space on your e-commerce site, further enhancing your offering. 

One of the pioneers in the brand partnerships space was the dining card membership brand Tastecard. They saw their whole business model come to a halt at the height of the pandemic lockdown, but swiftly pivoted their business model and worked with Awin to create brand partnerships that would continue to offer their members incredible benefits while restaurants were closed. By promoting other brand offers to the Tastecard audience they were able to maintain customer loyalty and drive a completely new revenue stream for the business which has since become an established part of their offering.  

Diversification as Awin’s North Star

Insights like those we’ve outlined above have helped to inform our own strategic direction at Awin. Understanding that diversification and a proactive approach to establishing new partnerships is vital to continued growth is why we’ve developed a new North Star metric that guides our own priorities and goals as a business.

Awin’s North Star metric is simple; to increase the number of active partnerships tracked through the platform each month. This benefits brands and partners alike, offering continued opportunities for growth and empowering brands and affiliates the choice to enter different partnerships, ensuring their performance goals are achieved and limiting the risks involved from relying on fewer partnerships.

If you are interested in diversifying your partner mix, testing new partnerships, or want to hear more of our case studies, please do attend our session on the mainstage at PI Live at 2.50pm on Tuesday with Awin’s Chief Customer Officer David Lloyd, or reach out directly to Joelle.mullin@awin.com.

And to explore the diverse array of partners you can work with via Awin, check out our Power 100 in this year’s Awin Report 2022 – our selection of the 100 most innovative and influential affiliate partners on our global platform.

The post How Can Brands Adapt to Change and Embrace Publisher Diversity? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

To support this, more and more platforms are introducing proprietary affiliate programmes, with aims to ensure they are a progressive and encouraging place for creators and influencers.

Here’s a deep dive into a few of those…do you think they’re doing enough to support the future of influencer marketing?

The post A Deep Dive into Scaling Influencer Relationships appeared first on PerformanceIN.

It would be great if we all had the time to travel the globe and lend a helping hand to the areas that need it. Well, thanks to today’s technology, it is now possible to plant trees without even lifting a finger – or green thumb. A multitude of technology companies, websites, search engines, and even brands are promising to plant trees in return for a user’s action.

These companies aren’t beating around the bush…

One company already rooted in this space is Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees when users use it to surf the web. The basic model is simple: users search, search ads generate income for Ecosia, which is then used to plant trees.

Ecosia publishes monthly financial reports and tree planting receipts, meaning users can ‘hold [the company] accountable’.

But wouldn’t it be great if you could see actual proof of the trees your efforts have planted? When trying to find the answer, this Twitter thread popped up:

“Tangible useful blockchain implementation”. We’re opening up a whole can of worms here, but the fact that a partnership could be formed that would allow sites promising to plant trees, as we often see, being able to prove this, would certainly be exciting, and a way to avoid greenwashing.

There are multiple platforms being designed to provide this. An example is veritree, a data-driven, restorative platform that connects its partners with nature-based solutions.

This type of partnership allows brands to see real, tangible impact. The technology enables the monitoring, managing, and verification, as well as tracking of the regenerative impacts of restoration projects that are ongoing in partnership with planting organisations across the globe.

Samsung Electronics US launched a project earlier this year. With a goal to plant two million trees in Madagascar by the end of the first quarter of 2022, the company partnered with veritree to manage the tree-planting initiative by harnessing blockchain technology to verify and track every step of the reforestation process.

Another example of this partner type is Ecologi. This model is also based around the idea that users are provided with access to evidence of how money is being used for positive change.

Revlifter’s Simon Bird spoke on this idea earlier this year, at Rakuten Advertising Dealmaker. It seems publishers are going to soon be offering the planting of trees as an offer type. Revlifer will be experimenting with offering:

• Trees only – e.g if you spend over £100 they’ll plant five trees
• Trees + discounts – e.g. if you spent over £100 they’ll plant two trees and you get 5% off

Retailers will be asked to buy trees upfront – “tree credits” – and then draw down from these. Consumers get an email with a link to their “metaforest” which is shown as part of a retailer’s larger “metaforest”.

Bravo Savings Network offers something similar with its ““You Buy, We Plant” initiative. The company has partnered with eco-driven brands, pledging to plant a tree every time you use one a deal or discount code.

Don’t bark up the wrong tree

The use of green initiatives could progress to effectively tackle greenwashing. In simple terms, greenwashing is when a brand or company spends more time and money marketing themselves as sustainable and environmentally friendly than they do actually minimising their impact on the planet.

We’ve seen brands like Boohoo, Asos, and Asda subjected to scrutiny over the disputable nature of their sustainability campaigns, and that’s just in the fashion vertical. We’re looking forward to seeing which brands utilise the incentives mentioned above in an effort to provide evidence of their eco-friendly efforts.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of who they spend their money with, so the idea that brands can now prove that they are doing good, or at least trying to, is a game changer.

The post Will You Be Planting Your Seed in the Meta Forest? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Here’s Neve Fear-Smith with how brands can make conscientious decisions when forging partnerships in these turbulent times…

The post How to, and How Not to Approach Brand Partnerships in the Recession appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Well, not exactly. 

Netflix with ads will reportedly exist as a cheaper subscription tier, launching in November, in a similar way to how Spotify comes free with ads. Nevertheless, this is still a radical U-turn for the streaming platform that built a brand identity out of being ad-free – “TV shows and movies without the commercial breaks” was a tagline to one of their own ads. 

Even as recent as 2020, CEO Reed Hastings showed disinterest in advertising, stating, “(It) looks easy until you get in it… There’s much more growth in the consumer market than there is in advertising, which is pretty flat”. However, Hastings did clarify that it was “definitely not a rule” to not include ads on the platform and was instead a “judgement call”. 

A judgement call that Netflix was forced to make this year, after losing 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and its stock price plummeting by 35% in the second. Desperate times, as they say. 

Cracking the Gen Z cookie (it’s tough)

It’s been established that Gen Z and millennials don’t like ads and it’s unlikely any consumers will be enthusiastic about seeing adverts on the cheaper tier, more a pinch-the-nose-as-you-swallow perspective to cut down expenses for the incoming recession. But, this actually presents an opportunity for marketers to get creative and adapt to not only a new platform, but a new audience.

Despite the general consensus, Gen Z doesn’t mind being sold to – in fact, there’s a whole attention economy on TikTok and YouTube dedicated to recommendations of products to buy. The only catch is that Gen Z craves authenticity and honesty in marketing, which is why they prefer taking recommendations and discounts from influencers they trust rather than the brands themselves. According to Sprout Social, 79% of Gen Zs in the UK and Ireland say they would make a purchase after seeing an influencer’s recommendation.

Partnerships are king when it comes to engaging with this age group. And as marketers start to tackle the streaming behemoth, perhaps one of the more effective forms of partnership would be with the platform’s own content. 

The Rick and Morty Multiverse of Brand Partnerships

Adult Swim’s animated series Rick and Morty – reportedly the most popular TV show amongst millennials – has seen numerous successful brand partnerships over the years, with the likes of Old Spice, Pringles, PS5, and Instagram. The show has just entered into the third year of its partnership with Wendy’s, the most recent ads serving as both promotion for its new series and the fast food chain. What’s striking about Rick and Morty’s ads is not only how funny they are, or how authentic they feel to the show itself, but also how well they resonate with viewers.

A YouTube video that has collated many of the ads together has 1.1 million views. Some of the top comments: “Most of these ads are just actual scenes fit to look like they were ads, and Rick counting his money at the end is genius”; “only rick and morty can make people search for ads.[sic]”; “These ads work not because they’ll create conversions but because they elevate brand value”. Another user commended the ad for still feeling “true to the energy of the show”. 

These sentiments can also be found in the comments section of the Wendy’s ad video on YouTube, which has an astonishing 11 million views: “Now this is the type of ad that actually makes me wanna buy what they’re selling [sic]”; “If every ad was like this I feel like rates would go up by 70%”.

Brand integration and product placement often feels forced and awkward but the Rick and Morty partnerships work because they are unabashed and stay authentic to the show. Instead of trying to be discrete or beating about the bush, the Rick and Morty ads are well aware of their commercialisation and make a humorously ironic point to this, whilst also creating genuine ‘canon’ content for the fans. The ads work in a similar fashion to influencers; audiences trust these characters, and they can tell when they are acting authentically. 

Imagining the possibilities

Marketers paying for the premium rate ad slots on Netflix could learn a trick or two from the Rick and Morty partnership model. Netflix’s original series make up the majority of Gen Z’s favourite TV shows. Integrating Netflix’s own content in ads could make for a smoother, more effective marketing experience on the platform, similar to how podcast hosts advertise sponsor brands to their own audience. There’s an opportunity to get creative and create more content for the platform altogether.

For example, Jane the Virgin, an irreverent, meta take on a telenovela – and also one of Gen Z’s favourite shows – could easily advertise in the same self-aware manner as Rick and Morty. The same goes for teen comedy Sex Education, which couldn’t be more perfect for marketing sexual health products.

Or, You – another zoomer favourite – could seamlessly slot into an ad for a dating app like Hinge. The ad could show a painfully uncomfortable date between Joe Goldberg and a new love interest, who met each other in a bookstore, complete with his extensive and neurotic monologue. The love interest is visibly uneasy and so is the audience because we know that this character is a psychopath, whereas she doesn’t. Cut to a brighter scene, the love interest now has the Hinge app and is finding a more suitable date. The moral of the advert: Learn a bit about each other before you date with the help of Hinge.

The point is that marketers should take Netflix with ads as an opportunity to try to build partnerships with the platform itself, to integrate their brand into the platform’s own content, its own vernacular, as a means of better engaging with its audience, better securing those clicks. 

Time will tell how Netflix with ads turns out, it is likely to follow in the footsteps of other streaming platforms which include ads, playing them out in between shows and films with no relation whatsoever. But with integrated partnerships there is an opportunity to really connect with and satisfy an audience; an opportunity to make the ads go down easier for the generation supposedly allergic to marketing.

The post How Integrated Partnerships Can Make Netflix Ads Revolutionary appeared first on PerformanceIN.

With key insight from Acceleration Partners, Awin, and Vyde, here’s a Fresh Look at the Funnel.

The post Deep Dive: A Fresh Look at the Funnel appeared first on PerformanceIN.