Virality Boost is the original influencer content syndication network, helping brands to increase visibility, spark interest, inspire action, and drive purchases at scale. They focus on crafting syndication strategies that cover the entire customer journey and aim to break barriers in influencer marketing that traditionally haven’t worked for advertisers. Their approach is researched for maximum viral impact and cross-platform actions, leveraging the natural customer journey to deliver incremental performance.

Q: Can you give us a high-level overview of Virality Boost?  

A: Virality Boost is a transparent influencer content syndication network, specializing in large-scale influencer campaigns. We deliver campaigns that impact the bottom line and help brands achieve larger business objectives with quality, category-relevant influencers and advanced social strategies that leverage social media algorithms to increase visibility and impact.

Q: What are the top ways you promote brands?  

A: We run 25, 50, to 100 or more influencers in a single campaign within a specific time window to drive virality — demand and awareness for the brand across two platforms, depending on brand — Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok.

Q: What is the total reach of your audience?  

A: Over 30 million.

Q: Can you share some insights about your audience and demographics?  

A: They span 23 categories: both male and female influencers in lifestyle, web3, auto luxury, fashion, sports, travel, auto lifestyle, family, personal finances, kids under 10, kids over 10, and more!

Q: Which verticals perform the best with Virality Boost?  

A: It depends on the brand, but generally wellness, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, unique offerings and products, sports, watch TV, and more.

Q: Can you tell us about a successful campaign you ran in the last six months?  

A: SenseofSelf.Life – we’ll have a case study ready in a couple of weeks. See a sneak peek below.

Q: What’s something unique about Virality Boost?  

A: Each campaign is spearheaded by our influencer captains. These captains are experienced influencers themselves, representing various niches within the influencer community. We diligently test our strategies, placing a strong emphasis on achieving measurable results. 

Q: Any industry trends or insights to share with brands?  

A: In today’s rapidly shifting digital landscape, where third-party cookies are being phased out, brands must prioritize and refine their attribution strategies to make well-informed budgeting decisions. Google is enhancing its AI-driven ads and testing Google’s Circle on Android, all to master social media imagery. Amazon is not lagging behind, with its decisive move towards influencer collaborations and image search features. Meanwhile, Meta’s robust pixel technology continues to set a high benchmark.

For businesses focused on driving growth and seizing market share, understanding the customer’s journey across diverse channels and platforms, particularly social media, is critical. Brands must focus tirelessly on stimulating demand, elevating awareness, and nurturing purchase intent. Clear attribution allows companies to allocate their resources effectively, ensuring each touchpoint resonates with their audience and contributes to a coherent brand narrative that fosters business growth.

In short, investing in full funnel campaigns and solid attribution models is not just about adapting to the new cookie-less era — it’s a fundamental approach to sustainably capturing consumer interest and propelling your brand forward in a competitive marketplace.

TUNE customers who would like to work with Virality Boost can request an introduction directly via TUNE Network.

Questions? Click here to chat with one of our experts.

Paylode is a leading customer perks platform helping companies launch and manage perks programs without the burden and expense of building one in-house. Paylode is like having an entire partnerships team in your corner. They vet and pre-negotiate thousands of perks offers from top consumer brands, and provide easy, no-code tools to save companies massive amounts of time and overhead. Perks programs increase conversion rates, retention, engagement, and satisfaction, while also unlocking a new stream of revenue for your company. Read on to find out more about this TUNE Network Partner and how their perks platform could benefit your brand.

Q: Can you give us a high-level overview of your company?  

A: Paylode is a powerful perks platform driving customer action and retention. It’s the fastest way for companies to launch, manage, and monetize a customer perks program that rewards customers who engage.

Q: What are the top ways you promote brands?  

A: Brands are invited to apply to our marketplace and if accepted, they join 1,000+ other household names and local businesses. We then work with our clients to promote right-fit perks that are exactly what their audience wants and needs. Brands can be featured in our persistent perks centers, as well as in client-specific marketing campaigns.

Q: What is the total reach of Paylode’s audience?  

A: Our clients have a total of over 23 million users in the United States and Canada (with some of our audience in Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, and Portugal). Interestingly, nine out of 10 perk redemptions are from customers who start and end their journey within the Paylode perks center, indicating that perks customers are not coupon hunters but rather shoppers and browsers.

Q: Can you share some insights about your audience and demographics?  

A: We work with a wide range of companies, but the ones that get the most value from the system are the ones who have a lot of customers and want to give them reasons to take action — whether that’s to complete a purchase, sign up, or any other action that’s valuable to your company.

Q: Which verticals perform the best with Paylode?  

A: We focus on verticals such as insurance, residential real estate, travel & hospitality, fintech, utilities, membership apps, and e-commerce. Each of these niches come with their own audience and nuances of reaching them.

Food, travel, and home furnishings offers do well with Paylode perks customers. Users browse and search from hundreds of offers and select what’s right for them. We also match offers to campaigns, to gift customers the best deal on the web in exchange for their engagement.

Q: Can you tell us about a successful campaign you’ve run in the last six months?  

A: There’s no campaign too big or too small — there are infinite ways to use perks. One hospitality brand created a perks page specifically for pickleball tournament goers, adding another way to thank audience goers with a creative bundle of deals specifically for the pickleball fans.

We’re working on an upcoming movie launch with a themed perk center for the main character’s biggest fans. Collectibles, merchandise, and movie ticket deals all promote the movie.

And though it seems small, the most impactful way we help companies is by helping their customers save, both on things they need every day and in that current moment.

For example, our residential real estate clients create move-in bundles for new tenants that can help them save hundreds on moving costs like truck rentals and cleaners, making it a little easier to settle into a new place. Our insurance clients provide auto supply deals and discounts that help their policyholders save, showing them gratitude even when it’s not renewal time.

Q: What’s something unique about Paylode?  

A: “Every single company right now is figuring out how to retain their customers while driving down costs, especially in this economic environment,” said Leo Polovets, Founding Partner at Susa Ventures. “Paylode’s approach to perks programs not only addresses the rising challenges of customer acquisition costs but also provides a seamless solution for businesses to drive deeper engagement and unlock additional revenue streams.” 

Q: Any industry trends or insights to share with brands?  

A: We live in an incentive-driven economy. Customers expect rewards and personalization in 2024. Working with Paylode means taking your customer engagement program to the next level in terms of both. Paylode is building a product based on the core value of delivering measurable impact to companies for a fraction of the cost it would take to do it in-house.

Q: Why should brands want to work with your company?  

A: The magic is where we link together brands and customers at scale, and we’re adding new and better no-code features every day to enable any marketer to run a perks campaign. We have a team of 15 industry veterans and engineers building the platform, many with a decade or more experience in the partnerships, affiliate marketing, and rewards industry.

TUNE customers who are interested in working with Paylode can request an introduction directly in the platform via TUNE Network. Questions? Click here to chat with one of our experts.

In an evolving digital landscape, affiliate marketers need to stay ahead of the game to maximize reach and drive conversions in a crowded field. One tool that can help is artificial intelligence (AI). AI offers immense potential to optimize and automate aspects of affiliate marketing, from streamlining workflows to creating content.  

Among the many AI-powered solutions available to the public today is ChatGPT, an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. In January 2023, it set a record as the fastest growing consumer application in history, gaining more than 100 million users in just two months. If you’re wondering how you can join the movement, keep reading — we’re exploring a few of the ways marketers can leverage the power of ChatGPT in their affiliate marketing strategies.  

Content Creation and Optimization 

Nobody reads a blog post or watches a video on TikTok because they want to be served an ad or have a product pushed on them. They’re looking to be informed, entertained, inspired. Which is why compelling content lies at the heart of successful affiliate marketing campaigns.  

ChatGPT can be a powerful ally in creating high-quality, engaging content. Its ability to generate human-like text makes it an invaluable tool for producing both long- and short-form copy — product walkthroughs, comparison articles, informative blog posts, creative ad copy, you name it. With some detailed prompting and a bit of human editing, affiliate marketers can use ChatGPT to save time and effort creating written and visual content.

A quick note on the visual content process: ChatGPT’s visual AI is DALL·E 3, which is technically separate from ChatGPT even though they can be used in conjunction. There are numerous other visual AIs available for free or as a paid subscription, based on your needs and the amount of images you’ll be generating. We’ve been most impressed with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

ChatGPT can also be a valuable addition to your current content optimization process. Provide the language model with a set of keywords, and it can generate optimized titles, meta descriptions, and relevant subheadings. You can also reverse-engineer old, unoptimized blog posts by feeding them into ChatGPT and asking for the top keywords and suggested updates. These practices can all help improve SEO and boost organic traffic to brand and affiliate websites. 

Personalized Recommendations 

Understanding and engaging with customers on a personal level is crucial for affiliates — it’s why they’re so good at what they do, after all. ChatGPT can help in offering personalized recommendations based on user preferences, browsing behavior, and previous interactions. Prompt the AI model to analyze purchase and engagement data and look for patterns — it may be able to suggest tailored product options that resonate with individual customers. This level of personalization can significantly enhance your users’ experience, upping the chance they eventually engage and convert. 

Customer Support 

Thanks to its conversational, human-like language model, ChatGPT can be integrated into chatbots or virtual assistants to offer support services. These could include answering common questions, providing product information, or completing purchases. This automation frees up human resources for more complex interactions and tasks that can’t be replaced by artificial intelligence. 

Analysis and Reporting 

Accurate data analysis is vital for optimizing affiliate marketing campaigns. ChatGPT can analyze vast amounts of data and provide valuable insights for marketers in a fraction of the time it would take a human.  

For example, some agencies have started using ChatGPT and other AI models to transcribe, digest, and summarize the key points and next steps on calls with clients. Other affiliate marketers leverage ChatGPT to perform sentiment analysis on social media platforms and forums, gauge public opinion, and identify potential influencers for collaboration. 

One important note: ChatGPT’s knowledge base used to be limited to information shared on the internet before September 2021. This limitation was one of the biggest headaches for its users. However, it can now search for and provide real-time information thanks to an update in fall 2023.  

Management and Workflow Automation 

Managing affiliate partnerships and networks can be time-consuming and challenging, to say the least. ChatGPT can automate several aspects of network and program management for the individuals who are working within them every day. For example, it can help to identify potential new affiliates, evaluate applications, write introduction emails, or proofread terms and conditions. This can all streamline the affiliate recruitment process. (We should note, however, that this aspect of affiliate marketing will always require constant attention and a human touch.)

Getting Started with ChatGPT 

Artificial intelligence, even in its early stages, has the industry abuzz with its potential to change the game. However, AI models like ChatGPT are only as good as the prompts that drive them. You’ll need the right marketing-focused prompts to effectively use any of the strategies above. More than likely, you’ll need to experiment and iterate to figure out what those are.

If you’re not sure how to get started, google the AI model you’re using plus “prompt for [the task you want to accomplish]” — you should find plenty of examples to choose from. You can also check out AI prompt-based communities on Reddit, Twitter, and most other social media platforms.

And, in case you’re looking for guidance on your overall strategy, head over to our Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing to learn more.

I want to hear from you: How do you use AI in your affiliate marketing strategy? What are the best prompts you’ve discovered so far? Let me know in the comments below! 

June’s featured partner Perform^[cb] is a leader in the outcome-based marketing industry. Their mission to “Think Bigger” and a streak of exponential organic growth allowed the company to make several strategic acquisitions over the years. Today, they provide marketers and publishers with the unique solutions their businesses need to succeed. Read on to find out how they could help your brand grow today and into the future!  

Q: Can you give us a high-level overview of Perform^[cb]?  

A: Founded in 2002, Perform^[cb] is a 7X winner of best in class in the outcome-based marketing industry, offering a comprehensive range of services through our Outcome Engine and affiliate program management. Enabled by proprietary, patented technology that seamlessly integrates with TUNE, Perform^[cb] allows marketers to optimize customer acquisition and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) by only paying for tangible, high-quality customer outcomes. 

We work with brands such as Walmart, LendingTree, FanDuel, Robinhood, Capital One Shopping, and Hungryroot to grow their customer base and lifetime value at scale.

Q: What are the top ways you promote brands?  

A: Our extensive ad inventory gives marketers access to major and emerging digital channels, such as mobile, search, contextual, display, and pay-per-call (just to name a few), ensuring broad customer reach across the entire buyer journey. We provide brands with flexible payment models tailored to their specific objectives, including CPA, CPL, CPI, CPE, and CPC. 

Q: What is the total reach of your audience?  

A: We work with a diverse range of clients, spanning small businesses, mid-sized companies, and enterprise brands across various industries and niches. With our versatile solutions, we cater to the unique growth needs of each brand, whether it’s providing strategic support for individual campaigns or full-funnel affiliate program management. 

Q: Which verticals perform the best with Perform^[cb]?  

A: Our team has extensive experience scaling and optimizing campaigns across a diverse set of key verticals, including but not limited to:

• Downloads and Security Software 
• Entertainment, Streaming, and Lifestyle 
• Finance and Fintech 
• Beauty, Health, and Wellness 
• Electronics and Gaming 
• Apparel and Accessories 
• Subscription Services 
• Grocery and Alcohol Delivery 

Q: Can you tell us about a successful campaign you’ve run in the last six months?  

A: A popular finance marketer seeking to acquire qualified consumers through valuable, long-term partnerships turned to Perform^[cb]‘s Outcome Engine team for assistance. We established a strong foundation with the fintech marketer, emphasizing compliance transparency, open communication, data-driven feedback, and strategic optimizations. Through collaborative A/B testing of landing pages, product bundles, pricing, payouts, and sub-ID tracking, we leveraged insights to optimize performance across top channels. Our recruitment of high-quality partners and streamlined creative reviews by our in-house compliance team further expedited the campaign launch process.  

The campaign surpassed its consumer enrollment goal, achieving a remarkable 74% increase in enrollments during the first quarter. The success continued, with an impressive 355% increase in revenue and a 274% increase in enrollments year-over-year. 

Check out the full case study here!

Q: What’s something unique about Perform^[cb]?  

A: Our commitment to delivering impressive ROI, developing cutting-edge technology, and fostering a vibrant culture sets us apart. One of our standout features is our Outcome Engine, a world-leading full-funnel digital customer generation tool kit. Powered by our patented customer acquisition platform (CAP), the Outcome Engine revolutionizes growth by integrating AI technology, expert services, and a curated partner marketplace.  

Our CAP secures all campaigns with 24/7 compliance and the anti-fraud software, PerformSHIELD. This powerful tool proactively and continuously protects brands from suspicious activity, providing them with peace of mind and maintaining their brand integrity. 

Q: Any industry trends or insights to share with brands?  

A: The future of outcome-based marketing is likely to be shaped by several key factors. Technological advancements and data analytics will be pivotal. The ability to gather and analyze vast amounts of data empowers marketers to make informed decisions, optimize campaigns, and deliver personalized experiences to targeted audiences. The impact of AI and machine learning technologies is already profound as we’re seeing within our own platform capabilities, facilitating efficient targeting, automation, and performance optimization. 

We have also witnessed a rise in influencer partnerships, emphasis on transparency and compliance, focus on personalization and segmentation, and diversification of programs with niche partners. These trends provide valuable insights for brands seeking to optimize their strategies and succeed in a dynamic marketplace. 

At Perform^[cb], we remain committed to ongoing investment in research and development, staying ahead of industry trends, and adapting strategies to meet our clients’ evolving needs.

TUNE customers who would like to work with Perform^[cb] can request an introduction directly through the TUNE platform by navigating to the Media Partners tab.

Questions? Click here to chat with one of our experts.

Affiliate marketing is a low-risk, high-reward channel that has seen its popularity skyrocket in recent years. However, low risk isn’t the same as no risk. With more than 80% of advertisers and publishers including affiliate partnerships in their marketing strategy, fraud is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact of life. 

As affiliate marketing grew into what it is today, so did bad actors and their numerous technologies to “game the system.” Some of these practices fall into a gray category where they aren’t necessarily illegal, while others are a blatant breach of contract.

Below, we’ve outlined the practices that account for why this channel has historically gained a bad reputation in the marketing industry. Here are the top ways we see publishers break the rules, how they do it, and how you can identify affiliate fraud like it in your own program. 

What Affiliate Fraud Looks Like 

Pop-Unders 

The opposite of a pop-up, a pop-under is an ad that pops open behind (or “under”) a browser window. 

When It’s OK  

A number of publishers still utilize pop-unders as a part of their advertising efforts, and that in itself is relatively benign. However, this practice is considered old school and typically does not add value to the user experience. How often have you seen a pop-under and said, “Oh great, I can’t wait to click on this!” Instead, it’s more like, “Where the hell did this come from?”

Some advertisers may not want this experience to be included as part of their program, while others might not mind, so it’s best the parties involved discuss this practice upfront.   

When It’s Bad 

Pop-unders can be set up to assist in cookie stuffing without the user knowing. It’s bad practice if the pop-under is for something completely irrelevant to what the user is searching for, or if the user did not take an action (click) to cause the ad to fire. 

A common practice for very large retailers or campaigns is to force an affiliate click on a pop-under where there is no immediate relevance for the consumer in the hope that they will purchase (think Expedia) or sign up (H&R Block). A red flag for this type of tactic would be an extreme spike in clicks from a masked referring URL with low conversion rates. 

Cookie Stuffing/Cookie Dropping  

Also known as attribution theft, cookie stuffing is always fraudulent. 

When It’s OK 

Never. 

When It’s Bad 

Cookies are little data bites that capture the parameters we all use in our tracking links. These data bites include important values like your affiliates’ information (name, ID number, etc.), and they track the touchpoints in a consumer journey.

Cookie stuffing happens when a third party, such as a publisher or CPA network, drops multiple cookies on a user’s browser before they take an action so the third party can get continuous credit for a sale. You may be able to tell if one of the partners in your program is doing this if their actions spike but they have very few clicks, behavior that TUNE’s Time-to-Action Report can help you identify. 

TM+ Bidding 

TM+ stands for “trademark plus,” or when a third party bids on your branded name(s) plus additional keywords. 

When It’s OK  

Trademark plus campaigns, when run through the affiliate channel with trusted partners, can help bolster performance and support advertisers by pushing competitors lower in search results. They also offer a means to get supplemental media in exchange for TM+ rights, which can be a win/win depending on the goals of a particular partnership.  

When It’s Bad 

Trademark bidding is part of paid search marketing, which means most brands will have a team that focuses on this and pays search engines to place their ads at the top of relevant pages. When unauthorized parties bid on trademarked terms, it not only drives up costs for your paid search team, but it can also result in completely inaccurate information, stolen sales, and poor user experiences.  

URL Redirection 

This happens when you navigate to a specific URL and instead of ending up there, you are rerouted to a different destination URL. 

When It’s OK 

There are a few reputable auto-redirecting publishers who scrape the web for misspelled domain entries and redirect them to advertisers’ sites. Some notable companies that do this are Resilion, NameSpace, and ProtectedBrand. 

When It’s Bad 

URL redirection is bad if it is set up with the intent to disguise itself and take users away from their intended destination. This can be done in tandem with website cloning, and it is another form of theft in affiliate marketing. Auto-redirecting works by using a protocol that remains hidden and enables click fraud.  

Bots/Web Crawling 

A search engine algorithm that organizes information. 

When It’s OK 

Fun fact: About 42% of internet traffic consists of bots scanning content, interacting with webpages, chatting with users, or looking for suspicious behavior. Some bots are useful, such as search engine bots that index content for search results or customer service bots that help users. A web crawler bot is like someone who goes through all the books in a disorganized library and puts together a card catalog, so that anyone who visits the library can quickly and easily find the information they need. 

When It’s Bad 

Like any technology, bots can be built with bad intent. Because it’s automated technology, bots can assist with most of the malevolent practices mentioned in this post. They can be programmed to break into user accounts, scan the web for contact information for sending spam, set up to perform click fraud, or stuff cookies.

If you have access to a tool like TUNE’s Time-to-Action Report and see an unprecedented number of clicks come through in a short period of time, that could indicate a bot is performing click fraud on a partner’s site.  

Website Cloning 

This practice is exactly what it sounds like: duplicating information and visuals from one site to create a copy of it somewhere else. 

When It’s OK 

Never. 

When It’s Bad 

I’ve seen this happen to brands when a third party purchases similar domain names and replicates the website imagery and content to dupe visitors and get the affiliate payout on those sales. The plagiarized sites abuse the way Google ranks content by sending fake organic traffic to themselves. This is why it’s so important to actually look at potential partner websites and do the research before accepting just anyone into your affiliate program. 

Toolbar Auto-Redirection 

When a toolbar, plugin, or other browser extension takes an action without the user’s knowledge and/or consent.

When It’s OK 

Never. 

When It’s Bad 

Some browser toolbars, plugins, and extensions automatically drop an affiliate click when a user (who has it installed) visits an advertiser’s website in order to generate an action that will give the user cash back. Many times, the consumer doesn’t know they have the toolbar installed and never get the cash back. See the post we wrote about Chrome extensions caught cookie stuffing for an example of this practice in action. 

We recommend requiring that any toolbar or browser plugin adheres to an “affirmative click” policy, where the user has to opt in to receive cash back (and subsequently allow the affiliate to receive commission). The major toolbars that do this are Shop At Home, BeFrugal, and WeCare. 

Tools to Detect Affiliate Fraud 

As affiliate fraud has expanded, so have tools to help brands and program managers fight back. Some platforms offer fraud protection built in, but most charge an additional fee for their solution or a third-party integration. TUNE provides both, allowing you the freedom to use our built-in proactive fraud prevention suite that’s powered by Fraudlogix, or integrate your preferred third-party solution. 

“TUNE’s customers depend on the platform to help them fight fraud and the data we are providing enables them to block fraudulent actions before they affect campaigns,” Fraudlogix CEO Hagai Shechter said in our post announcing the feature. “This saves TUNE’s customers time and has real implications on ROI.” 

Another TUNE technology partner, TrafficGuard, sees that on average across affiliate programs, between 10-15% of commission payouts go to fraudulent affiliate partners. Here’s how they explain it: 

“When we look at ad fraud in the affiliate channel what we are really looking at is misattribution. Tactics like cookie stuffing are designed to misattribute a conversion away from its real origin to a fraudulent affiliate. That means you are then either paying that affiliate for something that you should have got for free, or are paying the wrong affiliate. When it comes to scaling your affiliate program, this can cause you to actually scale into the bad actor, as it appears they are driving the most growth.” 
—Kalen Bushe, TrafficGuard

Keeping Affiliate Fraud Out of Your Program 

These days, affiliate fraud is just a reality brands must face. With the right platform and tools, however, it becomes a manageable part of any program.  

Visit our blog post on TUNE’s Proactive Fraud Prevention to learn more. 

Download our 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting an Affiliate Program e-book to get tips from industry experts on what they got wrong — like ignoring the warning signs of affiliate fraud — and how you can get it right in your program.   

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Digital marketers have learned this lesson over the past few years with the rise of mobile marketing; more traditional marketers are slowly catching on. Yet, performance marketers have known this forever, and have been saying it since the dawn of the affiliate industry. As large companies shift their focus to data-driven insights and measurable results (and away from costly brand marketing), and small companies vie to make an impact as efficiently as possible, the role and perception of performance marketing is shifting with them.

Below, we outline the reasons why it’s more critical than ever to do performance marketing well — and why it’s not just a form of marketing, but the future of marketing.

1. Performance marketing IS marketing.

At TUNE, we’ve long held that all marketing should be measured on performance. As CEO Peter Hamilton explained at 2017’s Postback conference, “This might seem like an obvious one, but most of marketing is still not measured. Whether we’re talking about TV and out-of-home is beside the point. Even most digital advertising is bought on programmatic, based on impressions and clicks and in display and not judged on engagement, return, or revenue. Marketing must be measured on the impact that it has.”

Increasingly, brands are catching on. Forrester predicts that performance marketing will grow at a rate of 10% each year through 2020, which is a rapid figure rarely seen with mature industries such as performance marketing.

2. Small and large companies win.

Performance marketing is a trend both enterprise companies and small startups can get behind. It allows large companies to measure more of a direct return than brand campaigns with no direct ties to leads, purchases, and revenue. And it allows small companies to get the most bang for their buck, spending only on things that directly return ROI.

You can learn more about what individual performance marketers and the companies they work for are predicting about the industry’s future in our e-book with Acceleration Partners, “Performance Evolution: Putting the Brand Budget to Work.” Don’t feel like reading? Watch our 2021 webinar instead.

3. New technology calls for it.

With the world becoming more connected and digitized, there’s really only one form of marketing that can help measure it: you guessed it, it’s performance marketing. Consider the up-and-coming technologies and ad supply opportunities we’ve seen in the past few years alone, such as podcasts, OTT, and connected TV. Performance marketing is essential to understand which search terms customers used and what results they were satisfied with. Similarly, with IoT devices like smart cars, it would be impossible to understand when to serve customers ads for oil changes without measuring when they were due for maintenance.

4. It’s the only way to make sense of cross-device marketing.

Speaking of new devices and technologies, performance marketing is ultimately enabling marketers to better connect the customer journey. Without measurement, marketers wouldn’t be able to make sense of how one customer saw on ad on their phone, was reminded of it later while watching TV, and logged in on their completed to complete the purchase online. The right  measurement can complete the picture for marketers and ensure they’re not retargeting customers who have already made a purchase, or wouldn’t be interested in the first place.

5. Measuring performance makes for better marketing, period.

Performance marketing enables marketers to reach the right people, at the right time, with the right message. Instead of a blanket advertisement to a wide demographic, performance marketing allows marketers to get super specific in not only their targeting, but in their measurement and refinement based on results. That enables marketers to deliver content that customers actually find useful and want to receive — re-establishing modern marketing as something that provides value, instead of noise.

Where to Begin

At TUNE, we believe that performance marketing is the way of the future, so we’re building the technology to support it. Learn more about TUNE, the industry’s most flexible solution for managing marketing partnerships across mobile and web, or reach out to sales@tune.com to get started today.

This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

It’s summer, and you know what that means: time to get out and have some fun! And it just so happens that our spotlight partner for this month is all about fun and games. Check out our profile of Jump Ramp, one of the newest partners below.

Q: Can you give us a high-level overview of your company?

A: Jump Ramp Games, a division of MobilityWare, offers free-to-play and fun mobile games in which users can win real cash and prizes and earn rewards. Our O&O (owned and operated) mobile apps include Lucktastic and Lucky Trivia Live. They offer exciting lifestyle experiences ranging from a million dollar sweepstakes, to a Red Carpet Oscar Night experience, to a trip to Walt Disney World and a dinner for two! These contests and content change regularly, so users play frequently to maximize their opportunities to win.

We manage the campaign for our users and are able to optimize in order to hit ROAS (return on ad spend) and KPI (key performance indicator) goals set by the client. We also watch the users journey through the games in order to show them which apps or games they would be most interested in. Finally, we use return levers to get the consumer to come back to the apps.

Q: What are the top ways you promote brands?

A: We take a native in-app approach, and knowing our audience, are able to show them the best apps based on their journey through the apps, and other apps they have installed.

Q: Which verticals perform the best with your company?

A: Gaming, finance, retail, and travel all work quite well for us.

Q: What is something unique about Jump Ramp Games?

A: Jump Ramp was an early pioneer in mobile performance marketing, and we’ve been successful leading this market for over nine years. We are a wholly owned and operated publisher. We run campaigns as a fully managed service, using in-app native promotions of our clients’ and partners’ apps.

Our audience is composed of folks who are exceptionally optimistic, more positively predisposed than most to want to try new things. Our users love our apps and enjoy them with exceptional stickiness, so they come back multiple times each day. We leverage these many touchpoints to encourage engagement with our clients’ and partners’ apps, using a variety of promotional levers to prompt them to download, play, play to a certain level, register, deposit, and perform whatever user actions represent success (KPIs) in each campaign for each client.

We target consumers exceptionally well, using our own 1P (first-party) data to segment the audience. Our ad tech was all built in-house. Our growth marketing service is fully managed, so clients each get a dedicated account manager and/or account director, who are real people applying real time and effort to make each campaign as effective and efficient as possible. 

Q: Any final comments?

A: We are continuing to not only develop new games, but also developing new ways to drive a broader audience. In addition, we are constantly working on ways to optimize our clients’ objectives in order to exceed their ROAS and KPI goals.

If you’re a TUNE customer who would like to partner with Jump Ramp Games, you can request an introduction by navigating to TUNE in your platform. If you have questions or would like to become a TUNE customer, email us at partnerships@tune.com and let us know!

For many people around the world, 2020 has turned into the year of online learning. Here at TUNE, it’s no different. So we’ve started a webinar series to help keep us all connected and informed about partner marketing, affiliate trends, and the performance ecosystem at large. 

Here’s a look at what we’ve covered so far, and a preview of what we have planned for the rest of the year:

Get the Scoop on Influencer Marketing

On April 30, experts from TUNE and BrandCycle hosted a webinar titled “When Good Advice Pays: Community Influencer Marketing.” Led by Brian Marcus, vice president of global marketing at TUNE, and Scott Ginsberg, vice president of client development at BrandCycle, the webinar explored how marketers can use technology to combine authentic connections and trackable conversions.

Community influencers get their name from the social media communities that they create and manage. These influencers are known for cultivating authentic, individual relationships with their followers. While they may not have the reach of celebrities or mega influencers, community influencers certainly have the engagement, boasting followers who often interact multiple times per day.

As an influencer network, BrandCycle provides marketers with expertise and the infrastructure needed to run marketing campaigns with these community-minded affiliates. And that infrastructure is built on TUNE. 

BrandCycle uses TUNE to power the complex day-to-day processes of affiliate marketing — tracking, attribution, optimization, payments, and more. In addition, the TUNE platform also provides specific features for influencers, including promo codes and cookieless tracking, and an almost limitless capacity for customization. 

But you’d never know it just by looking at it. For BrandCycle’s customers and affiliates, using the network is simply a seamless experience that translates into value for everybody involved.

Sound interesting? The full webinar goes into more detail about the partnerships, technology, and best practices behind community influencer marketing. Click here to watch the webinar recording. 

Discover the Value of Partner Discovery

If you believe that partner discovery and recruitment is a one-time task, then I have a bridge to sell you.

In all seriousness, finding new partners is an essential part of every successful performance marketing program. It should also be an ongoing process, as it’s part of the cycle of strategizing, operationalizing, and optimizing that we describe in The Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing. (If you haven’t read the guide, you can get an introduction to this cycle in Part 1 of the blog series.) And luckily for marketers everywhere, new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and technology mean partner discovery doesn’t have to be a tedious or time-consuming task. 

To help spread the word about the benefits of partner discovery and the new technology that’s driving it, TUNE teamed up with Publisher Discovery on a brand new webinar. Titled “Taking Ownership of Publisher Growth,” the webinar covers how the partner discovery and recruitment process impacts business growth and program optimization. If you’re an advertiser or an agency, you don’t want to miss this. 

Topics covered include:

• The role of discovery within the lifecycle of a partner program
• Technology solutions that facilitate the discovery and recruitment processes, including TUNE and Publisher Discovery
• How to use artificial intelligence to add value beyond time and cost savings
• Practical tactics for finding new partners, such as gap analysis and competitive research
• Tips for making discovery and recruitment a seamless part of a weekly/monthly rhythm

Click here to watch the full webinar recording!

Keep Learning with TUNE

If you don’t want to wait for the next big thing, you can always visit the TUNE Blog for our most recent articles on partnerships and performance marketing. Looking for something more in-depth? Head over to the TUNE Resource Library, where you’ll find plenty of e-books, industry research, and recorded webinars to keep you busy. 

We also have a few other projects in the pipeline, including a couple podcasts. You can listen to the first here, featuring TUNE’s vice president of marketing as he talks to Jakub Kubicka of “The Daily Marketer.” You can also listen in to our episode on “The Snyder Showdown” here.

As for the rest of what we have in store, we’ll be sure to share with you as soon as we can. Until then, happy learning!

Content Links

Webinars
“When Good Advice Pays: Community Influencer Marketing”
“Taking Ownership of Publisher Growth”

Podcasts
Listen to “The Yoda of Affiliate Marketing,” TUNE’s Own Brian Marcus, on The Daily Marketer Podcast
“You Can’t Unsee It”: TUNE’s Brian Marcus Explains Why Affiliate Marketing Is Everywhere on The Snyder Showdown Podcast

Is there a specific topic that you’d like us to cover in a webinar or blog post? Let us know in the comments below!

This article was originally written for FeedFront Magazine, issue 49. It is based on our four-part series on mobile affiliate marketing called Mobile Planet.

If influencers are the gold rush, then mobile affiliate is the moonshot. In this article, we’ll show you what’s standing in the way of marketers who want to land and expand partnerships on mobile — and it’s not what you think.

Here on earth, influencers may be making the affiliate headlines. Yet there is a more interesting story emerging: the race to unlock “the mobile” in affiliate partnerships. Why? 

Mobile Is Everywhere

Mobile is no longer a device or a channel, but a foundational part of life. So much so, Pew Research found that in 2019, 1 in 5 Americans rely on a smartphone as their only means of internet access at home.  

And as mobile evolved, marketing technology evolved with it:

1. Digital tracking and measurement methods advanced.  
2. Mobile payments and mobile commerce became commonplace.
3. Cross-channel customer experiences have (mostly) been optimized.

Thanks to these advancements, the opportunity for mobile affiliate is wide open. So, what’s slowing us down?

Barriers to Mobile Affiliate

Organizational walls. Brands that existed before smartphones often have organizational walls that separate their online and mobile businesses. These companies may tack on apps and mobile websites as an afterthought, or treat mobile as a separate strategy — an offshoot from the core business and its marketing.  

Cross-channel affiliate links. Online advertisers and app marketers have different tracking standards. With two sets of tracking methods and systems, affiliate tracking links sometimes create black holes in the cross-channel attribution universe. Affiliates want to steer clear.  

Cross-channel affiliate UX. Often, user experiences in the affiliate marketing ecosystem (e.g., web ad to app product page) are inadequate. While intelligent routing exists within app stores, not all brands use it to make their affiliate marketing journeys cross-channel. 

Lack of familiarity. Companies with limited expertise regarding the mobile ecosystem — affiliate players (sub-affiliate networks, mobile measurement partners), creative form factors (e.g., native), ad fraud — may be slow to adopt mobile.

Improving Education and Tracking

Simple education (like this) is a useful first step in advancing mobile. But bridging the tracking gap between mobile and desktop is the game-changer for all marketing partnerships. Particularly because cookies are not reliable for mobile web tracking and are useless in mobile apps.

To track performance, apps and mobile websites need measurement software development kits (SDKs). These communicate tracking data using server-to-server communications called “postbacks.” SDKs and postbacks enable accurate attribution on mobile devices, no matter whether the user is directed to an app they use, a new mobile website, or an app that they have not installed.

Winning the Space Race

Today, companies known as mobile measurement partners (MMPs) are best equipped to track performance in apps and on mobile web. Companies like Branch and AppsFlyer stitch together every event and customer touchpoint, route users optimally, and enable multi-touch attribution.  

Partner marketing platforms like TUNE that can directly integrate a customer’s MMP data with the customer’s partner data, without the need to install another SDK, will win the race. If your brand has an app, chances are you have the right SDK already in your box. With a few lines of code, you could be measuring mobile performance and managing mobile partners today.  

In a universe of opportunity, why keep your world so small?  

Before you go, check out The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Partner Marketing — a must-read for anyone who works with mobile marketing campaigns and performance-based partnerships.

This post was originally published by Geno Prussakov in the AM Navigator blog.

With the new decade around the corner, just few hours before we usher in 2020, I would like to bring you a compilation of expert predictions on affiliate marketing trends to watch and things (likely) to happen in 2020.

In line with our tradition to pick the some of the brightest affiliate marketing minds, I have once again reached out to many industry thought leaders, and I’m excited to bring you the final product (based on the responses received) below.

(You may also get a kick out of reviewing the predictions for 2017 as well as 2018 trends, and expectations of 2019 here).

2020 Affiliate Marketing Trends and Predictions

In 2020, brands will begin to take more control of their own affiliate programs and build programs to their own spec. All aspects of a program will become more configurable, as no two partnerships are the same, including new tracking methods, commissionable events, payout terms, automation/performance logic, and data granularity. And thanks to advancements in digital tracking, the ubiquity of mobile payments, and optimization in cross-channel customer experiences, the race to unlock “the mobile” in affiliate partnerships will heat up. Starting in 2020, many of the organizational walls of mobile user acquisition and desktop affiliate teams will disappear. Mobile and desktop tracking standards will converge. And affiliate user experiences (e.g., routing from web ad to app product page) will vastly improve, enticing new and exciting partners to join the ecosystem.

— Brian Marcus, VP of Global Marketing, TUNE

As marketing leaders are being challenged to deliver on company-wide business goals, digital marketing spend needs to show ROI that contributes to this success. We will see more brands focusing on improving their affiliate and display marketing strategies and relying on networks for their expertise and guidance in building campaigns that perform. Programs should be measured beyond ROAS to ensure alignment with business objectives. By developing bespoke strategies for products with lower margins or customized campaigns for new vs. existing customers, each approach should be intended to attract and retain customers and deliver a better lifetime value. To achieve this, 2020 will be the year that we see true personalization within affiliate — from AI and machine learning that powers matchmaking capabilities, to networks and publishers collaborating to create dynamic, real-time, personalized decisions for delivering relevant ads. All of this will need to be done with a focus on data privacy, ensuring that consumer experiences are compliant with GDPR, CCPA and other laws in development.

— Julie Van Ullen, Managing Director, Rakuten Marketing

2020 will be a pivotal year for the affiliate marketing industry. Some companies will continue to push the concept of so-called partner marketing, but many brands will recognize that in effect this is a semantic difference. Where the real work needs to be done is building a more holistic understanding of how to work with multiple publisher models through more intelligent payment models. Brands will increasingly come to realize that the traditional CPA method needs a more creative approach and wider appreciation beyond last-click. This coincides with more and more businesses looking to affiliate marketing to monetize their traffic sources. Brands will also require a more nuanced service as manual tasks become automated, freeing up account managers to focus on more strategic projects. This in turn means those companies working respectfully and intelligently with more detailed datasets are likely to be those that succeed.

— Alex Forsch, President, Awin US

As eCommerce CMOs face increased pressure to find and develop talent that can effectively utilize the ever evolving technology toolset needed for fueling customer acquisition while also obtaining profitable return on ad spend (ROAS), I expect affiliate marketing to gain heightened attention in 2020 as a coveted solution to these challenges.

With an average ROAS of 12:1 (via the Performance Marketing Association’s industry survey) and the innovative ability to help brands meet highly relevant users at all stages of their shopping journey (through the use of artificial intelligence to search engine marketing and all the specialized disciplines in between), affiliate programs will capture new levels of priority from merchants.

— Choots Humphries, Co-President, LinkConnector

With the many changes browsers are making to how data can be passed, stored and accessed, we are seeing tech companies make major updates to their tracking methods. 2020 will continue to shepherd in tracking changes as data privacy regulation continues to shape global markets. This will place continued focus on adapting tracking and marketing efforts to respect consumer privacy without degrading user experience. Access to valuable data and understanding consumer insights will be increasingly important as companies look to continue offering valuable shopping experiences. Brands are making great strides to move away from reliance on browser-based tracking methods to have greater insight into consumer behavior. Affiliate marketing will continue to provide new ways for marketers to find performance-based solutions in this evolving ecosystem.

— Nicole Ron, VP of Marketing & Business Systems, CJ Affiliate

The coming year will see continuing blurring of ‘channels’; influencers, affiliates, content properties, with a portfolio of monetization techniques being applied. The move toward mobile first engagement will continue the focus on honing techniques for ensuring accurate cross platform tracking with continued emphasis on appropriate attribution. The third major trend will be the increasing use of big data and machine learning in analyzing and understanding marketing analytics, as well as in affiliate and relationship analysis. It’s going to be an exciting year!

— Chris Tradgett, CMO, Publisher Discovery

Marketing through influencers will continue to be a sometimes-connection for affiliate managers, with true channel confluence failing to emerge now or ever, even if an affiliate network finally acquires an influencer network.

Coupons, long the red-headed stepchild of our red-headed stepchild industry, will see increased demand and usage, in particular from content publishers. Merchants will participate in more experimentation along these lines to keep from losing more business to Amazon.

Heretofore proprietary elements of industry infrastructure will continue their gradual move to third parties for efficiency and capability, especially reporting by companies like Trackonomics, Affluent, and AffJet. This will enable publishers to better focus on user acquisition and business development.

The phrase “Partner Marketing” as an alternative to “Affiliate Marketing” will gain more purchase than the other “Ps”, “performance” and “programmatic”, such that the PMA might change what its first initial stands for.

— Brook Schaaf, CEO, FMTC