AFFILIATE MARKETING
How publishers and marketers are refining affiliate and reporting workflows
The following article highlights an interview between Walter Knapp, CEO of Sovrn and Mike Shields, co-founder of Marketecture. Register for free to watch more of the discussion and learn more about the tools and services businesses operating across the open web can use to simplify and improve operations.
Anyone whose business lies primarily on the web, whether a publisher, a media business, an influencer or an independent creator, relies upon various tools and services to help them streamline operations and reach their goals.
However, when operating on the open web, the number of tools needed can quickly become overwhelming, leaving marketers struggling to identify which resources will benefit them most.
To dive into some of the ways businesses, influencers, creators and more can streamline and improve operations, Walter Knapp, Sovrn’s CEO, recently spoke with Mike Shield, co-founder of Marketecture; they discussed how to make affiliate marketing and gathering multiple vendor reports more efficient.
How Sovrn is filling a gap in the affiliate marketing space
While the affiliate space can be a significant opportunity for many publishers and marketers, it can also be challenging to navigate. From identifying which merchants carry the best-aligned products to tracking ever-changing commission rates, key tools are proving vital to successful teams.
For example, providing price and merchant comparisons within an affiliate commerce carrying article is essential. And so is the ability to localize merchants. If someone views an article in the U.K., the affiliate link should send them to a nearby merchant, such as Tesco or Boots, instead of Target.
In another example, while there are generally affiliate link creators available, workflow tools help media companies, influencers and creators close a gap in what can prove to be a tedious process, especially for influencers who tend to have some different steps.
“An interesting thing that we did for the influencer market specifically is built an iOS app because most influencers operate almost exclusively on their iPhones,” Knapp said. “So, as they’re surfing the internet and come across Nike’s new Air Max golf shoe, for example, they can just copy the URL of the product page, go to our app and double tap.
“It grabs the URL, and because we know they have an account and affiliate setup with Nike, it converts that link to an affiliate,” Knapp continued. “Essentially, it appends their affiliate ID to it — and then natively from the app, they can post it to Twitter [X] or wherever.”
The sheer number of ad tech vendors businesses typically use covers a wide range of services, from open bidding to transparent marketplaces, prebid/header bidding setups and more. However, unless teams are using a single programmatic platform, these systems are disconnected.
And, as many teams are tasked with doing more with less or simply don’t have enough time, people or money to waste, identifying tools that will streamline, simplify, etc., is essential.
This results in ad ops teams spending hours upon hours downloading reports from each vendor and then figuring out how to organize the data because few vendor reports share the same format. Not only does this cost teams time, but it can also mean that data isn’t properly matched, analyzed or compared across vendors.
“This is a job for software,” said Knapp on the challenge of downloading reports from multiple vendors. “We said, ‘OK, we can acquire that, and we can take that software and make it more robust, more scalable and easier to use.’ And that’s now our advertising management software.”
As various industries adopt emerging technology, such as generative AI, to assist in somewhat menial tasks, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there are technologies available across the board that can reduce or eliminate tedious, time-consuming tasks. From establishing workflows for affiliate marketing to incorporating software to manage multiple ad tech vendors, publishers, media companies, influencers and independent creators all have easy-to-implement tools and services at their disposal.
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Register for free to watch more of the discussion between Mike Shields and Walter Knapp and learn more about the tools and services businesses operating across the open web can use to simplify and improve operations.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Campbell’s Soup Is Trying to Change Its Name. Here’s Why.
The 155-year-old Campbell Soup Company, the first to bring canned soups to the market, wants to drop the “Soup” part of its name and go by just the Campbell’s Company. Shareholders can vote on the suggested name change in November at Campbell’s annual meeting.
The request reflects Campbell’s broader strategy to expand beyond soup and into higher-growth categories, like snacks, which have shown promise. Snack sales grew 13% for the company last year while soups grew 3%. Nearly 48% of Campbell’s net sales came from snacks in fiscal year 2023. Meanwhile, Campbell’s Goldfish brand reached annual net sales of $1 billion in March, a feat only attained by one other product from the company: its iconic red-and-white-labeled soup.
Campbell CEO Mark Clouse said at an investor event on Tuesday that the “subtle-yet-important” name change more accurately reflects “the full breadth of the company’s portfolio.” Earlier this year, Campbell acquired Sovos Brands, the company behind the Rao’s sauces, Noosa’s Yoghurt, and Michael Angelo’s frozen entrees brands, for $2.7 billion.
The company has also made other acquisitions, like a $4.87 billion deal for snack company Snyder’s-Lance in 2017.
Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Photo Credit: Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images
Campbell executives said on Tuesday that they see stable sales in soup, 3% to 4% annual growth in snacks, and 1% to 2% in meals and beverages.
Even though the company assumes no annual growth in soup, it continues to innovate and invest in the category. Campbell recently introduced new spicy soup flavors, including the Ghost Pepper Chicken Noodle soup, to appeal to younger shoppers. Older populations usually buy more soup, so sales in that category could rise from groups like older millennials, the company said.
Campbell’s fourth-quarter earnings for the three months ending July 18, 2024, show that total net sales were up from the previous quarter, from $2.068 billion to $2.293 billion.
“For the last five years, we have been on a transformative journey to redefine our company,” Clouse stated.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Apple Adds AI Writing to iPhone 16 for Texts, Emails
AI can write emails. AI can write songs. AI can suggest writing improvements that go beyond spelling and grammar to word choice.
As big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple roll out their latest AI features, one use case of AI keeps coming up: AI can write. It’s sometimes so good that job seekers have asked it to write their resumes and cover letters, and new technologies have rolled out to detect AI’s presence.
Related: These 4 Words Make It Obvious You Used AI to Write a Paper, According to New Research
Easier writing is a key selling point of Apple’s AI, Apple Intelligence, featured in the new iPhone 16 released Monday. Apple Intelligence is “built into your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to help you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly” according to its product page.
Apple said the AI can help upcoming iPhone 16 users draft emails and texts.
iPhone 16. Credit: Apple
Apple isn’t the first to focus on writing as an AI use case: Google ran an ad at the Olympics last month about how its AI could write a fan letter from a child to her Olympic hero — sparking conversation about what would happen when the Olympian held a stack of fan letters that sounded the same.
“As more and more people rely on AI to generate their content, it is easy to imagine a future where the richness of human language and culture erode,” Shelly Palmer, professor of advanced media in residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications wrote in a July 28 blog post.
Though Google ended up pulling the ad after public backlash, the future the ad portrayed — of young people turning to ChatGPT instead of puzzling through how to say something themselves — is fast becoming a reality.
ChatGPT has over 200 million weekly users, over 60% of which are under 34 years old. Nearly one in three users are under 24 years old.
Related: Can ChatGPT Help Start a Business? I Tried the Latest Version, GPT-4o, to Find Out.
Research published earlier this year shows that university students who rely on ChatGPT experience poorer academic performance and memory loss. A separate study found that the top uses of ChatGPT were creating content, responding to emails, writing cover letters and resumes, and coming up with ideas.
AI opponents point out AI’s writing abilities may be based on copyrighted works used by big tech companies without credit or compensation awarded to the people who wrote these works.
“To add insult to injury, the bot is being trained on pirated copies of my books,” author Margaret Atwood wrote in a 2023 article for The Atlantic last year about the issue. “Now, really! How cheap is that? Would it kill these companies to shell out the measly price of 33 books? They intend to make a lot of money off the entities they have reared and fattened on my words, so they could at least buy me a coffee.”
AI supporters say that the anti-AI group is “classist and ableist.” The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) defended AI writing last week, for example, by saying that “not all brains have [the] same abilities” and some need “outside help or accommodations” to write. Disabled writers took issue with the remarks, as well as NaNoWriMo sponsors, and the organization has since changed the wording of its stance and apologized.
Related: Klarna CEO Says AI Could Help Reduce Company Headcount By 50%
Then there are more neutral issues with AI, like estimates that AI systems could run out of free training data within the next two years, leaving open the question of what kinds of data to use next.
AI-generated content has steadily risen to the top of Google searches, doubling from about 7% in June 2023 to 14% in June 2024.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
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