You're listening to the affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by affivermedia.com. The chapter and verse of everything you need to know about running a successful affiliate program for your business. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers, publishers, networks, agencies, and matec providers who operate, support, or manage affiliate marketing programs around the globe. If you want to launch, scale, and grow a successful affiliate marketing program, you're in the right place. In this podcast, you'll learn how affiliate and partner marketing is constantly changing, and tune in to industry experts who are getting behind our mic to share tactical insights and practical knowledge to help your affiliate program grow. Here you'll discover what's new and trending in affiliate and performance marketing, how to run your affiliate program successfully and gain industry insights from experts and practitioners from around the globe. The truth is, you simply won't find this information anywhere else. Now here's your award-winning affiliate and performance marketing host, an industry veteran, your affiliate marketing guide, and the founder of Affiverse, Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_00This week I was talking with Todd Crawford, co-founder of Impact.com, but we had such a brilliant conversation that we've decided to make this week's episode into a two-parter. So tune in for part one and get the lowdown on affiliate marketing then till now.
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SPEAKER_00This week I'm really excited because I've got somebody that I've long admired in the affiliate marketing industry, Todd Crawford, the co-founder of Impact.com, who is joining me this week to talk all things affiliate marketing. Welcome, Todd. Thanks so much for being here with me today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks, Leanne, for having me. I'm excited to be on the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're going to get down into the nitty-gritty of affiliate marketing, the future of where this industry is headed. But before we start, I'd like you to just take a couple of minutes. Tell us a little bit about your journey in affiliates. It's quite rare that I get to interview people that have been in the industry longer than what I have. So let's go right back to the beginning for anybody that's new and wants to just understand a little bit about where you've come from and tell us how you landed up being the co-founder of Impact.com today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it started back in 1998. I was part of the team that founded Commission Junction, which is I think now just called CJ. But um at the time it was we had the domain CommissionJunction.com. So yeah, started there. And then that company was sold to ValueClick in 2004. And then I left, I think in 2006, Digital River recruited me to help them with their affiliate platform that we branded One Network Direct. In 2008, we kind of got the band back together and started Impact Radius at the time. And now we're Impact.com. So it's been 25 years of three different companies all working kind of on the platform or network side of things.
SPEAKER_00And that is an amazing journey because I sort of landed in the industry around about the early 2000s, and I remember all of the companies that you've just listed up. But some of the affiliate managers that I meet at industry events are probably only turning between 25 and 27. So you kind of started when they were born, which is a long time ago. And not to make light of that, because it's very important that people like you are sharing the history of where we've come from in this industry so we can understand how we actually take the industry forward in the future. So before we get into the deep of it, tell me what led you to break from formation and actually create impact.com because it's quite a unique proposition. It's it's probably one of the most intuitive tools that I've had the pleasure to work on with some of our clients. But what made you actually decide to kind of break formation from traditional networks, which you'd had a lot of experience in, and create this really robust tracking solution?
SPEAKER_02You know, you walk away from you know one of the first global affiliate networks, and you think, well, maybe we're done here. And a couple years go by and we looked back and we're like, nothing is changing. There's this appetite for things moving forward. And I think, you know, even my days at CJ, there were features and capabilities that we wanted to build, or our customers or publishers wanted us to build, and we never prioritize them and build them. And so there were probably two major things at the time, you know, it's evolved. But at the beginning, it was the pricing model seemed it wasn't going to change. I mean, it's kind of like a monopoly. Like uh, why would we change our pricing if we don't have to? And two, you know, this kind of idea of building some technology and data capabilities that just didn't exist. And uh that was probably the genesis or the impetus for starting the company, Impact.com. But then, you know, on a 15-year journey, other things kind of came to light, or like the idea of expanding beyond affiliate and and really just calling it partnerships.
SPEAKER_0015 years ago, when you started this business, did you ever think that it was gonna be as big as what it is? Because I I mean, I have to be honest, this is one of the tools that I has really like blown my mind from a management perspective. I actually physically have used the tool for many different clients and the capabilities that you've built into this go really deep. Like it's not just about affiliate and partnership channels, but you can track pretty much everything through impact and the data that it amalgamates in the in the reporting suite, which I believe you now have a course on to actually get people certified on because it's that deep. You know, like did you think that it was ever going to be this BMF machine that you've that you've kind of built and are still building?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think part of the reason we did it is because we we were like, there's so much more potential here, and it's kind of contained because you know, when you you think about how an affiliate network works, you're you're kind of signing up to lease partnerships, at least from their perspective, right? You don't get to own the partnerships, they kind of exert ownership over them and curation and management of the network, and you get to tap into it. So some of the transparency and capabilities weren't there because it favors the network model. And we really wanted to give ownership to the brand of the partnerships and access to all of the data because we knew data was really important to unlocking the channel and understanding the true value, the true incrementality, as opposed to being told it's incremental. You can actually make that decision yourself. Because what, you know, and this everybody says this, you know, the the the word incrementality is subjective. There is no universal definition there. And really, what does it mean to your brand or to your brand today versus tomorrow? And so we really wanted to unlock that and open up this idea that you can have private partnerships. So if you do a brand, a brand deal, putting that into a network doesn't really make sense. Their business model is not being an affiliate, and so they don't want to be listed or recruited by other brands potentially. And as a brand, I don't want anyone to know I'm working with you. I I want that to be private for as long as possible to give me a competitive advantage. So that's kind of the initial thinking there. And it's expanded in added capability around, you know, how do you manage creators 15 years ago or 10 years ago when people really started talking about influencers because of the social platforms? Uh, most affiliate marketers raised their hand and went, We've been working with influencers all along. It just wasn't in the same way, you know, paying per post, more of a PR upper funnel branding exercise, measuring social signals versus actual revenue. And I think that's evolving as well and starting to kind of come together in the partnership ecosystem. But yeah, that that's kind of our initial thinking. And then, like I said, as influencers and other things have come along, it's evolved the way we think about it and the way we've evangelized it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because that's a that's a good point, actually, because a lot of people are talking about microinfluencers and nano influencers now being part of that partnership economy and that mix. And as we see new social channels and new communication and community-based channels evolving, you know, it's very important that your technology solution can actually accommodate all of these different types of partners and the things that they are going to need, which are not the same as perhaps, you know, an SEO affiliate or a voucher or cashback or loyalty-based affiliate, the traditional type of partners. So I guess my question to you, because I really want to kind of delve into the past a little bit before we get into the future, but you know, at the time when you were sitting down around the table to spec this all out, I mean, how were you feeling at that time? Like was this like your guttiest move, your your big adventure, or did it just kind of evolve naturally over time and you just kept adding to it intuitively?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think, you know, I always tell people there's kind of two types of people that start companies. There's entrepreneurs, they have great ideas, they can change the way businesses operate, they can change an industry, and then there are opportunists who are, hey, look, those guys over there are doing it. We could do it and make money too. And I think we fall into the former. We're very fortunate that all the co-founders are still with the company, they're still, you know, contributing ideas. And, you know, when you have that DNA in the company, you're really looking to move things forward. And so when we started the company, we felt like these changes were going to benefit the industry. And and, you know, again, what the the perspective I have is if we had just built another affiliate network, which we could have done and we could have been built a better one, and you know, we would have been crowding up to the table to get our slice of the same pie. And it was already crowded. And that's not fun. You're just trying to steal business from me, and I'm trying to steal business from you, and you know, and that's kind of where the industry was. You know, people would leave Link Share for CJ and for CJ for Link Share in hopes of you know greener pastures, something better, something promised that you know I would get you know better pricing and more services or whatever. What we really wanted to do is figure out how we can grow the pie. Like I would like to see the pie be 10 times bigger and get 50% market share, right? As opposed to try to fight for 10% or 20% at best. It's too much work and there's not enough reward there. And and really, like I said, changing the industry, growing the industry is much more rewarding. And I feel like, you know, being in the industry for 25 years, I can step back and look at it objectively. And I'm not always biased about impact.com or ourselves. It's it's really like the industry has to be healthy and has to flourish. And the C-suite has to see it as something vital to their business growth. And, you know, affiliate wasn't always that. So that that's kind of our perspective on mine on the industry.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that that change is happening? Because we still hear affiliate managers saying, you know, I need to I need to explain to the C-suite what this channel is and how it can be leveraged. I need to get the buy-in, I need to get the budget, I need to get all of these resources in place. Do you do you think that that's slowly changing from your perspective as you see a broad strikes view?
SPEAKER_02Never been more bullish on the industry. I've never been more excited about it. And I think, you know, there's different companies at different stages of maturity when it comes to this channel. There's companies that haven't done it yet, still, surprisingly, or that are just starting to do it. Yeah. And there's companies that have been doing it from the beginning. But you'll see that some of these teams have been renamed as partnership teams, a partnership channel versus affiliate and titles as well. The individuals are partnership managers. There are people in the C-suite that see this channel as far more valuable than they used to. And there are people who don't get it still. So, you know, the more people that get it, the more it gets socialized, those people move to other roles. You know, I read in the Wall Street Journal in January of this year, someone wrote an article that CMOs with performance marketing experience are in most demand, right? So, you know, that's exactly what I want to hear.
SPEAKER_00True story. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it's it's exciting right now, I think. The opportunities are are continuing to evolve and grow.
SPEAKER_00I think that's a good point because that was going to be my next question to you. Is do you think that this industry has had its growth peak, or do you still think that there's massive opportunities? And I I know you've got a really good handle on like around the world, because impact is is a global business. We see a lot of growth in the US, especially in the e-commerce space. That trend just doesn't seem to be stopping. And obviously there's volumes of numbers there, but around other parts of the world, are you seeing any great big growth spurts in this channel? And what looks exciting to you right now?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, you look at the US, I mean, from a just an e-commerce revenue perspective, it's the largest. So there's way more opportunity for growth if you go to the UK. It's a very large market, but again, there's fewer consumers just by the size of that country. So it's going to be somewhat smaller. So the number of partners, the number of brands, and the potential is not less. It's just it's all constrained by the size of the economy, right? And so when you look at a lot of these emerging markets, you know, take Indonesia, for example, I mean, the population alone, but then you have to look at the economics, credit card adoption, middle class. Those are the things that drive the economy, and therefore our industry can grow within it. So when you get into the global markets, you know, it's really about, you know, the ability to transact online and the size of the middle class that has that discretionary spending that's willing to shop online.
SPEAKER_00I guess the infrastructure too. Because I I recently just came back from Vietnam and I was so surprised at how many business transactions were happening on a mobile phone on the back of a motorbike. And it it was just amazing to me that, you know, people were transacting, doing business, booking, travel, you know, doing everything on the back of a smartphone. And when you look at the populace there as well, it was just phenomenal to me. It was just huge, huge numbers. And to me, that's exciting because you know, in Europe we're quite established in the affiliate space, in the US, we're quite established in the affiliate space. But there are all of these other countries around the world that are slowly starting to catch up. And I think that's where partner managers or program managers really need to get intuitive with the technology stack that they're plugging into their business to actually catch that growth as it's happening.
SPEAKER_02So one thing I would also add there is, you know, when you start an affiliate program, the low-hanging fruit are the affiliates that are the biggest and they understand how to work with a brand. Like we, you're a brand I want to work with, boom, we we put you in our machine and we start promoting you the way we do, whether we're loyalty, coupon, content, it's very easy. It's that high-hanging fruit that takes work. And I think a lot of people are just happy with the low-hanging fruit of less work. And, you know, it takes an agency or somebody that can say, you know, we can be more strategic and we understand the nuances here to find that high-hanging fruit, which is not going to come to you. But once you engage it and make it happen, you're creating far more value in that market for your brand. And again, it takes a little bit more work and a little more education. But that to me is the the other side of this opportunity that I think a lot of brands are missing. And uh because you know, you take the path of least resistance.
SPEAKER_00Have you got an example of a brand that's done that recently that sticks out in your head where they've actually innovated to step outside of just the traditional low-hanging fruit and did it quite successfully?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of brands that that approach this differently. And that's the beauty of this, is that there's no one size fits all. Two brands that as a consumer, we would consider them identical competitors are taking completely different approaches, right? Some are focused solely on just looking at you know traditional affiliates, or their idea of non-traditional affiliates is different from another brand. So that that to me is what's the most exciting about this is the the teams that lean in and that we're seeing a shift in the way the roles of those teams. I think historically, affiliate is a very nurturing kind of business model. You know, you're my affiliate, I want to check in with you, find out how we can do more together, you know, wash, rinse, repeat. But now we're seeing more of a sales or biz dev focus in in those roles. In addition, so you have kind of the hunters and the farmers, right? Or so that I need to go out, I need to can talk to the, I need to first I got to get through the door. Will you talk to me? I got the right person, and then I got to convince them of the opportunity, test, you know, optimize, test again, and and and develop that partnership. And I think different companies are at different stages there. So to me, you know, giving you anecdotal how one company did it, it never applies to another company. I mean, one that we've talked about a long time was Barkbox, which is a subscription service. They initially tried to go out and work with all of the pet shelters in the US, of which there are tens of thousands. They don't understand marketing a lot of times, they don't understand affiliate, but they understand that when you adopt a pet, I could give you a printout like a postcard or have a flyer or just a printed out eight by ten piece of paper that I fold up and put in your adoption materials that has a unique promo code to sign up at BarkBox, right? So, you know, that is very interesting. And, you know, you're really meeting the customer at the perfect moment, right? They're adopting a pet. Of course, they want to subscribe to something like a BarkBox. So it, you know, it's it's different, and it's also different by Geo as well.
SPEAKER_00100%. And I think you've actually touched on quite a few things there because the first thing I want to say is I think affiliate marketing has moved beyond the basics of the four P's of marketing. You have to be thinking innovatively and you have to be engaging with your partners, whoever they are, whatever kinds of publishers they are, because they are really at the forefront of innovation. That is their job. They do it every single day. And I think the programs that I see really succeed versus the programs that just chundle along with a little bit of, you know, net profit every month, are the ones that do lean in and do simple things like that and actually get really close to their referrals and say, how can I actually like tap into that additional market opportunity? And that's really a really important message that I want people to tune into today because it isn't just about onboarding and recruitment. It's also about what do you do with those partners when you have them. And that's the bit that I think people leave and they just they kind of just let partners trickle along on their own. And that's where you're missing out on growth opportunities and value opportunities as well.
SPEAKER_02To your point, I mentioned earlier about CMOs with you know performance experience, performance marketing experience are in more demand. The difference between being a performance marketer and a media buyer is if you're buying Google or Facebook, it's basically a slot machine. You know, you're putting in a dollar or a pound or a euro or whatever, and you're getting trying to get back more than that, right? Two, three, four of those. And there's no relationship, there's no conversation or meaningful. I mean, you can call your Google rep, but keywords don't have any feelings. If you stop bidding on that keyword, it's not upset. When you're working with a partner and you tell them you have to stop working with them, or you're not gonna buy premium promotions, or you're not gonna have to lower the commission because of whatever the data shows. People are not happy about that, and there's a lot of give and take. But the most important part is that people are having conversations to do business. And that's where my new advice that I've been kind of on my uh soapbox about is that brands are very focused on how they measure the success of a partner, right? I have return on ad spend, I have conversion rate or just sole, you know, revenue volume, things like that, or new to file, whatever it is I'm measuring. But where I think we miss the mark is we don't ask publishers, how do you measure me? How are you benchmarking me? And I'll give you a good example. If you work with CNN underscore, they're measuring you based on effective CPC or revenue per page visit or page view or CPM metric. And if you don't understand that, and you don't ask them, how do I benchmark against my competitors? You know, I think I'm paying you a fair commission, but I might be under benchmarking. And so I need to understand that because you're not going to lean in as hard when your the demand for your content is so high that I've got to be on top of my game and I've got to understand how you're measuring me, not so much how I'm measuring you, in order to get the best placements to get you to lean in and work with Moore. And that comes out in conversations. Likewise, maybe there's something I'm not in love with about this publisher, and I need to talk to them and say, how have you solved this with other brands? How have you helped other brands champion or make me like what you're doing even more, right? As opposed to being kind of blasé about it and getting that kind of feedback, those conversations. There's three kinds of buckets I would use. The one is just certain things that happened to the industry that propelled affiliate forward. The first was the dot-com bomb. When the bottom fell out, all these companies that were just blowing huge amounts of venture capital into CPM buys to get, you know, we're advertising, we're getting all these eyeballs out there. Nobody's clicking on the links or buying, but you know, people thought that was great. And when that fell out, people really leaned on affiliate a little bit more. They appreciated it just a little bit more. The next one was in 08 when the mortgage crisis hit. What we saw there is that consumers shifted, not marketers, to wanting deals, coupons, cash back. And those publishers really came up, rose up materially, and have ever since. And now with the recession, again, you're seeing this performance-based, high return on ad spend channel that's becoming more diverse, very popular. So that that's one thing that I've I love about this industry. And it also ties into like publisher-driven innovation. They're really the ones making that happen in most cases. The other thing is early on, you know, there were all these message boards where affiliates and brands and networks would talk, complain, whatever, right? And to me, the most rewarding was I would see posts where an affiliate would show a picture of a car and go, I bought this car because of my earnings affiliate, or my child is going to college because of the money I'm making as an affiliate marketer. And these are not companies, these are individuals that were doing whatever they could. They they quit their day job, right? That that was always exciting to me. And that's when I it just felt so rewarding to see the benefit actual at the human level, right? You know how many dollars you're paying out every month or every year, but to see someone admitting that they're benefiting from it. And then I guess related to that, it's always been the employees giving people an opportunity to work for us, and it's their first real job or a stepping stone in their career and seeing them 10, 20 years later being senior executives when I mean, I literally remember wearing, you know, a brand at swag or whatever, and being at a restaurant for lunch and having someone wait on us and go, my roommate just got a job at your company and they love it. They're so excited, and I wish I could work there. And it's like, you should apply. And I mean, literally, they went from that to, you know, they're they're off doing something else, you know. So it's those are some of the most memorable things for me in across the industry over these 25 years.
SPEAKER_00I love that because I think most people that land up in this industry, they become lifers. Like there's very few people that I've met that came into the affiliate space and bounced out and never came back again. Like they may have changed vertical, they may have changed working network side or agency side or brand side. But I think once you get into this industry, you kind of love it. And very few people actually hate it. I've never met anybody that hated it because it's it's such a diverse job. Like nobody can get bored working in affiliate marketing because it is constantly changing all the time. You have to learn new technical things, new development things. It takes a broad mix of SEO, media buying, relationship management, biz dev sales, as you said, and it combines it all into one role. And to me, that is super cool, but also it means that it's a job that requires constant on-the-job development and learning. And one of the things that I would like to see this industry do is invest more in that. And I know you guys have created a fantastic training academy to actually help affiliate managers or or brands just understand the channel a little bit better, which is awesome. Do you think that companies will start to invest more in skills development in this job genre? Because typically what I've seen is people come in from a customer service or client-facing side, or they come in from a sales side and they learn all the other skills as they go through on the job. If you're very lucky, you've come into this role from a media buying side, so you already understand traffic and the kind of commercialized part of the of running a program. But do you think that we'll see more education and development being kind of invested into this channel as well?
SPEAKER_02Well, obviously, we we feel very strongly about, as you said, we've started our our Partnership Experience Academy, PXA. If you just Google impact.com and PXA, you'll you'll get to that the link for that. And it's free to anyone. They don't have to be a customer of ours. They can be our competitor. There's tons and tons, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of hours of training constantly developed. We have a huge team reaching out to the industry to create this content. It's not just us creating it. It's to give people more information, more education. And, you know, when you complete these courses and get certified, they can be added to your LinkedIn as a certification. So, you know, it's it's it's all about build, like I said, growing the pie, building the industry, creating more mind share. I mean, we want to be the nucleus of the industry. I mean, we can't be the industry, but we want to be we think we we can be a material player role in the ecosystem. And so, you know, we're trying to provide this education. And, you know, you know, look at HubSpot. They that that's where we got the idea. They they've they did it. It's super valuable. And uh, you know, it you need to const, as you said, you need to constantly be learning. Um you probably have more knowledge as someone in this space than anybody that's done paid search for 10 years or media buying for 10 years. It's it there's way more to it, more nuances, better data, et cetera. It's not so flat and uh, like I said, it's not that coin-operative machine. And I'm not trying to dismiss you know anybody's role or contribution, but um, there's way more moving pieces. Um and uh it's way more exciting and dynamic. So yeah, I love it, and we're way committed to to PXA and helping the industry evolve and grow and learn.
SPEAKER_00Wow, what a jam-packed episode this has been. Now, if you were listening at the beginning, remember this is a two-part series. So tune in next week as we talk some more with Todd Crawford about what the future of affiliate marketing looks together. And just before we go, I'd like to do a massive shout out to all of our listeners that are tuning in from Santa Barbara as well. It's amazing to have you here with us on this podcast journey. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to give us a five-star review if you're liking what we're putting down this week. See you next week for part two with Todd Crawford.
SPEAKER_01This podcast is brought to you by AMP. The Affiliate Manager Performance Program is designed for ambitious affiliate program managers working at brands, agencies, or affiliate networks that are looking to grow and scale their affiliate programs and partner performances. We've already helped hundreds of affiliate program managers from a range of industries get the best out of their affiliate partnerships and build consistent sales within their affiliate programs. With just one hour per week over a 12-week period, this program is unlike any other. You'll learn proven tactics, tested strategies, and accessed decades of experience with industry veterans who have launched, scaled, and grown multi-million dollar affiliate programs around the world. Book your seat on our next cohort by visiting our website, ativersemedia.com, and hit the training menu. From there, you can register your interest for our next cohort launch or contact our sales team to find out more. That's a wrap for this week's affiliate marketing podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down, why not head over to Apple ITs and give us a five-star review? Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel so you never miss another insightful episode or one of our free webinars ever again. Tune in next week for more digital affiliate marketing insights, friends, tips, and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partners driving consistent sales.