Affiliate marketing platform Awin has revealed how the global company has shifted its focus to include agencies, and how its platform can shine a spotlight on performance.
Formed in 2017 following a rebrand of networks zanox and Affiliate Window, Awin has 17 offices across the world with more than 1,200 employees.
Awin’s global affiliate platform connects advertisers with a network of publishers across a variety of sectors from price comparison sites, blogs, email marketing and social networks.
“Affiliate marketing has really come into its own over the years,” said Jessica Brown, Agency Partner at Awin.
Prior to joining Awin, she worked publisher-side at the Groupon Reach Network which includes the Mirror, Mumsnet and The Guardian.
“I became a bit frustrated that the networks and other affiliate platforms didn’t have dedicated agency roles. I only knew about one or two and they never lasted that long, it was a bit of an in and out strategy from the industry overall.”
After liaising with Awin, which at the time was looking to address the gap in affiliate marketing with agencies, she was asked to lead on its new strategy.
“I had all these great relationships with agencies but opportunities were limited to those publishers previously. So it was effectively lifting that strategy and applying it to hundreds of thousands of publishers across a network and Awin were the ones I decided to join.”
Last year, Awin acquired SingleView, a data-driven platform developed by Manchester agency R.O.EYE, which saw all staff from the agency and SingleView join the company.
The technology, which sits independently within Awin’s open partnership network, is used by brands such as PrettyLittleThing to assess which combinations of media deliver the best return on advertising spend.
“We’ve taken a lot of learnings from them,” she said. “They’ve really helped with the strategy and given us honest opinions on what agencies actually want.”
