LISA: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Lisa Maynard, VP of Marketing at Awin.

Welcome to the Performance Marketer's Toolkit, the series where we explore the biggest challenges modern marketers face and the performance enhancing solutions that help overcome them.

In each episode, we'll look at a real world marketing challenge and how brands are solving it through the agility of the affiliate channel and the help of Awin's tech.

Today we're exploring how to reward content partners for the true value they bring.

Modern shopping journeys rarely follow a straight line. Customers research, compare, read reviews, and watch videos long before they hit buy. Yet many marketing teams still rely on last click attribution to measure success, even though only one in five marketers believe it accurately reflects their long-term impact. Nowhere is that disconnect more obvious than in the affiliate channel, especially from the partner's view. They write articles and film clips, they share links and make sales, but we all know that's not the full picture.

Content is usually [00:01:00] positioned at the top of the funnel, right where products are being researched. It puts eyeballs on brands and drives purchase intent, but that sale might take weeks to land.

In the meantime, the customer is scouring for offers on other sites. When they make their decision, the content creator that drove that first click? Outta the picture.

It doesn't seem fair. Quarterbacks are among some of the world's highest paid athletes for all the plays they make. It's time the affiliate channel stopped valuing only the touchdown and started paying for the pass.

In recent years, Awin has enabled our advertisers to fill their funnel by commissioning partners based on assists as well as sales.

Those advertisers also gain more insight on the role certain partners have in driving purchase intent. And once they know something assists, they can run those same plays again and again.

Then we have the advantages for partners. By having our advertisers pay for assists, we've helped some of the world's most influential content sites make affiliate marketing work better for them.

Here's Scott Ginsberg, VP of marketing at Penske Media - home to titles like Rolling [00:02:00] Stone and Variety - talking about the hidden layers of ROI that assist tracking provides.

SAM: As an editorial publisher, how do you navigate those conversations with brands - particularly if you're coming to an affiliate from a very commercial mindset of like last click wins?

SCOTT: Yeah, no, and I actually had a really good example even partnering with Awin. This actually helped us with that electronics retailer a couple years back where we were looking at about a one to one ROAs and trying to secure the renewal. And honestly, once we started to look at that assist metrics, and it ended up being, I think north of like 20%.

It really showcased that like, yes, if content's doing its job, it's educating, it's influencing, but ultimately there may be another party that converted that consumer. I think that's always been - you know, a, a savvy consumer at this point knows to look for that deal to, knows to look for that offer, so. I think our big win is still gaining some credit and still being able to demonstrate to that brand, like, "Look at the whole ecosystem, what we were able to sort of influence above and beyond what that direct attribution was able to give us."

LISA: Awin's Commission By Assist is [00:03:00] easy to set up.

Advertisers simply amend their attribution settings to pay commission when a customer clicks on a link but doesn't immediately complete their purchase. Even if their final click was driven by a different partner, the first link in the chain still gets paid a commission - and that amount is down to you.

Since 2024, Awin advertisers have paid out nearly $650,000 in commission on assists.

If you're not paying on assist, you could be missing a huge chunk of your purchase funnel. Think about it. The more you value those early contributions, the more browsers, researchers and visitors you'll capture, and the more chances you get to land a customer.

This exact scenario unfolded at an electronics brand working with Penske Media. We'll let Jim Harriman from Stat Commerce tell the story.

JIM: We had a bit of an uphill battle with a, a large consumer electronic retailer, um, that really wanted to invest in, in the channel - in affiliate to engage that consumer that wasn't necessarily ready to buy. Again, talking about kind of feeding the, that lower funnel activity, [00:04:00] uh, but didn't quite have a way to sell in internally.

Um, and so what we had done with Penske Media and, and Scott was kind of devised a, a long-term strategy over the course of, of the year, a number of different content plays and traffic drivers, which would be designed to get eyes onto that content that was developed. Um, and we ended up taking a client that was very hesitant in investing even, you know, $5 - $10,000 in a content play - to become one of the largest spenders that I think to date we've, we've ever seen and, uh, continue to spend year after year after year in that upward funnel activity 'cause they were able to see so much positive downstream results from it.

LISA: With the customer journey becoming more and more complex, there has never been a better time to use Commission By Assist, and create a winning playbook.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Performance Marketer's Toolkit.

Join us next time as we tackle another marketing challenge and show how Awin helps marketers enhance their [00:05:00] performance.