FLIGHT PA: [00:00:00] Flight attendants prepare doors for arrival and crosscheck.

Rich: Hi, I'm Rich Towey, Global Content and Communications Manager at Awin. Welcome to our Power 100 Special.

In celebration of the new Awin Power 100, our index of the hundred most innovative partners on our platform, I caught up with some of the class of 2026 at Think Tank Americas.

We talked at length about the unique cultural and market differences each country brings, as well as their top affiliate trends.

FLIGHT PA: Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you enjoyed your flight and welcome to Chicago.

Lucas: GoLoot is a performance marketing company that specializes in helping brands acquire customers via content.

Rich: That's Lucas Beland, CEO and co-founder of GoLoot.

Lucas: So we have a large network of content publishers and partners from tier one editorial media websites to blogs and newsletter. And we power our own native ad units in these articles and on these pages that feature recommended products and offers to the readership that they can, of course, then click on and make their way to their website.

It's a discovery [00:01:00] experience, it's a consideration experience, but it's specifically designed then for performance, so hoping that that click converts into high-quality customers. And we've expanded the business over the years to then support newsletter formats, article formats, and all sorts of exciting content activations.

Rich: And, uh, just, uh, geographically from starting out in Canada-

Lucas: Yeah.

Rich: ... then into the US, the well-trodden path there. What was that journey like for you, uh, expanding out?

Lucas: I would... You know, and we started even in Quebec, which is a very unique market, a French-speaking market drowned in a ocean of English-speaking consumers.

The laws are very different in Quebec. The privacy frameworks that you are, you know, you're abiding by when you advertise in Quebec are pretty intense. So I feel like we got, like, really thick skin as an advertising company starting in one of the most difficult markets to start in. Every creative a brand sends you, you're like, "That's not compliant. That's not in the right language. Those are... You know, this isn't right punctuation. We gotta change it."

So anyway, we had to do a lot of work to demonstrate our value in Quebec, and expanding outside of that market felt really easy. We were like, "This is the Wild [00:02:00] Wild West." There's, like barely any rules.

Rich: Yeah.

Lucas: No one cares, so. But jokes aside, we, I think we got to build a really thick skin as a company.

Rich: Uh, so Christian, you got great presence in both, uh, UK, US. What are the big differences between serving consumers in those, in those two markets?

Christian K: Yeah, certainly.

Rich: That's Christian Klos, Partner Lead for Specialty Retail at card-linked offers specialist, Cardlytics.

Christian K: We are the biggest CLO provider, uh, in the United States, and we're essentially the technology that aggregates all of the banks, or as we call them, financial institutions, into one place for advertisers. You know, advertisers can come and work with Cardlytics and get access to the Chases, to the Wells Fargos, to the Amexs of the world, and really, you know, get their brand offers out there.

Rich: Now, every market carries different financial restrictions, so we're really keen to figure out how this works on a global scale.

Christian K: I think it just comes down to, you know, the financial institutions that we work with. Obviously, those [00:03:00] are really safeguarded environments, so there's, you know, rules and regulations, data governance that we need to follow.

And as you can assume, those, you know, differ a little in the UK and US market. Otherwise, very similar in regards to, you know, the product offering and what we're able to do with, uh, advertisers and driving incrementality.

Chris: We launched in the US in Q4 last year. We've just seen a really positive reaction to what Revving's trying to do. Yeah, we're, we're really enjoying the experience so far in the US.

Rich: That's Chris Pettit, CEO of Revving, who comes into the affiliate industry with a very unique background.

Chris: So my background, I'm a lawyer and structured financier by profession, but I've spent a large chunk of my career in the media and entertainment industry sort of bridging the gap between creativity and money.

We spent a lot of time, my co-founder David and I, working together prior to setting Revving up, doing a lot in mobile gaming. We were doing a load in film and television. And we saw that in the affiliate world, really long supply chains, really complicated, people are waiting far too much time to get paid, [00:04:00] but they can instantly see their commissions happening and there's, you know, if anything's gonna frustrate someone, they can see they've got something they're gonna get paid for, but they've gotta wait months to get paid.

Rich: Yeah.

Chris: So we thought if we could tap into that data set - we could pull it out, then we could fund on it. And so that's where we founded Revving, and we've sort of created this whole new financing tool called transactional-based funding. And that's how we make sure your affiliates and our customers get paid as quickly as we possibly can.

I think, you know, there's that natural US optimism generally.

Rich: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: And that's re- that's always nice to embrace. But I think they've really, they've got the message, they understand it, what needs to be done, and they can see how Revving can support their business. You know, not wanting to be a downer on the UK, but I think we can take a bit of a leaf out of their book sometimes.

You know, if you can access capital and you can reinvest in your business and you can scale and you convince your CEO that this is a good thing, I think we can collectively move a bunch of the, you know, economic uncertainty in the UK, that mindset. I think you see a lot of positive [00:05:00] attitude over here, which I really love.

Rich: Expansion to the US seems to be going well for Revving, but Lucas did have some important reminders about building a wider North American presence.

Lucas: The majority of our business is now in the US. GoLoot's head office is in New York City, and we partner mostly with American brands. But they love to lean on us as a Canadian company to navigate the Canadian market because Canadian consumers, especially with Quebec as a, you know, very significant part of Canada, are so similar, yet so different from Americans.

Rich: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lucas: There's a lot of similarities, and if some brands oversimplify it and think it's just another California-

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Lucas: ...like, you know, 40 million consumers that have, you know, high buying power and... But the reality is Canadian consumers trust different kind of media. They speak a different language in some capacity, especially in Quebec.

Rich: Mm.

Lucas: They consume content a little bit differently. And so we've helped our advertisers adjust their strategies when they enter the market, and being Canadian, first and foremost, has given us, I think, a unique advantage.

So yeah, today our business is about 70% US, 30% Canada. We're helping a lot of our American partners [00:06:00] on the affiliate networks market themselves in Quebec and in Canada.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Lucas: And I always caution them, like it's very similar consumer profiles, but yet so different. And you-

Rich: I was gonna say, like what, what, what are those, what, what, what do you pass on to people who are doing the opposite, right?

Lucas: Yeah.

Rich: The US to Canada.

Lucas: Yeah.

Rich: What are the key things?

Lucas: We do also, yeah, so the Canada to US is a whole other journey, and I think brands are super excited to enter the US market if they're Canadian native companies. We give them a lot of scale.

Rich: Mm.

Lucas: We have so much distribution, so many great media partners in the US. And I think that journey is a little bit easier. You're tapping into a bigger consumer pool, generally bigger buying power. American consumers are very responsive to direct response advertising. So they, you know, American consumers consume a lot of media, and they love ads, and they love to interact with ads and discover products, and they love commerce content.

Canadian consumers are a little more conservative. They're not as accustomed to the news and to media, and so we have to persuade them in a very different way. We have to court them in a very different way.

So I find that our Canadian partners, you know, they struggle in the US market because it's [00:07:00] competitive, so we're helping them gain a lot of scale through our media distribution, and we're a friendly Canadian partner that they can lean on to grow quickly.

American companies going the other way are very ambitious about Canada, perhaps too much, and need to understand that there is a very different consumer profile-

Rich: Yeah.

Lucas: ... very different consumer behavior that we have to navigate together.

Christian H: GoWish is the go-to place for, uh, anything gift related, actually.

Rich: That's Christian Holmgaard, Head of Affiliate Partnerships at GoWish.

Christian H: It started only being a wish list, so could just post the stuff that you wanted, but, um, then it turned into this whole inspiration platform that we really try to focus on. So now actually most of the wishes created in our app are actually coming from the stuff that we recommend them. So it's come a long way from just being a wish list platform and then, yeah, evolving over the years.

Uh, a funny thing that we, we recently discovered that is very different from what we see in Denmark, for example, is that the US users are, mm, they feel like it's kinda awkward [00:08:00] actually getting a wish list that they didn't ask for. And they also feel like it's kinda awkward sending a wish list-

Rich: Yeah.

Christian H: ... To someone when you didn't ask. And, and it's so funny for us because in Denmark that is totally normal. You just do that, no one bats an eye. But we found that in the US that's can be quite awkward. So we have a challenge there trying to figure out, okay How can we change that perception? Is there anything that we can do to change anything in that area?

Rich: Tell me about, uh, Melhores Destinos.

Marcel: Well, Melhores Destinos w- is one of the biggest travel deals in Brazil. We are the pioneer doing this in Brazil.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: We are doing this for the last 18 years, almost 18 years so. Since the beginning, the market's changed a lot in Brazil, so it's quite challenging moments.

Rich: Speaking is Marcel Bruzadin, Partnership Coordinator at Melhores Destinos. One of a significant amount of concept partners on the Power 100.

So, so one side of the business is the [00:09:00] travel-

Marcel: Yeah.

Rich: ... and then you have that other side, which is the, uh, Melhores Descontos.

Marcel: Melhores Descontos, yeah.

Rich: Yeah. What's that all about?

Marcel: Melhores Descontos was born last year. So it's quite similar to Melhores Destinos, but it's all focused in products and retail markets. So we share deals from phones, TVs, uh, clothes, uh, everything. The public in Brazil is very smart.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: They want to pay less, but to acquire a good product. It's a market in Brazil that's increasing a lot, so the retail market in Brazil, we have like Amazon in Brazil.

It's getting big as well. Mercado Libre, it's a brand from Argentina.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: They are becoming very big in Brazil.

Rich: And, um, just, just, just about the audience then, so, uh, y- your social account, I think it's about, uh, over 1.5 million followers-

Marcel: Yeah.

Rich: ... uh, on Instagram. It's, uh, it's quite a social-focused audience, the Brazilian, uh, consumer base, isn't it?

Marcel: Yeah. So people in Brazil, we use a lot [00:10:00] of social media. We are like something addicted to it.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: Uh, it's not that good, but people, uh, they like to buy on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp as well.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: WhatsApp in Brazil is, like, huge.

Rich: That, that's a totally unique thing. You know, you, it's a good way of doing that, right, having that WhatsApp because it must be like a direct connection.

You can build a community on it.

Marcel: Mm, yeah.

Rich: Um, and that's kinda unique to the Brazilian market really, isn't it?

Marcel: Yeah. In Brazil, like, people use WhatsApp for everything.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Marcel: Like, they use for business. They use for personal things. I'm, I'm pretty sure that's, it doesn't happen in other country.

Rich: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

What, what are the big, uh, trends, just, just looking at the industry, so the, the travel industry at the minute, what are sort of the big trends that are, um, keeping you awake at night?

Marcel: AI, for sure, is something that's happening. We saw here in, on the panels that AI is changing everything. It's changing so quickly, so we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Rich: Mm.

Marcel: We are very aware about this, and yeah, for sure it's something that we [00:11:00] are studying and reading about it every day, so yeah, it's changing a lot. Even for Melhores Destinos or Melhores Descontos, it's something very important. Maybe in one year we can see different markets, not only in Brazil, but the whole world.

Ryan: There are quite a few areas that are, that are continuously evolving, I think especially with the advent of AI and everything happening more broadly in the ecosystem. Figuring out where consumers are going to be and how consumer behavior is gonna be reshaped and, and sort of evolve is central to how we think about things.

Rich: That's Ryan Nahas, VP Channel Partnerships at Rokt.

You might have seen Rokt's name on the Oracle Red Bull Racing Formula One cars. Having been valued at $3.5 billion, it's one of the biggest partners on the Power 100.

Ryan: So Rokt is a channel that helps advertisers acquire brands during the transaction moment, and that's essentially the flow that people are in when they made a choice on a commerce site, they've decided what they wanted to purchase, and [00:12:00] they're now following a series of pretty standard steps from the selection cart all through the payments page and the confirmation page.

And essentially what Rokt does is that it enables advertisers to engage that very audience at a moment where there is a very high intent to make a purchase. And so imagine you just made a purchase and I incite you to make a second purchase, I don't know w- how you behave as a shopper but a lot of people tend to also take that on.

When we think about Rokt as a channel that helps transform the commerce media and sort of that transaction moment, the question is: What is that transaction moment going to be? Is it still going to be on the sites and apps of brands?

Rich: Mm.

Ryan: Is it going to exist in LLMs? Is it gonna be in other ecosystems?

So part of the thinking is where should Rokt be as we continuously evolve? And then on the flip side of that, or sort of the parallel path to that, which goes back again to the heart and soul of Rokt, is, is the algorithm that we have and sort of how can we continuously [00:13:00] drive the most relevance to consumers?

And because of everything that's happening from an AI perspective, from a LLM perspective, from a data processing perspective, our ability to be even more effective in finding the best thing possible to show someone at a given point in time has been sort of really multiplied. And so now our goal is how can we continuously build that sort of infrastructure and ecosystem that would allow us to solve for that customer need and continuously be that channel that is truly incremental, efficient, and solves for a need in an ever-evolving sort of marketing landscape.

Joep: The kind of, like, customer journey, uh, has changed a bit. Where in the traditional affiliate marketing mix, a lot of content publishers have lost quite a bit of traffic. There's also, like, a recurring thing I hear from people here, over here in the US. They say, like, "Our top publishers were usually content publishers," but through the LLM, like, kind of switch, change, if you want, a lot of those publishers [00:14:00] lost traffic to direct-

Rich: Mm.

Joep: ...um, uh, web shops.

Rich: And last but not least, that's Joep van der Boer, CCO at Shoparize, one of our featured publishers on the previous Power 100, who we also caught up with at Think Tank.

Joep: So we're a global, uh, CSS publisher, which means that we run Google Shopping and Bing Shopping, uh, campaigns on a CPA basis, which helps merchants that have seen a significant CPC increase, uh, year on year for the last couple of years to take back some, uh, buying power in the, the Google Shopping auction.

Alongside the two parts of a core business, we also run a price comparison website, and all of this is live in 21 European countries at the moment, uh, which will be extended later this year to 36 countries. And on the side, we're also opening the US, hence we're here in Chicago.

So those web shops need to, you know, be very creative in finding ways to pop up in LLMs, otherwise they just lose twice, right? They lose the affiliate traffic from, uh, the publishers and they don't show up in the LLMs.

Rich: Mm.

Joep: So that's why it's very important to have, like, your [00:15:00] full strategy and also, like, the Google Shopping and Bing Shopping included in your strategy because you might just miss out completely if you, uh, if you're not-

Rich: Nice, yeah.

Joep: ...ready for that.

Rich: You touched on a couple of trends there, LLMs-

Joep: Yeah.

Rich: ... uh, product discovery. Um, what are the... what's the single biggest thing, uh, that you're talking about in the office at the minute trend-wise?

Joep: Yeah, I'm gonna be very funny here and use the buzzword AI. I mean, it's, it's the, the reoccurring thing, right?

And I know everyone talks about it, and everyone is always, uh, you know, is using it in completely different ways. I don't agree with every single way, uh, because it's also almost becoming a kind of an excuse for people to not-

Rich: Mm.

Joep: ... you know, perform anymore.

Rich: Yeah.

Joep: But what I took away from the Awin ThinkTank basically and talking to merchants is basically that LLM unpredictability and people that see a lot of affiliate, uh, traffic disappear-

Rich: Mm.

Joep: ...and have a very hard time in generate that traffic back via LLMs And, uh, I think one of the advices I would give to brands, like, right now is, you know, talk to content [00:16:00] creators. Like, what you really wanna get is people that have a network of other people that are familiar with someone, that are actually trusting the person.

Uh, and if you could generate that- that traffic to your website, there's way more likely people are gonna buy than, you know, finding other creative ways.

Rich: I was gonna ask you what the big trends that you're focusing on. Is- is LLMs the, in there?

Lucas: Yeah.

Rich: Yeah, yeah, possibly?

Lucas: So, no, it's inter- Yeah. So we started off as an ad network, and we still are at our core an ad network, right?

And we're very proud to be distributing dozens of millions of dollars in revenue share to content partners now, thanks to our performance business, and it's been a really, really great asset for our clients who are spending perhaps too much or depending too much on some ad platforms, and they wanna diversify and touch a consumer at a different point in the conversion funnel. So that ad network business we're super ambitious about. But over the years, we've launched new products to support our brands and our agency partners. One of the products that we're really bullish about is a Meta-supported product, so try to help [00:17:00] brands build partnerships with publishers on Meta so they can advertise from a more trusted voice, from a place of credibility, typically even benefit from better CPMs on Meta because publisher partners have a lot of authority and trust on that platform.

So when you're thinking about how saturated Meta ads have become over the last 20, 30 years now, I mean, brands have been spending for a long time on Meta. You can leverage commerce content and content publishers in general to help you reduce your costs on that platform and build a better relationship with the Meta reader that's, like, saturated with ads.

So we've been very bullish about that and supporting our clients there, which kind of bridges the gap between, like, a dying open web. There's less traffic there, ads don't perform as well, and Meta still is, like, the gold star of performance marketing. But we can help bridge that gap and give publishers a second wave of momentum.

So that's been really interesting. And then, of course, we've been leaning into how content influences LLM and just overall AI discoverability. It's becoming a new KPI for our brands to understand, [00:18:00] like, yes, this is driving sales and this is growing my traffic, but how is it impacting my AI discoverability? How am I being cited? What are the nuances between an indexed and a non-indexed page?

I think we're taking a cautious approach at Goloot where the market right now doesn't really know what it wants. Everybody's panicking about, you know, the transformative search behaviors that we're witnessing, and then there's, like, no traffic coming from ChatGPT, but everybody's searching there, and there's a lot of panic.

We're trying to learn, and approach this with caution. We wanna work with partners where affiliate networks are taking a lot of leadership here. We wanna work with partners who can help us deliver a better service to our clients, and we'll see where this goes.

Like, it's undeniable that search behaviors are going to change. How that becomes a partnership model between brands and media publishers is still very unclear and fuzzy. And I have found that while many brands talk about it, not a lot of them are doing things about it, so we're gonna have to keep working on, you know, finding the right partnership models, and affiliate networks will be key in that for sure.

Rich: Thanks for listening to this Power 100 Special. You can view the full index at awin.com/power-100, your ultimate source of new partner inspiration. We'll also be featuring in-depth interviews with each guest on our YouTube channel.

Right, I've got a flight to catch. See you next [00:21:00] time!