Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and
have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast.
I am your host, Ty DeGrange, and I am thrilled to have today
Adam Weiss. Welcome to the show, sir. Hey. Thanks for having me, Ty.
Heck yeah, man. Adam is the founder of Wise Digital Consulting. He
is definitely an affiliate marketing veteran. What have you been around the space? What? Twenty years
at least? Not to make you feel old. Yeah. I think veteran is I was gonna say veteran is
just another word for old. I mean, we're kind of both in that
category. I think you've been at a little bit longer than I have, but we're we're up there. Maybe. But
you look a lot younger. Probably are a lot younger. Maybe not for long if I keep
at it. So, Adam is is an amazing resource. He has
been consulting with publishers, partners, affiliates for quite a
long time. He's, launched his own consulting firm, Voice Digital Consulting.
Prior to that, he was you were at Rakuten for, what, fifteen years ish? A little
over fourteen. And then I think a lot of affiliates seek him out to say, like, how do
I find partnerships? How do I make sense of the channel? How do I monetize?
And similarly, you you do an amazing recap of the affiliate industry in your newsletter.
You develop the really awesome partner landscape, which we've talked
about and and published similar. And I think yours is kind of one of the more comprehensive publisher
partner affiliate landscape visuals I've seen out there. So super excited to dive in
with you today. Appreciate it. I'm excited too. Thanks, Ty. Heck, yeah.
So, you know, I have to start out. You you kind of provided a bit of a hot take. We did
a conversation with some of our teammates recently, and, you mentioned
that, Hagar Van Halen is preferred over
David Lee Roth Van Halen. Can you but I wanna preface it with Oh,
man. My first concert ever was Van Halen, and I'm slightly
embarrassed to share that I have a ringtone on my phone, which is always on
silent, of course. But occasionally, it sneaks through and people will actually hear it in an office
environment or outside, and it's David Lee Roth, Van Halen,
jump. That's okay. It's true story. How bad is that on a scale of one
to ten? Well, I didn't know there were still ringtones beyond just
what what I mean, do you have, like, a Nokia from the early two
thousands? Is that Snickers bar, you know, Nokia. It keeps
me off of social media even though even
though that's what we work in. Just kidding. They don't have a Nokia. But Well
help us understand this hot take because, inquiring minds wanna know. Well, let's
give some context for your audience was I met the team, and
I thought that when you're given a, you know, a presentation or an overview, you gotta
say something controversial. And that was my controversial statement, but I stand by it.
I don't dislike DLR. As a matter of fact, I I love them. I love the early Van
Halen stuff. But maybe just, you know, for me, my formative years of
of rock and roll, just that intro riff to fifty one fifty.
I'm not gonna sing on your podcast, but if you if you know, you know. We won't say no to it if
you wanna Well, I don't want you to lose subscribers. But that run, you know,
the fifty one fifty and o u eight one two and for unlawful carnal knowledge,
those three in a row, that was epic. And that was Yeah. Me
growing up. Again, my formative years of rock and roll, and it
just it spoke to me. And to this day, if you were to ask me
to throw on a Van Halen album, I would I would put on fifty one fifty. And I wanna be clear.
I love one and two and nineteen eighty four and Divergent and all that
stuff. Don't get me wrong. I love it. But my
go to is is the Hagar Van Halen. That's just that's who I
am. Sorry. What's your favorite jam off fifty one fifty if you had to pick
one? Oh, man. Actually, like, fifty one fifty, the last
song on the album. Do you listen to a song an album all the way through,
like, old school style, or do you go into the song, like, Spotify style and just say, hey.
I've got my playlist. That's a great question. We can make this podcast
just about music. I'm happy to. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
I have become more of a Spotify person, which is play me
songs like Van Halen, and then you get a playlist. And then a lot of times, it
introduces you to new music, which is great. Hard to beat. I think
the art of listening to an album, if that is an art, has sort of disappeared, and it's sort of a
shame. So I do try to listen to albums. I have a
really good, friend who I used to work with who always
listens to the record. And when I see him post it on Instagram
or something, it inspires me, and we're sort of missing that. I
I think a lot about Dark Side of the Moon and the Joshua Tree
and some albums that, in my opinion, have to be listened to
end to end. There's a ton of them out there. Email me or whatever.
Text me. I'd love to hear what people say. That's an important That'd be a great list,
like, albums that need to be played through. It's probably it's it's subjective, of course, but
I think that's what makes it fun is to Yeah. Talk about it, think about
it like that. Dark Side of the Moon to me is the that is the penultimate
end to end. You can't pick one song. Love it. Very
cool. So a little bit of a segue. We've kind of talked music. Maybe we'll weave
some music in later or throughout, but We should. People come to you for affiliate.
You're clearly one of the leaders in the space. Your your kind of exec summary newsletter is, I
think, a awesome curation and and summation of a lot of things that are happening
and updates and news and less people make sense of it. How did you get into
it in the first place? Into affiliate or providing that overview? Affiliate. Affiliate?
I got a job at LinkShare. It was that simple. I had worked at
twenty four seven Media. I worked at about dot com prior to that, and I landed at LinkShare
on the publisher side of the business, took a real interest, and the rest
was history. It took off. Really loved the business, loved the
publishers, loved the people I work with worked with. And
it was a I feel like my sort of career there paralleled the
evolution of the affiliate space as well because it was maturing over that time as well.
That's awesome. Was there certain aspects of the people or the work or the
day to day that kind of was an moment for you that got you really kind of,
excited about being involved in it? Like, what was it in
it resonated for you then? It's a good question. I think there was an
entrepreneurial spirit that I saw on the publisher side of the business because that's where I started.
I think I saw a lot of innovation happening. I remember
learning about a business called You Promise, which some people might remember it still exists,
and the ability to shop and save money towards college. And at the time, I had I think,
yeah, my I didn't even have my first kid when I started there, but in that time
frame, realizing the power of being able to shop online
and put money towards college savings and then seeing these other interesting
models that were being developed, helping find
discounts and savings and introduction to products. And the innovation
I thought was interesting and rapid, and
I thought there was a lot of change happening from the ecommerce perspective that was being driven by the
publishers in the space. And I took it upon myself to really learn
who are the publishers in my neighborhood and what do they do. Pretty
good neighborhood. Yeah. Where where were their offices? What did they do? How many people work
for them? Because you were dealing on the on the other side of the business with
major brands and retailers, who everyone knows for all intents and
purposes. On the publisher side, we were still learning. Who
is this publisher, that publisher? What are they doing? How many people work there? Have they raised
money? All these other kinda story lines were being Yeah. Developed.
So I took a real interest in in understanding that. That's awesome. And I think it kind of resonates
with me heavily because I had a similar experience when I entered the space. And I feel like
people don't always realize how much affiliates are doing truly innovative
things, how entrepreneurial they are, how I I view them as, like, the
currency of the space, and I think that you're you're really focused on that side
of the ecosystem. Obviously, you know, we are as an agency as well as we're courting these
great partners to promote great brands and advertisers, but
you're we're really working directly with them, and I think that that's compelling and super interesting.
And for the advertisers that you work with, it's it could be interesting to them as well. That's why
they're signed up with you with a network at the end of the day is for
support, finding distribution, innovative distribution,
distribution that's gonna provide new customers, that's gonna drive higher ticket
sizes, that's gonna drive a particular action that meets their goals.
And the publishers are thinking about that too. They should be. And I think that's what what makes it interesting.
And I would also say not all of them win. Not all of them have the right
answer, the right model, the right technology, but the industry
can compound on what we learn from what works and what
hasn't worked as well. And it's important to know what publishers are
doing because that is how things are gonna grow from that
from those those kind of those ideas. I think to build on that, wrap maybe wrap up
that thought, the advertisers that are so are the ones that are winning
are the ones that are either working with a partner to unlock it or even
better, collaborate with a partner, an agency, and network to be
super interested in how those partners operate and hop on calls and to work through things
to kind of feed that innovation. Because if you I think if you can feed that innovation as an advertiser
and listen and hear feedback and learn from the innovative, cutting edge affiliates
and partners, you're gonna find ways to unlock their value even further and help them and tee them
up with content, rewards, commissions, bonuses,
incentives, all the fun things that fuel the system. So it's super interesting.
Couldn't agree more. What about things that folks get wrong? You know, we talked a
little bit about, like, some pseudo best practices a little bit here and what can work
well, but, like, what are some maybe some misconceptions of affiliate marketing
that you've seen, or how often do these come up? Or I'm curious to learn more about your
perspective in in working with with publishers and affiliates and in the industry in general.
I think it's the inverse of what you just said is what they could get wrong.
One size does not fit all. Every advertiser's different. Every publisher
is different. We are a partnership platform. We wanna brand
ourselves as partnerships. Partnerships are never one size fits all.
So taking the the time to understand both
sides, goals and objectives, what's the give and the get in the partnership is
critical to establish a partnership and then to optimize it as well over
time. It requires some strategic planning and an assessment
of your partners and potential partners. So in my opinion, if you're not doing
that, that's where there's a potential to fall down to
become too concentrated in the top part
of your portfolio, if you will, and miss out on innovation
even if not today down the road. You might not think someone is a
good partner for you today. That's fine. But if the
risk is low to integrate now, you never know what's gonna happen
down the road. There's I feel like I've seen instances
of we don't wanna work with this particular publisher, and
then the publisher gets big, and there's more
friction essentially to partner with them, then, you know,
you have to deal with prioritization and all that when you could've just partnered with them early on,
built a relationship, started to see little bits of what works and
what doesn't work, and now be at a point of optimization. But now you're at a point of
fighting just to get through the door. Such a great callout. People don't always
realize that these things change quickly. There's ebbs and flows, and getting in on that
emerging channel is really a first mover advantage is something people should consider when
they can as long as there's got some incentive alignment and something set up well at
the beginning. Totally agree. Speaking of that, good segue into
when you get dropped into an engagement, when you're consulting for an affiliate or publisher or
partner, how do you approach that? What are some things you look at
to help them with partnering with great brands, with monetizing
their audience and their community and their site. How do you kind of look at
that and get started and approach it? It's hard because it's a unique
use case for each potential client. Every pub like I just said, every publisher is different, so
it's not one size fits all. So for me, the approach is
really understanding their business, doing some discovery,
looking where they're at in their life cycle of their business? Because I think that matters. Are
you just starting? Are you at a mature stage? Are you trying to get over
a hump to get to maturity? And where are they making investments?
What are some key challenges that they're facing? What are the problems they're trying to solve?
So I look at it more as how can I understand your business, come
in as an extension of your team to solve a particular
problem or problems over time and evolve with
the business and make sure that even the problem I'm trying to solve, which a lot
of times is around their strategy for affiliate monetization and building partnerships,
Like you said, there's other components? I could do all that. We could do it really well.
But let's say if the product itself is not good or if you're a content site and you're not
generating content or traffic for that matter, all
those things have to play together to be successful. You can't do one
of them really well and be successful. So I wanna make sure
that if you're gonna have me come in and help the business in one facet of it,
the other ones are moving in lockstep as well. That's sort of a long winded
answer, but the short answer is it'll depend on what the needs are of the business, but you really need
to understand what their the problem is they're trying to solve and if it's something I could help with. And
then I was I love getting under the hood and and getting things working and moving.
That's great. And are you do you find yourself kind of playing, like, a fixer
role? Do you find yourself kind of doing a lot more of the partner
partner approach and how to set up the right types of partnerships and matchmake for for
revenue purposes? Are you helping them get from a certain level to another level?
Like, kinda curious to understand what you're seeing most often and maybe
what you wanna get to or or think would be optimal. I'm just curious
to learn more about what you're kind of seeing most frequently in these types of engagements where you're
helping these types of partners and affiliates. If this was multiple choice, my answer would
be all the above. There's a lot of strategic work that I get to
do with publishers entering the market who wanna accelerate their
knowledge of the space and how to navigate the landscape. In
some cases, it's very hands on. In some cases, it's more of like a coach, if you
will. But then, yes, there's partnership development that happens as well. I
try to do one before the other or assess where a publisher is at to see if they're
ready for one versus the other. I always tell publishers,
you only got so many shots at this, and you gotta make sure that you're in a good
strategic position. And it doesn't mean you have to wait till everything is perfect.
I'm certainly not suggesting that. But you only have have so many shots at
this, so let's make sure that we have everything lined up correctly. And to what we were talking about
earlier, goals and objectives are aligned. We understand what the brands or
the the advertisers are trying to do as well. We understand the competitive landscape and
how, as a publisher, we differentiate. Is the brand gonna be like, oh, is this just like
x? Well, perhaps in some cases, but in other cases, these are the five things
that differentiate us or that we can do for you or that or even on our road map. So just
making sure that all of those things are lined up becomes really, really
important. So, again, it's gonna depend where they're at in the life cycle,
but everything I do can be at the very strategic level, helping you enter the
market, assessing where the business can go in the market, to your point, to
partnership development and understanding where there's opportunities to
optimize a brand that you're working with, or, again, even adding new partners
into the mix as well. You kinda touched on it. Are they ready, when they're ready,
and, like, kind of turning on the, like, the faucet, if you will, of partner development.
How do you like to kind of define ready for partner development? And and,
obviously, that comes in many flavors like you said, but how do you think about that?
Is there something unique from a product perspective? Is there existing traffic already that you're
monetizing? But relative to the traffic, there's a a gut sense that we could do any
more. Have I seen, broadly speaking, from a benchmarking perspective,
opportunities like this that there has been success that we potentially
can tap into. So it's it it varies. Do you have a newsletter that's out there
working? Do you have a team dedicated to this right now? Because, again,
from a partnership development perspective, there's some real low hanging fruit and easy ways
to partner up with people through the channel. The scale of the channel is what's beautiful. But if we're trying to get
strategic or get additional budget or investment, we gotta be able to manage that as well. So I look at
a bunch of different things to make sure that we're in a a good place and at least have some of those things
ready to roll. When you kinda look at all the consulting engagements you've
done with Wise Consulting and the types of partners that have come to
you and some of the results you've helped them with and the problems you've solved for them. What makes
your eyes light up in terms of the characteristics of a of a partner that's really needing
help from you and maybe alluding to, like, there is that you really wanna nail in the
future for what you're doing. I'm curious to know maybe some of those commonalities,
common threads between partners that are really needing certain things. Obviously, again, it comes
in many site you know, shapes and sizes, but what kinda gets you the most
excited and pumped to work on a a partner? Well, a lot of times
it's, of course, the business itself, what it's doing, the problem it's solving. One
hundred percent. I love when someone comes to me and what they're
doing is solving a real world problem that I have when it comes to
and then use the term problem loosely when it comes to just shopping online, but
a real world a real world challenge. A painkiller rather than
a vitamin, perhaps. Perhaps. Yeah. And is this something that I've thought, wow, this
would make my life a little bit easier when it comes to ecommerce, shopping online, or even shopping in
store? So I think that's always interesting, the people that you get to
work with at these organizations. And are they potential
partners who wanna immerse themselves in a solution, who wanna take a
strategic approach versus throw it all against the wall? And, again, I'm all for testing and
learning, but I wanna make sure that we're taking sort of some some logical
steps to make sure that we get to the right solution. Because if you're just looking to jump to the finish
line, then I don't know. You know, you're gonna be successful in the long
term. And you're willing to make changes. You're willing to learn from those changes. You're willing to
understand the time and the investment that it takes to do so. And then most
importantly, what I think is a great approach
and clients who are successful is when we do bring things to a
brand. Here's something we've developed as a publisher that we want you to invest in, and they
say no and here's why. Put that back into the cycle of learning.
These brands or partners or advertisers are not interested, so let's maybe
not go back to the drawing board, but optimize ourselves in terms of what our offering is to
get to that end goal that ultimately is gonna drive a new partnership,
increased revenue, or something of the sort. Love it. When a partner
is approaching you and you're kind of they're trying to look for growth or trying to look for
eyeballs and distribution, I know that's a little different than the monetization side. We call
it the acquisition side, if you will, for an affiliate. What are their options in front of them at a
macro level just to educate the audience? And and that while you're not necessarily pulling the levers on all of those, can
you share more about that? Can you clarify in terms of what I offer or
look at for the publish? Yeah. Less about, like, what you specifically offer,
but more how does affiliate grow? How does an affiliate or a publisher think
about distribution and audience growth if they're small, medium,
large? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that knowing some of it is involved in your
scope of work, some of it is not, and I'm curious to learn more. It's like we talked about earlier.
There's there's multiple facets at play here. It starts with having a great
product, whatever that might be. You're a coupon site. You're producing content.
You're a browser extension. You're some type of post checkout optimization
tool. You're whatever. So having that product is important.
And then there's traffic. How are we thinking about getting traffic?
Paid, organic, there's various paid channels, which I think you know something about. Correct?
You have a newsletter. Are there other things that you're doing to
grow and diversify traffic? And then there's the partnership
piece, which is where monetization comes in. Do you have the right infrastructure for that, the
operational setup? Do you know who you're dealing with? Do you know are we getting the best rates? Do
we have the right partners? Are we are we thinking about this strategically?
And then the last piece, which sort of blends in with the traffic generation
component, is the brand of the publisher themselves. Are they
building a brand? Are they creating some stickiness with the user? Solving a problem for
the user where they're they create some stickiness and tell their friends, hey. Install Honey or
Rakuten or or Cap One Shopping or whatever it is. Hey. I got a
great deal at this site. You should check out this site. I learned about this pair of of
running shoes, or I just bought a, a bike rack for the back of
my car, and I had no idea what to purchase. So what do I do? I go to an affiliate site, you know,
to read the reviews. And I'm ashamed to say I don't even remember specifically because I read, like, a whole
bunch of them. But, nonetheless, you know, creating that brand is important, which I guess
is is counter to what I just said. But, nonetheless, it's it's something I think will be more and more
important for brands, for publishers as, as they continue to evolve. That's
awesome. Where where are you biking these days? Where I live, there's an
old rail line that they paved over, so it's
pretty flat. It's called the North County Trailway, and there's a South County Trailway. And it basically
runs from the Bronx all the way up through Westchester County up to Putnam County. It's
pretty awesome, actually. It goes across the reservoir, and it's really nice. Sounds amazing. It
is. It is. I want to check this out one day. Anyone's in the area and they wanna go for a bike ride,
I'm down. There you go. Offer has been, presented to the
audience, so take Adam up on it. I'm curious about a
lot of things. I wanna talk about when we did our kind of lunch and learn topics
and dove in with the team and talked about a lot of the observations you've
had in the space, we talked a little bit about trends. There's quite a few trends you've observed.
Maybe can you share maybe maybe some of the best of from those trends
that you're observing and share with the with the audience a bit more about what you're seeing in the
space, what's happening in digital and performance marketing, what's happening with these partners, what's happening
in affiliate marketing that's a that's a key trend for you. There's always a lot happening,
which is great. And who knows? By the time you publish this, there might be be new stuff
that that pops up. I'm sure it will. Which is a good thing.
Mhmm. Trends, I think we are continuing to see growth
and innovation on the publisher side like we've been talking about. I think there
is a focus on traffic, like we've been talking
about, and what changes are happening. Google is constantly
changing their algorithm. There's a lot of artificial intelligence now that
is sort of there's questions around what's gonna happen with that. I
think we're seeing more and more influencer and affiliate
convergence, and I think that is still in the
evolutionary phase. There are a ton of different influencer
businesses out there, a lot that are great, have great partnerships,
and they're more and more starting to integrate from an affiliate perspective. And the
networks and agencies themselves are starting to either acquire or form direct partnerships
as well. I'm curious to see how that shakes out in the the mid to
long term and how partnerships are presented given you
have an an in house partner and looking at other external partners
as well. So I think those are some of the immediate things that come to mind. And from a
trend, I would go back to what I was just talking about brand building. I think that's that's gonna continue to be really important
for publishers as they grow. And the traffic sourcing
question becomes more and more there's more
concern perhaps around the inventory on Google that's available to them. So
from a brand perspective, it's become even more important for publishers
things you're seeing, you know, brands try to make sense of as Google,
you know, clearly is taking up a larger piece of real estate of the search engine results page
and and kind of more of those clicks. It kinda relates to what we talked about with chat
GPT and the AI with kind of this crazy
feels complex daisy chain of, like, when is the creator compensated
when you have, like, multilayers of tech curating their
content, maybe repurposing their content to kind of,
like, feed into the user's need to ask questions and get value. So,
like, have you seen what is, like, the macro strategy for a partner that's
like, well, I'm getting hit from an SEO perspective because of maybe,
I don't know, competitors are generating more content and I'm not fast enough, or Google's
taking up more of the serve, or, I'm kinda listing out some macro challenges maybe that you
see that I'm hearing you share. What are some, like, high level ways that you might
approach that or say, like, to a partner, hey. This is how partners are
addressing it. How do how are they counteracting that? I don't know if I have a good answer for that. I would
probably tell them to call you in terms of figuring out alternate traffic
sources. I think I I'd assume some folks are getting involved
in a more paid sources that make sense, investigating
channels that they haven't been acquiring customers from before. I think
focusing on newsletters is is a good approach as
well. I personally, you know, enjoy reading a lot of the
affiliate newsletters and, you know, I I sort of look at it from an inside baseball
perspective too, but, you know, how they're structured and the colors of their click here
button and stuff like that to see what's working. But I think newsletters is a good source. So it's
essentially alternate traffic streams that they're gonna need to consider. Yeah. Trying
to own kinda own pieces of that customer relationship with with a
lot of these things changing with privacy. It's it's the email and
SMS and other other means of relationship, customer relationship management, new and existing is
is really exploding and needed. So I think that that's definitely resonates with me and the team.
SMS is another another good example as well. Yeah. For sure.
Maybe kinda coming into the experiment thought theme of
always be testing, what are some things that kind of struck you in
terms of, like, learnings or observations or, oh, wow. I didn't expect that to
happen in in maybe your Rackton experience, maybe some of the consulting
experience you've had. Always love to, like, talk through learnings and I don't necessarily have to name
specific clients, but I'd love to hear what are some maybe of those moments you've had
over the years of, like, wow, that was surprising or that was really instrumental for me as
a practitioner. What what are your any learnings that you wanna share with the audience?
Yeah. I think it's fairly simple to say
taking the time to do the discovery makes things a lot easier down the
road in terms of different testing scenarios. It's not that
you're just looking to sell a newsletter placement or get an increased
commission from an affiliate perspective. It's about what your partner brands
are looking for as well that's gonna help drive your strategy to what I
was talking about earlier. It's about the partner's attribution logic, their
thoughts on partners in their program already, what they're looking for, their marketing
calendar. I think asking the right questions in advance
goes such a long way. And I know I'm not giving you a specific I did x and
it resulted in y. There's certainly tons of examples of that, but each of
these different scenarios, I think the macro strategic approach
helps for longer term success and partnership, and that's really what I've
picked up over the years. And like I said earlier, taking a no and turning it into
a revision of a strategy can really make you successful.
Yeah. I'd say those are those are some kind of high level. I love it. Yeah.
Do you think that people maybe don't ask enough questions generally in this in the
industry? And and I'd love to hear more about that. I think people ask questions. I think
it's asking the right questions to achieve a particular goal between two
partners. Again, if we're a partnership business, it's it's a two way street, so we gotta ask the right
questions. And I think understanding what it is
your advertiser partners are looking to do or potential partners are looking to do is
really important. So like I was just saying, who are the partners in your program
today? Where's the lion's share of it coming from? Are you looking to diversify? What are you looking
for? Those types of things. And and there's a laundry list that I usually go through.
But those types of things, I think, reveal where the opportunities are
and help find gaps in the market and ultimately success for for a publisher and an
advertiser. Yeah. And you talked about kind of kind of taking that strategic
approach, in a number of, you know, cases that you get presented with. What do you think
people maybe get wrong about strategy or maybe miss upon on the strategy
piece? Good question. I feel like it's it's very similar to what I've been saying.
I think having that bird's eye view of the business
is important and gives you a better opportunity to create a solid
foundation for the longer term. So I think to be more
specific, when opportunities present themselves, they're not always a
fit. That's okay because they're out there in the industry, and
your business is not happening just today. You want it to to expand
and grow over time. Mhmm. So I think you need to have a three hundred and sixty degree view
of what's happening. All the cool stuff in our space, the broader ecommerce space, we talk about affiliate
being on the cutting edge. And even those things that don't apply today
help us formulate that strategy for the longer term. Also,
just the basics of understanding the market size, the competitive landscape,
levers that potentially could be pulled that maybe you're not pulling today. All of
that sort of comes together to help build an approach that will ultimately lead
to a solid partnership and help and, hence, solid monetization as well. That's really
interesting. And, you know, hey. You've got a chance to kind of go through the
ranks at Rakuten. You spent a lot of time there. You know, you I think you were
certainly a leader within that organization over time. And and can you share maybe more,
like, from a leadership perspective in in performance marketing and affiliate marketing specifically?
What do you think kind of separates those that are more successful than those that
maybe struggle or have more challenge in in more leadership roles, managing folks,
being an influential part of a larger organization. And now, obviously,
you're seen as a leader consulting and in impacting the the industry. But
from, like, the leadership side of it, how do you kinda look at those learnings and and and maybe what separates
those that are stronger from those that are having that are more challenged? So when I think about my
time at Rakuten, it comes down to being able
to balance the strategic and the tactical. And what I mean by that is as you move
up the ladder, you need to focus on more strategic things. But if you completely remove
yourself from the day to day, you lose touch. And it doesn't have to
be in the weeds pulling levers for a program, but
client QBRs, interactions with clients are
critical. I love the leadership team I work with during my time at Rakuten because
pretty much everyone from client services to tech to marketing
all grew up in the business. They worked on the ground floor and all had this
really solid tie to the business. And even as
we were later required to be more strategic in our thinking, we
knew how the day to day worked. And we had a gut
sense for strategic ideas and opportunities that had legs and ones that might have sounded cool
and maybe even the math worked, but we just knew clients wouldn't go for it because we sat in those meetings.
We knew what the client was looking for if that ties together everything I've been I've been saying,
you know, so far. So we really it made a big difference,
in my opinion, as to why that team was so successful and
such a great team that that tie of the the
tactical to the strategic. And, again, you get more strategic the more
senior you get. But I feel to be successful at that leadership
level, don't lose sight of sitting in a client meeting. If
you if you're not I would just say try to be in a set set of goal for yourself to be in
a one client meeting a week, want a date, whatever it is, whatever is appropriate to stay connected
to what's really happening in the business. Yeah. I think that's such an awesome call out. You look at all these
successful and software companies, I mean, from Facebook to
Glossier, and there's the list is you know, Amazon, I mean, everyone is
the customer obsession concept is so talked about,
published, real. And I think it's still I think a lot of people are not
doing it enough, and you just kinda called out the importance of it. And it's like having that
voice of the customer really present, top of mind, backed by some level of
the quantitative and the qualitative, I think it's just so such a great reminder. And so,
what a what an awesome point. Yeah. And I think to one of your earlier
questions, talking about earlier even in my career, I felt like it was important
even then and now to sit in the room with publishers and
understand who they were and what they were doing, getting on airplanes, going to
different places, sitting in their office, seeing the environments they worked in,
the people they worked with that were beyond just the people that you were talking to on the partnership side from a tech and product
and engineering standpoint, it goes a long way. And I think for me, at least, that
was sort of rooted in the foundation above, I guess, who I
am as someone in the affiliate marketing industry, really understanding
their businesses from from top to bottom and and feeling like you're you're
ingrained in it goes a long way. It's not just a it's not just a line item on a report.
You know, you look at a report as an advertiser and you see fifty, a hundred, whatever it is, publishers,
and they just look it looks transactional. No pun intended. I know there are transactions in there,
but you really get to understand who each of these are and it makes you think a little
bit deeper about them and and what you potentially are doing with them. I love that. Yeah. The depth of
understanding each partner and then your entire partner ecosystem or your program can be
there's a three d chess element to, I think, understanding each of them in a way that's that's a little bit more,
best in class to your point. So Completely. This has been amazing, Adam. You've you've
kind of, just dropped some awesome knowledge on affiliate marketing, your journey, your
learnings, who you are. Speaking of that, just to just to share, what are
some things that maybe the, affiliate community doesn't know about you? You shared some good singers to kinda kick
it off, but maybe wrap up with a couple that, that maybe you wanna share to folks that
that might not know about you. Well, I feel like they know a lot now given our conversation
about music. I think that probably tells a lot about it. Are you
gonna be, putting the record player on here anytime soon, or are you kinda more shifted
over to the full digital experience in music? I'm fully digital. I love I
got my Sonos behind me with a few throughout the house. It's a beautiful device.
It's on my wish list, I'll I'll say that. They're great. They make it super
easy. If you're gonna get one using affiliate link, of course. I'll
need it. They're not cheap. But I'm I've always got music on. I feel like it's important. I always have
music on. I feel it's important for the kids. They hate my music, of course. Well, my daughter is better about
it than my my son, but I want them to be exposed to everything
that that I listen to. Because now I I look back, and I remember
my mom playing the Beatles and the Beach Boys and Neil Diamonds. And when I was
young, I was like, oh, but now I love listening to that stuff. So
music is a is a big part, of of me throughout the day, you know,
working or or otherwise. When you're working and you you wanna get something done, but you still
wanna enjoy some good music, what's some go tos that you that you reach for? Oh, we're going
deep. I like this. Like we're talking about earlier, I do a lot of, like, the Spotify
playlist, and it varies. I'll be honest. I I can
listen to everything from
classic rock, which I love, to you know, I was in college in the
nineties, and, like, nineties rap and hip hop was was big for me back then, big
influence from a lot of my roommates and really, really love listening to that. To more modern day
stuff, I love Aviso. I love the war on drugs and bands like that.
But, also, I listen to, like, Wham and eighties
rock, and I love Def Leppard and you name it, man. I it depends on my mood at
the end or whatever mood I wanna be in. And, I'm sort of all over the place. So like I was
even saying, you know, the Beach Boys or the Beatles or I love
it. Yeah. What about you? I go in waves. I'll I'm similar to you in a lot of that, the
diversity and the collectiveness and the eighties and nineties influence for me in particular.
I will have waves in, you know, morning motivation or, you know, kinda get
get going, and I will definitely reach for the nineties hip hop. Mike,
our CEO and good friend, recommended Nate Dog Radio to your point of letting the
artist kind of go and then let the algorithm pick, and it's phenomenal on Spotify. It's
it's really, really good. And I think it reminds you of how amazing his
ability is in terms of, like, baseline and tracks and and creating some
hip hop, beats with collaborations with a number of artists which are just off the charts,
no pun intended, and, and quite good. Yeah. And then, yeah, sometimes
I'll do kind of the the deep focus stuff via YouTube or Spotify
to kind of, like, zone out and just crank out work. But those are those have been
some go tos, but I'll reach for all kinds of stuff across the the genre. Yeah. I love
The genres. It's fun. I love that, you know, Spotify helps surface new stuff
as well, which is good. I've been using that Spotify DJ, which is their AI
that pulls back stuff that you listened to in the past or makes recommendations. I've
been so I've been if there's one element of AI, I guess, I've sort of incorporated into my
life, it's that that Spotify DJ. And then, you know, like I was saying
with the kids, it's interesting because my son is into to rap and hip hop, so I try to let
him hear what I listen to when I was growing up. And he digs it, so there's a connection there. And That's
cool. My daughter got into, like, ABBA and that type of
stuff, which I dig also. Wow. So it's nice to sort of I think music kinda creates
a connection across the across the ages, and I I love it. That's an amazing,
amazing way to say it, amazing wrap up. Adam, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks,
man. Look forward to more great conversation, and, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Ty. This is great. Appreciate it. You bet.