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Your 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 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.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing
podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I'm really excited to talk to Richard Wright
today. Hey, Richard. How are you doing, man? Yeah. I'm doing great. Thanks, Ty. How are you? I'm good. It's
so good to see you. It's, been pleasure to knowing you for a very long time and to
stay in touch and, excited to dive into things with you today. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. I was,
I was thinking it was it's probably been over ten years ago, probably when we first
met, obviously, with eBay. Absolutely. What a great affiliate experience which
we'll dive into. So for those of you who don't know, Richard Wright is an amazing
affiliate marketing practitioner, very experienced, professional, thoughtful,
knows his stuff. He's based out of the UK and has been on all
sides of the affiliate marketing game from agency to brand
to consulting, knows knows more than than most in this space. I I
definitely am thrilled to have him on. He's a wealth of knowledge. So, really gonna be a
treat to chat with him today. Oh, thank you. That was very, very flattered to hear you say all
of that. Sometimes feel like I suppose a lot of people, you you forget sometimes how long you've
been in the industry, maybe how much knowledge you've you've acquired. But, yeah, certainly been around
a long time. It's well deserved. It's well deserved. And maybe, maybe
share just getting getting going. Like, how how did you get into the affiliate
marketing world? Yeah. I think it's worth, like, a lot of people, a little a little bit by accident. So I
actually, when I left school, I didn't go to college right away. I sort of
kind of, yeah, I wasn't really in the right frame of mind. We'll put it there. But
I ended up working in insurance for five years as an insurance broker,
and I got really bored doing that. And what it always wanted to do is work in
advertising marketing. And so I grew up in the eighties and nineties with those amazing
TV brand ads. It's a real sort of, purple period for that kind of
advertising. So I went to college about twenty four, twenty five, just thinking
about advertising, TV advertising, that kind of you know, that's cool stuff. And,
obviously, digital marketing was it was really starting to gain prominence at the time. So while I
was on my course, I was really wanting to zone in on those modules. So at
that time, there was ten modules. Digital marketing was just one, and it
was in an elective. So, I made sure I was on that module, learned what I
could. Whatever I was learning was pretty obsolete, I'll I'll be honest, at the
time. But as soon as I graduated in two thousand seven, I knew I needed to get a
job. I knew I needed to get a job in in digital. And literally in the
middle of my exams, I haven't even completed my degree course yet. I had the, the
interview with with ROI, which is, how we eventually got connected with eBay.
And, that turned out and it was affiliate marketing. I'd never heard of it. Didn't know
what it was. All I knew was they were gonna hire me. It was in digital marketing. It
sounded cool, cool company to work for. And then, yeah, that that's how I
got into it. And, yeah, it's it's been one of the it's been a brilliant career.
It's just one of those ones that think, you know, I'm not a sort of super techie guy.
I'm not a super, you know, numbers accounting guy. It sort of it needs quite a
broad range of skill sets, I think. You know? You gotta be good relationships. You've gotta be
commercial. You know, you've gotta be reasonably tech savvy, and you you've gotta be able to bring it all
together. So I thought that sort of suits my skill set quite well.
But it's, yeah, it's a fun industry. It's, you know, it's it's a lot of relationships and things like
that. So, yes, I've I've stuck at it all these years. That's amazing.
Yeah. And I think you nailed it with how it, like, blends together so many
aspects. And and and there's there's focus data aspects. There's partnership aspect. There's
human psych aspects of the business and the job. So it really resonates
with me, especially because there's a lot of stuff that gets packed into affiliate marketing
and that a lot not a lot of people are aware of. So that's really interesting. What's been
your observation about kind of that UK market? Obviously, you're coming from that
perspective, but you've also had exposure to so many other, you know, markets. Maybe I'm just
curious to learn a little bit about how do you maybe see how it maybe operates a little bit differently than the
US market and other regions. Yeah. It's an interesting one because, I think the the biggest
difference we see, particularly when I look at the UK and the US, with the US,
I think the budgets required for you know, when you're buying investing in media with, you know, some
of the bigger partners, so much bigger than the UK. So in the UK,
there's if you wanted to buy a, you know, a week long package of exposure and say a cashback
site, you might be talking, you know, two thousand to five thousand dollars, whereas in
the US, it could be twenty to thirty thousand dollars. And, obviously, the size of the
market in the US is so much bigger. But I I definitely know that when people are,
you know, in the UK managing programs and then branch out into the US, that's always a
bit of a shock for, you know, what their the costs are for additional media and things.
And so that's one that's definitely kind of jumped out, I think. And when we start looking
at, maybe, going to Europe, so I think, yeah, different countries
has got different levels of understanding of affiliates. So I think probably
my experience, you know, Germany, maybe, probably similar kind of
levels of, acceptance and knowledge, and and affiliate marketing is is is sort
of a a norm, but sort of you get into maybe kind of France, Italy, Spain. It's a little
as a model, it's sort of less advanced, I'd say. Yeah. So it's certainly not, and
one of this is one of the key things I think I learned with when I was working with eBay because
we had this idea in in the UK. We had a way of working and some publishers that we really
knew how they worked, what motivated them, and we fondly thought that we could just go to
France and do the same thing in Italy and Spain, and it just didn't work.
And I remember speaking to a colleague who was at eBay and said that, you know, the,
even just buying things, ecommerce, the whole thing is very different. So, you know, in Italy, for
example, they're explaining that the delivery, the postal service is just not reliable. No
one in their right mind would buy a TV, but, you know, from a website. And I mean, I don't know if that's
still the same now. This is going back a bit. But there's there's a lot of other things that you sort of
need to consider of how things work in the UK, which is a small
island. You know? It's very easy to deliver things around the place. But other countries,
very different. Other countries, I think Spain, people don't have credit cards like that like they
do here. It's not nearly this you know? You know what I mean? So there's so many local market
nuances that make ecommerce and, therefore, affiliate marketing more challenging.
And the the key thing is you really need to sort of approach each market with a bit of an
open mind, speak to people there, and, you know, not have this mindset of, oh, this
works in the UK. It'll work everywhere. Or, oh, this works in the US. Everybody's
gonna work like this. So there are there are a lot of local market nuances. But I think
it all comes down to it's like, with a lot of things, it's that customer first approach is, you know,
aware of how how are they actually buying things, what are the places where they go, what
makes that convenient, and then that sort of really helps you understand that, okay, these are the partners I need to
work with. That makes sense. And and having such good Fascinating. Yeah. It is fascinating.
Having such experience, you know, broadly with specific programs and, you know,
being able to have a visibility into, like, multiple, you know, European programs and UK
programs. Like, have you noticed, like, a particular maybe estimated amount of
overlap between countries? Or I'm just curious to know I would imagine it's it's quite
specific, and there's obviously a lot of a lot of, partners that can
expand beyond, you know, go multi country, US to UK, Canada,
you know, multi multiple coverage across Europe. But how much is that
overlap a thing versus more country specific in your experience? Yeah. I don't
know, to be honest. It's, because some things will will overlap for sure. So I'm thinking that are
you thinking more like publisher business models or sort of brands and advertisers? Yeah.
Thinking more publisher side, like, their ability to reach customers across,
you know, let's say, like, beyond, let's say, is I'm trying to understand kind of,
like, in your experience, how much did you see, like, a partner be able to reach
users across Europe, across Spain, France, Italy, Germany, etcetera,
rather than just be focused on Germany as an example. Gotcha. Yeah. I think,
generally, I think a lot of publishers find that very, very difficult because, you've got the translations.
And sometimes, depending what your website is called, if it's a sort of,
if the name of your business has got a word in it like cashback, that word is very different in
those different countries. So, again, when people are searching communities, and they start,
generally quite locally. It might be to a to a region or to a country, and they get famous in
there. So sort of each country has sort of its loyalties to its to those
businesses that have come up. So it's it is very difficult as a publisher to to go to one
publisher that will cover all of Europe. I did I've not found Yeah. I'm struggling to
think of one that would cover that. And, interestingly, I was speaking to
partner early today, actually, to do and this is in the sort of cycling world. It was a a cycling,
federation. So Movistar has a cycling team. They compete in the Tour de France and things like
that. Their audience is predominantly Spanish, but also Latin America.
So they have that sort of even the geographically very, very far apart is sort of culturally
similar because of the language. So that's sort of a fairly unique case, but it sort of shows that sometimes that, you
know, just because a country is right next door to each other, that they think, oh, they'll
they'll be able to influence that audience. I think that's probably one of the the biggest challenges because you'd like to
think, maybe if you're sat in the US, think, oh, let's crack America. What's the big European
publisher that can speak to all of them? I can't really think of one that does. You know, you'll the probably the
closest you would get is a publisher, like, I suppose, global
savings group that has bought properties in each of those regions and can give you some
degree of you know, if I onboard with them, they can onboard in all of those different
countries, or they can give some localized solutions. But, you know, it is it's
definitely a challenge going ongoing pan European. That makes sense.
It's super interesting. You know, it kind of brings up the thought of, like, the ideal partner
mix. It's something that, you know, I've talked about in in my newsletter, and we we
run into it in all programs. We look at we look under the hood and see kind of a a mix of
partner types and publisher business models like you said. We haven't talked a lot about this yet
in recent terms, but what are you kinda seeing in that in that sense? And, like,
maybe with some of the examples you've had you know, you've obviously had so many great learnings in your
career, various advertiser brand programs. But what's, like, a
mix that you feel or or maybe some observations you have on the mix from a
UK perspective or some of the from the program types that you've had. I'm curious to learn more about
that because I kinda have some barometers. We've talked about it. You know, it's come up recently with the
PMA, and PMA is having that kind of, like, survey where they're trying to get more insights
into partner mixes and and how brands are approaching it. But sorry for the long
intro, but what are you kinda seeing with partner mix? It's very often brand specific. So
because we wanna think about where so so currently where I work with with Zwift as a
business, we just don't do we've never really done any discounting. So for
us, it doesn't make sense to do extensive work within the coupon sector, for example.
So we we predominantly do, and and because our product is quite complicated,
for a lot of people, indoor cycling is quite a new topic. It inherently is one
that requires quite a lot of explanation. So it it naturally lends itself to things like
editorial content and video influences. So so the the
sort of the the makeup of our program, although it's a very new affiliate program,
only launched in September, Those that's the mix that's probably gonna
work best for us. And, you know, we will test things like, you know, cashback and some of the
more, conversion focused ones as well. Generally find it that the mix
I suppose the golden rule is to try and aim for as much diversity as possible, so not over
relying on any one business model or over relying on any one partner too much.
But then it's sort of a horses for courses, if you like it, you know, in terms of the mix.
I think there's always a danger if, you know, way too much of you know, if eighty percent of your
program is coming from just coupon code, I'd say that would definitely be a red
flag. You know, then there needs to be that diversity in there with, you know, certainly
content and influencers. But affiliates is so broad now anyway. We you know, you think
about technology partners as well. It's they're all doing very, very
different things for that brand. You know, if you think it you know, it's either it's bringing new customers, then you've
got different types of partners that can do that, then you've got partners that are great at converting
things maybe on your site and and so on. So, yeah, I do but it's
very difficult to give a a kind of one answer to that. It's I think each one needs
to think about where it is in its sort of journey, what's its product.
Yeah. What does it need its affiliate program to do for it? You know, some brands are very
mature, got loads of brand awareness out there, and they look at their affiliate program as we want you
to convert our audience that we that is aware from all of our other activities.
Some brands will say we want affiliates to do all of it or, you know, to be involved in all of it. So it's
so, yeah, I think it's quite difficult to give sort of a a one size fits all.
It's a bit of an unfair question, but I think it's cool because the the audience can understand how you think about
it. You're thinking it from a very, you know, brand centric customized way. You're not
just applying a a a templated approach, which I think people would get into problems with.
You know, maybe you keep you know, obviously, your focus is Zwift right now. Maybe give us a little bit of background
on just the business and what it does for consumers who are curious. Like, I think it's really cool to just
dig into that a little bit because that's that's where a lot of your focus is right now, and I think people would be super interested
to learn more about the brand. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So, well, I I started with Zwift in February, and I'll be honest,
I hadn't heard of it before it started. Very much, but it's within,
so it's within the cycling world. So if you're into cycling, road biking, mountain biking, and
triathletes, Zwift is a huge brand. So it's indoor cycling. So,
the idea is that, you sort of during the summer months, you're probably out on your bike, but during the winter
months when it's cold, you wanna be indoor training. Now in the old days, that was on a
sort of an old, exercise bike, and you'd be staring at your wall just
pedaling away, bored out of your mind. So what Zwift aims to do is make indoor cycling
fun. So the the product itself is, it's an app. It's a game. It's a
virtual world, and there's, hardware and equipment that
is sort of, connects what you're pedaling into what's going on in the game.
So you've got races. It's a massively social platform as well. So you've got
clubs and communities and other riders. You can race just for fun. You
can do races. There are professionals, Zwifters. So it there's all sorts of different
ways on there, but, essentially, what you've got is somebody indoors probably in a little
office like my room here, maybe their garage, or they call it a a pain
cave. So this is, yeah, in some people, some
people use it to train for their road biking in the real world. Some people are exclusively
indoor cycling in, you know, Zwifters. You know, when you think about esports, esports is
massive. Yeah. So it's sort of it does kind of all of those
sorts of things. And some of the really interesting things about it, one of the challenging things about
it is there's quite a high barrier to entry in terms of cost, the gear, the equipment.
So one of the things that Zwift is really trying to do is bring that barrier to entry down, bringing the
cost of equipment down. And some of the products that that we've released very
recently and in the last couple of years have really aimed to do that because for us, what matters is
getting people swifting, getting people onto the game, and having fun. And and
that's how our business works, really. So Yeah. If we give people a low cost entry product
that's a great product Yeah. That that's gonna get them on there. But it's a yeah. I love it.
It's super fascinating. I'm not a I'm not a huge cyclist, but I know people who are specifically,
and we have a ton of them in in Austin. I know coming from the Bay Area, California, there
was it was a huge community. It's really, really fascinating. It's like almost
like the Peloton thing, but way more focused on the real real hardcore
cyclists. Right? That's right. Yeah. So Peloton would probably be more focused on, I suppose,
it's more like a spin class. So it's probably, you know, CrossFitters Yeah. You know, that sort of thing. Zwift is much
more focused on road cyclists, triathletes, and, and because
the experience is kind of gamified and there's new features come out now. You can get power
ups and things like that. So, yeah, it's a it's a very different kind of audience. But, yeah, if you if
people are following Tour de France right now, depending on where you are in the world, you might start to see some
Zwift adverts. You'll see some Zwift logos around that. And what I've sort of said, it it
feels like it's the biggest thing I've never heard of. I I
bet. Yeah. Do you find there's people that are entering with
Zwift and then becoming a cyclist, or is it always people that are, like, always a
pretty experienced cyclist that adopt Zwift? I think it's changing. So I
think much earlier in the in the company's journey, it was much more the latter of, you know, existing
cyclists who want something more convenient. So, you know, if you imagine
to train for a road cycle event, it's hours out on the bike somewhere. And if you live in the
middle of New York City, how are you gonna do that? Or, you know, middle of New York City during
the winter, do you really wanna get on a road bike for several hours? It's you just you know, it's
just not convenient or realistic for people to do it. So this gave them a really
fun, exciting, compelling way of doing that in their in their garage. But as
the barrier to entries come down and as the Zwift brand has has grown, as our products
have got a bit more friendlier to outsiders, it's kind of coming the other way now. So we are starting
to see more people discover Zwift as you know, people probably come from more of a fitness, you
know, mindset saying, I I need to do more cardio, and and, you know, there's lots of options. There's Peloton or I could
go running. And, you know, people are discovering Zwift as well. This looks like a fun way that I can, you
know, do my exercise at home, and discovering that way. So, yeah, I
think it's definitely changing. I love it. That's really interesting. It seems like a really cool
niche offering. It seems like the price point is really compelling, and I can see where it's big.
Are you seeing adoption, like, bigger in certain regions? Obviously, you've got, I'm curious to
know more about, like, where it's available and where you're seeing the most customer adoption geographically.
Yeah. I think, geographically so I mean, Zwift as in in the app, the game, it is available
globally. So, you know, we have every, you know, most countries sort of cover. But where where we're sort of,
I mean, Zwift is a US business. Where it's strongest broadly follows where that
cycling enthusiast audience is. So, it's gonna be the US, UK, Europe.
So you think about in in Europe where the big cycling events are in France, in
Italy, in Spain. That's where we we we see the biggest sort of penetration,
but it's it's really growing in places like Australia, as well. We've definitely got
people, you know, China or over Asia, but it's sort of, it it
definitely follows this sort of cycling as a sport where those people
are. And so yeah. So, yeah, if you if there's a country that is showing Tour de France on the
TV, it's probably got a strong, Zwift customer base
there. But in terms of sort of where we're shipping currently, it's definitely US,
UK, and Europe is where we're the only focus. That's very cool. I'm yeah. I'm
curious to learn more. I could see it being massive with with the cycling community in areas where they
they certainly have limitations to when they can ride. And I like that they're you're kinda seeing that
transferring conversion both sides, like people that are new to cycling or people that are
experienced in cycling. It's happening. That's fascinating. Are you
obviously, the content influencer has kind of taken over our world. What other kind of, like,
macro trends are you seeing in affiliate marketing that are notable for you
and the brand or or maybe just learnings that you've had recently in terms of tests
and experiments. I'd love to hear more about maybe your thoughts on those verticals because they've
become so important and powerful recently and and but also curious about
other macro observations that you're seeing in the space. Yeah. So the thing is it is a macro
observation. There was a written an article early in the year, actually, about coupon codes
more generally. And it was sort of more as an observation that there are
I think they're under the the traditional coupon code publisher being under threat from
lots of different angles of how brands are managing their code
strategies. So there are so many more solutions now where people don't have to
leave the brand's website to go and get a code and come back. So, you know, you're seeing, more
brands working with each other, so in the basket. So, you know, people like Myprotein are
doing that. I think quite a lot of other brands, are now having their own
coupon codes on their site. So, you know, there are there are partners that will give them the
technology to to do that, and some of those codes might be for specific audiences.
So it could be for students or, health care workers or veterans and things like
that. And brands doing more of the loyalty points and things like that. So so the I
think there's a general trend of more solutions around offers and offer management
that are very different from those public coupon sites. And while there are a
lot of very good coupon sites out there, there are a lot of bad ones as well. So anyone that
manages an affiliate program is probably getting applications from dozens of
coupon code sites a week. So there's a lot of them out there. But I would say,
generally speaking, there are other solutions that brands are looking at that are very different to
that. So that's a sort of a broad trend, that I've seen, but brand
to brand seems to be getting quite a lot of traction. So sometimes that's,
it's just two complimentary brands saying, hey. We've got audiences we're both interested in. What's the best
way that we can work together and exchange value so we we can, you
know, exchange those audiences. And and I think that's the the beauty of affiliate, and this is why it's
sort of you could argue it's not strictly speaking affiliate. You know? Maybe we're not paying a commission to
that other brand. But the the fundamentals there, it's I'm working for a brand.
I've got an audience I'm interested in. How can I acquire that audience? And being
really open minded about how I do that. So brand to brand's getting really
interesting. Technology partners as well, which is a sort of again, you
you probably wouldn't think about that as being affiliate at all. It's really a conversion optimization
tools. The only thing that makes it affiliate is you pay on performance. And it's
so there's a lot of these solutions and ways of thinking about things
that really giving people a lot of different ways of, I suppose, making ecommerce
work best for their brand. And it's sort of thinking, you know, is is affiliate a
channel? I think that was a a debate that you had with, another guest on the the podcast, Tom.
And and it is an affiliate at least is lots of different channels. The only thing that unites
them all is that pay on performance model. So, yeah, it's
Yeah. Thinking more broadly about how you require an audience. I love
that. I think that's why I've been drawn to it. I think that's why a lot of people are.
There's just so many levers to pull. You can be so much more diverse. You know, all your
diverse all your eggs aren't in, like, the meta basket. It's full funnel.
There it's multichannel. It's, it's a lot of really interesting
aspects. You almost get to play this, head of customer acquisition, VP of marketing,
VP of growth kind of role where it's like, hey. I can do a lot within this channel because it's
a pay it's a payment method Yeah. Than rather than an inventory source. And I I think
that's a really great way of thinking about it, what you've highlighted. And, yeah, like, a lot of the
debunking the myths of coupon is really cool too that you talked about earlier around. Hey. There's a lot
of ways to reach the deal promotional space world in a way
that's valuable and not just like, oh, it's a race to the bottom. It's it's
cheapskates trying to get discounts on things and, like, undercut. It's there's a lot of
ways that it can be positioned right for some brands. Obviously, not all
brands, but there's a lot there to chew on. Yeah. And I think those newest solutions, it's a lot of them,
it's about the brands getting control of where those offers are, which audiences
am I happy to give an offer to and which audiences they might not. What's that experience?
And one of the observations that's made a previous brand was,
it was a it was a brand that did lots of couponing anyway, but it was, eighty
percent of the people that were in basket on our website left
to get a coupon code from another from you went to search the brand, coupon code, then came
back. Eighty percent of transactions. So then you think about
your customer journey about, okay, how much of that am I controlling? They go off.
Maybe they'll discover a competing brand, and, you know, you'll lose them altogether. But you're
losing them. They're going away. Coming back with a code. You're incurring the commission. So
and so as a brand, you don't want that to happen. You you wanna keep your your customer right there in the basket,
right where you want them. If there's somebody you want to give them an offer, then you want to be in
control of that. So there's the there's more and more solutions for for brands.
So, yeah, it'd be interesting to see what what happens within Coupon. I'm sure they'll they'll they'll evolve and
adapt. With the the great businesses and, you know, well funded. But,
yeah, it's an it's an interesting one for sure. Absolutely. I love I love where you're where you're at with that.
In in terms of how you've kind of taken on the management of a program for for
the ZIFs, for the totems of the world, like, maybe other things that you think
are exciting or interesting to maybe share to the audience around, like, how you might approach
it or maybe some other, like, learnings or observations you've had in
in, other programs that you've managed since you've had, you know, exposure to so
many in in the brand side and the agency side? Yeah. I just actually, the one that
comes to mind was when I was at at Totem, which is a student discount
platform, and for the most part, that is, you know, giving offers away with a with a code to
a verified audience. But we also did quite a lot of, content. So
we had an Instagram channel with, obviously, an audience of
students, and we would do video content for brands. So brands would say, we
wanna reach student audiences, and we'd obviously do the student discount bit, but we'd also do the social media
bit. And we started off doing quite glossy production videos.
They were amazing. They were quite expensive to do. They're great fun to to produce and and put out
there. But we didn't always get great engagement with it. And one time, our,
our social media manager, who sort of generally, you know, maintained our, our our channel,
We did something for a, a beauty retailer, and she just had a load of products on
her bed laid out as lipsticks and lip glosses and mascaras, and she just filmed it with her
phone. It was about a ten second clip, and it outperformed those glossy videos
by more than ten times. Easy. And, you know, some of those
things when you just realize it's like that that power of something that is, that feels more peer
to peer user generated, that authenticity when you put on on a social
channel was a real eye opener. I mean, that was a few years ago now, and maybe that's sort of, you
know, old hat thinking, but it was something that really sort of makes you think about,
you know, how can you well, when you're thinking about when you're investing in media, you know, that sort of
or the old way of thinking is this is an ad. It has to look amazing and slick and everything. But, actually,
something that's very off the cuff Felt like for that audience, it felt like it
was one of them. You know? That was, yeah, really interesting. It's something
that we try and encourage. How do you encourage an authentic, experience
between, you know, a social creator and your brand? It's gold when you can get it right. It's difficult
to get it right. Yeah. But, yeah, that was an interesting one. I think that's,
spot on. I mean, it's definitely hitting us across a number of things. We're seeing
the trend. We're seeing, like, the thought of, like, authenticity and ugly ads or
user generated content and making it very, like, a trusted voice and a like a friend or a
family member or, you know, someone with a degree of influence to kinda say, hey. Check this out.
This This is what I liked about this is what I didn't like about it. Having it be very
real is something that, you know, I think everyone's kind of caught on to and seen. So it's cool
to just see hear your validation on it. Know know that that's what you saw firsthand in the
data. It's good to validate. And Yeah. Surprisingly, surprised to see some brands that are kind
of still trying to catch that curve, and they're a little bit late to that wave. And
it's cool to hear that you you saw it first hand and witnessed it. Yeah. We definitely do.
And and I think as well, the way people are, discovering products and researching products, they're
not going to Google and searching keywords and discovering that the best ranked
articles and things like that. I mean, Google recent changes are causing people a lot of
a lot of, problems. You know? So, you know, some affiliates are losing positions. Others are gaining
positions. But, you know, I think when I think about my kids' age, they're they're
probably I'll be amazed if they even use Google. They'll probably go to TikTok and, you
know, search that way, you know, and or or YouTube. And that will be the the where they
start their journey of, you know, which indoor cycling trainer should I buy or which
guitar should I buy? You know? It's and is it gonna be the glossy production
thing that comes from the brand, or is it gonna be somebody who looks like them, talks like them,
saying, you know what? I've had this guitar for six months, and it's awesome. You know? Which one are they
gonna trust? So, yeah, it's definitely gonna be, an interesting one, and it's, obviously, it's a
fairly obvious trend. I'm sure everyone's aware of it, but it's it's interesting when you get into sort of the reasons
why that is the the direction of it. I it'll be interesting to see how Google changes
and evolves, what sort of results it's done gonna start putting in. I think it's gonna
be quite different in five years. A lot more video, I imagine. I agree.
We we've had some really interesting conversations and seen it too
around, like, TikToks taking up more and more, search share.
On and a lot of people are starting their queries there. They're trying they're learning. They're getting educated.
Reddit's coming up a lot more. Maybe talking about the search landscape, what are you
seeing in data? What are you seeing in learnings? Are there we reported some
interesting declines in some of the content sites. A lot of the high quality ones that are kind
of hitting on what Google's looking for on the algorithm are are just fine and growing, but
certainly some are getting hit pretty hard. But what are you kind of observing in your landscape
in terms of the Google SEO, paid search, content site
impact? Is there anything that you're observing that's interesting, or what else are you kinda seeing in
that world? Yeah. To to be honest with you, we're we're we're not really seeing anything.
The main reason at the moment so right now, this is our sort of the low season
with Zwift. So the first time we'll probably see any differences
where we start hitting our peak period and we compare peak period this year versus last
year. So and because the the affiliate program is brand new as well, I've got no year on year
data. So it's I'm quite quite blind at the moment to
what those, things are. Yeah. But most of the content sites that we work with, when you sort
of read about the changes in Google, they should, in theory, if anything, gain
share in theory, but we we know that the theory doesn't always match with with what happens out
there. So it's it's a conversation we're constantly having with the partners because, you know, I'm
having to plan for q four right now and knowing that search landscape is
evolving all of the time. So, normally, when you like to book media and, you know, what's
my guaranteed page views, it's suddenly become very difficult because the rug could get
pulled from an algorithm update. So it's Yeah. It's something that we're
trying to monitor, but I what I don't have is that sort of the the history of the data. I
can say, yeah, year on year on year, it's this how it's looking. So it's a it's a tricky one
for me. Yeah. Totally. And I think, like, even brands that have that historical
knowledge are having a hard time in this vastly changing market, like benchmarking and
thinking about, okay. Are we comparing it to twenty nineteen? Are we comparing it to twenty twenty one?
Like, things are changing drastically. The last few years have been very behaved differently.
So even those with some of that data, you know, not to, like, be overly optimistic about
your situation, but in some ways, you might be at an advantage in some ways with lack of
data. Obviously, it's better to have some something to go off of. I
also like what you said about the you're kind of always if you if you step back and think about what
we're trying to do, these trends are always coming in. Right? And if you're managing
Meta or TikTok or Google, you get to kinda stay in that lane and think about all
the changes that are happening in that channel, which is often the case of a brand. Yeah. With
affiliate, going back to the positives that we talked about, I feel like
there's a lot there's so many more signals because you have to think about the s curve of
each individual business model. You have to think about the s curve of all of those channels that are working.
So if Google's seeing gains or a hit in a particular
category, that's impacting, you know, affiliate. If perhaps a
particular loyalty vertical is getting hit or there's competitors coming
into that space, that's impacting the ebb and flow of the diversity and the volume of your
affiliate program. We're seeing, like, you know, Reddit Reddit strikes a deal with Google. That's helping out,
with certain affiliate partners or maybe taking away. So it's this interesting con you know, for
people coming into this, either marketers or not, you know, or heavy performance marketers, they get it.
But, like, I think there's a there's actually in some ways, it's a sim it can be simpler,
but there's also a lot of variables going on within affiliate channel, especially as it matures and
gets that volume. I don't know if you feel that way too, but I think it's really interesting. Yeah. Because, I mean, when you're buying
media or you're trying to plan like, I I am right now planning for q four, which is our peak and,
obviously, Black Friday, a lot of people in the industry, they rely on historic trends and
data to inform, okay. Well, this worked last year, so I'll invest in it this year.
But, you know, it might be that something that worked well last year is just gonna get is just gonna
flop. So, I mean, you know, newspapers that were using, coupons that were
having a white label solution, and offering that, those have been hit by Google.
So they're not gonna get the same levels of traffic that they were this time last year. So
it's it's really important that when affiliate managers or planners or buyers, when they're
looking at the historic trends, is make sure that you're looking at these these other, you know,
changes in the industry. You know, where does your where does your publisher get their traffic from?
And if they're beholden to to Meta or to to Google and things like that, what's
going on there? Because you again, the the rug could get pulled from from you. So it's,
yeah, you gotta be Yeah. Yes, looking back because sometimes historic data can be
reliable, but you you've gotta be looking forward as well and say, oh, maybe the
variables are gonna change. Yeah. It's diversification's the name of the game. It's it
gets it gets talked about a lot. It's an easy thing to say. And, obviously,
the work and effort and planning and measurement of it is is a whole another
story, and it's not that easy. You know it better than anyone having managed so many great
great programs in your career. Speaking of your career, what was a
sliding door moment for you where it was kinda like, hey. Could go one way. You took another path.
Kind of learnings from that. Yeah. I think probably it was when I look back, I
think getting to work on the eBay program was probably the the big one for me, and I very nearly
screwed that up. So it was, when I started ROI, I
was running we had, so it was just before the financial crash of two thousand eight. So we
had, subprime loans clients. Very lucrative.
So but it's very, very low tech. There was no product feeds or APIs. It was very
much, you know, we we sometimes had people going door to door and then clicking on
affiliate link and filling the details out on behalf of somebody at the door. It was that low
tech, but very lucrative. And then two thousand eight happened. That entire industry just just
vanished, really. But it was at this the same year that ROI won the eBay account.
So there was an opportunity where I was I think I somebody left the
eBay team, and they were quite junior, and I was a bit more senior. So the company said, we're looking for someone else to
go into that team. And I was like, well, I I don't really wanna go down a level, so I didn't apply for it. And
then my boss pulled me into a room and said, hey, Rich. Have you thought about this? And I was like, well,
I'd love to. But then, anyway, he said, actually, I put on the email that current seniority
would be respected, so, you know, you wouldn't drop a level. So I missed that sentence from the
email. Like and if you haven't sort of call me into a room and say, you know, I think you
should go for this. I I could have missed out on it. And what I learned
on on, you know, managing the eBay partner network and the experiences I had,
referring to earlier, you know, first time working on something that was outside of the
UK. So getting to travel into Europe and, you know, spending time in Zurich, and you meet people
from all over the world. You know, the conversation had with, mentioned about you
know, someone explained, well, in Italy, this is how it works. And in Spain, this is how it works. And in Germany,
getting to spend time with, you know, you guys in camp from over from the US as well. And, you know,
it was just, from my initial year or two, just working
on subprime finance loans and leads to then go into eBay, and we're learning
the APIs. And I don't know if you remember the, quality click
pricing and all of that and, you know, all of the commercials that sort of, like All too well. Yeah.
You probably sell PTSD about it, but it was fascinating stuff. And it was
so yeah. It was my Oh, man. Yeah. And it was it was amazing. And
so it took me you know, I think traveled into Europe, traveled to the US, met so
many people, and that was the real foundation, I think, of the the career that I've built. And as
I said, I I very nearly, for the sake of not properly reading an email, could
have missed out. And thank you for to to my boss at the time for
for pulling me into the room and and, looking to arrive at your problem. What a great lesson.
What a great story. I'm sure so mutually beneficial that he was so
helpful in kind of shedding light on it for you and and obviously an open a door opener and
a a sliding door moment in your career that that went so well. I I couldn't agree more,
man. I I it opened up so many the world of, like, high rigor
Silicon Valley, multichannel marketing. Like, it was I
probably said it it too many times. People may eye roll, but, like, the the level of quality talent
coming out of that group at the time when it was happening was really second to none. I'm
just very fortunate. And I think like you, it really opened my world up in many
ways and was such an amazing learning experience. So it was cool. And then, heck, here we are
talking today because I I I got to meet you through that experience. So, Yeah. I made some
great connections. Yeah. Is there a, you know, book or a resource that
you would point for folks that that maybe was really impactful on you in a positive way
or, you know, change your thinking on a topic? Yeah. That's what I tell you. I'm
probably not. I'm not one of these people that sort of reads a lot of I don't do a lot
of work stuff outside work. Maybe I need to do it more. So I I I That's
good. Yeah. So most of the time, outside work, it's football and guitars
and all that sort of stuff. But there was, one topic that was, obviously, is really
big at the moment. It's AI. And I'm not one of these people that jumps onto these
things and, you know, I'm not like an AI bro or anything like that. And I'm always a little bit
skeptical, you know, when people say AI is gonna take over affiliates. I was thinking, well, is it gonna be
negotiating deals? Is it gonna be recruiting? Like, what is it gonna do?
And it was a, podcast. I think it was an Awin podcast. They had a guest on it,
Rob Beresford, who runs, Affiliate dot AI. But he was explaining about
actually, it's more about that productivity thing. So, you know, this sort of thing. He said, imagine
if you the reporting, the amount of data that exists, you know, with an affiliate program that is
just laying there, not being accessed to by people because it's just too difficult or time
consuming. You know? And the amount of time I spent downloading spreadsheets
from one from an affiliate network, from Google Analytics, trying to
smush it all together, fiddling around with the date formats that don't match up, and and then trying to
kind of analyze what's coming into the website and then what's coming after the transaction.
And if you could have all of that data fed into, you know, sort of an AI
computer sort of thing and just ask it prompts as you would in chat g GPT. You
know? And the amount of time that it would save and what that would do, and it would take away that sort of,
the skill of having to learn Excel and, you know, the time it takes to do all of
that. And it really just got me thinking about this. That will really, really help a
lot of people in this industry, I think, being able to have access to data with just
real word prompts. You know, tell me what's the the if you're a publisher, what's the most
lucrative journey on our website? And like a chat GPT experience,
you can say, right. It can spit it all out for you rather than going have to download multiple
spreadsheets and you know? So I think it's got the power to really, remove a lot of
barriers to good data, the barriers being skill set, barrier being
time, and then with that information being able to do something really meaningful with it. So it sort of really made me
think very differently about is this AI thing just a bit of fad that people are just
gonna, you know, rave about? But, actually, how is it, you know, in the real world gonna
help us? So, yeah, that was, really got me thinking about it. And,
yeah, I'm still sort of it's still very early days for that sort of thing. I haven't got to play with
anything like that yet, but it really did get me thinking, wow. That could be
really powerful. I love that. I've heard great things. I think our team is kind of doing some collaboration
with them currently, And, I I love that one. I think there's a lot more to do there, and I
think some of the things they're coming out with is it's material change. It's, it's not.
That we could we do a whole episode on on that topic, I think, because there's a lot there, and I'm
I'm really glad you brought it up. So I think it's how how can we do our jobs better rather than how can our
jobs be replaced. I think that's the the key. Exactly. I think it's augmentation.
I think it's efficiency. I think, you know, I think it's, yeah, lots to talk
about there, and and definitely we could go way deep on that. We probably should at one point. I
love it. Just rounding out, Richard, it's been a pleasure, man. I know you've you've had some really
great learnings in your career. You've you've shared some great history and story and and
thoughts of how you think about the industry and affiliate marketing and doing it the right way. I think you've had a
there's a humility and a thoughtfulness and a craft about how you approach affiliate marketing that I
wanna call out. And I I think that that comes through with how you operate and how you speak about it and
just the way you work. And you've always been one to just get things done, and I think that's something that to make
sure people are aware of. You have a strategy. You have an experience, but you're, there's a no
frills, respect about how you approach the work, which I I think is important to call out for everyone.
In kind of rounding out the pod and and as we talk about, you know, got through some of the learnings and
the always be testing theme, obviously. But, you know, what what's a fun, silly fact that maybe
people don't know about you? You kinda touched on, you know, full of football guitars, but
love to hear just what do you wanna share with the audience about you? Yeah. I was thinking about this one. I
spent probably probably most people know I play guitar because they're they're always the background of my my thing.
But, yeah, I don't know whether it's fun or silly, but I'm a a bit of a space geek.
I love, learning about space, the cosmos, the universe, all that sort of thing. I find that
absolutely fascinating. I've always got, some sort of going to sleep at
night. I've got a space documentary on. Just just love it. Just thinking about how
planets were formed. That's so cool. Is the universe infinite? All that sort of thing.
I just yeah. Absolutely. I can't get enough of it. I love that, man. That's
very cool. That can get pretty fascinating as you dive into it, and and I
love to, to learn and hear that that's something that you're into. Very cool.
Any space fact that you wanna drop on us or anything about space in particular that
you found fascinating in your learnings or the documentaries you've had? Any recommendations? Yeah.
There's one. It's sort of a space fact, but it's sort of a mathematics one as well. And it's the,
the implications of infinity. So you say, is the universe infinite?
And mathematically, it's saying that, right, somewhere if the universe is
infinite, that there is somebody exact a complete replica of me and
you having this conversation out there somewhere, and that's a mathematical
fact of infinity. Because if if you think about the infinite monkey theorem,
you've got twenty six letters of the alphabet, and an infinite number of monkeys are gonna
type out the works of Shakespeare. Each one of those letters is like an an
element on the periodic table. So your body is just an an assembly
of atoms and an an element. So if the universe is inflow in
infinite, eventually, that will be replicated. And that is really mind blowing fat, and it is
scientific. But yeah. I think we have the perfect GIF when we post this
episode. We're gonna have the GIF of the guy's head just, you know, exploding with the space that
just I think I had this is such a weird overshare, but,
like, as a kid, I remember being about ten and, like, you're kind of
going through life and thinking about what does it mean and thinking about the universe. And have
you ever had this where you're, like, thinking about how far it stretches and how vast it
is and it almost sends you into a little bit of a spinning loop in your brain. And it's
it's actually a bit frightening because you think I can't really describe it. I'm not gonna be able to
put words to the feeling and the mix of emotion and brain thought that comes up.
But I remember that that feeling of, holy cow, what if it is ever ending? Or what
if it ends? And it's like this crazy epiphany that your mind starts to
go down this rabbit hole and you're just like, wait. What? It's very difficult for a human brain
to sometimes wrap your head around, but I think it's so cool that you you've kind of gone there
and you've shared that today. That's that's a it's a it's a weird thing. It's cool. Yeah. It's definitely one of those things
that if you're like me when you're trying to get to sleep and your brain's racing with all of,
you know, work stuff, family stuff, or, you know, all of the jobs and chores you haven't done, And
then you start thinking of pondering those things, and it just kind of because it's such
a vast subject that your brain can't really think about, oh, I need to mow the lawn.
So it does actually help me sleep just pondering these sorts of things. So it's quite a good kind
of, yeah, mental well-being kind of thing. I actually think that's that's awesome.
I came across the a tweet or something recently that had something similar. I think as we get into
adult life and all the stressors of day to day and all the BS that comes out
of us, it was, if I find it, I'll share it with you. But it's like, you know,
we're a rock going across the galaxy and universe at
x speed, and you're worried about this over here. It's it's something along those
lines, and I think it kinda does A little perspective sort of thing. Could put you at peace. Yeah. A little
perspective. What's, is there any fun little thing that you've maybe purchased recently
that you can't live without that you wanna share with the audience? Well, I've had it for a couple of years, actually.
But, if you're in a video, I'll show it to you. But basically, it is it is a
desktop guitar amp, which is beautiful. Oh, yeah.
It is very it's awesome looking. Yeah. And it's so perfect for my
exact use case. So you don't want a big guitar amp in a very small room with a
family. So you want something that's not too loud, super high quality, but it's also a
Bluetooth speaker. So it I can do everything with this. So all day, I
have this set up there with the music going with Alexa
Alexa plugged into it, got the guitar plugged into it. I'm not disturbing the family too
much if I'm rocking out with the guitar. But it's just one of those products
I'm just bought, and and it looks so nice that we actually decorated this room to complement it.
So if people are just listening, it's a kind of it's a it's a small unit Bluetooth
speaker. It's kinda like metal retro looking and a cream. And, yeah, we've got sort of
copper tones and blue, and it just it looks amazing in the office. And it just it's just one
of those products that I just like every time I look at it, I think, that's the perfect thing
for what I Yeah. Needed. It does everything, and it looks looks awesome. Pretty clean, pretty minimal,
pretty pretty attractive, piece, and it functions well. It's awesome. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, so
much things with the musical equipment. It's cables and things all over the place getting
dusty and stuff, which I could do with the dust, actually. What's the brand? It's a Yamaha.
The so it's called a Yamaha THR. Cool. Yeah. They're they're definitely good
if you're if you play guitar. I think it'll also play you can play bass through it as well, I
think. But it's just a great thing to have and, you
know, For the for the rock stars out there in the audience. And
I you know what? I researched it on social channels and YouTube, and
I listened to all the influencers talking about it. And I probably clicked one of their links when I bought it. There you go.
Beautiful. It's all happening. Richard, dude, you're the man. I can't I need to hear you rock out
on the guitar one of these days. I'm sure we'll get to do that maybe in London or maybe in somewhere in the
UK. Yeah. But just wanna thank you again. You've got a wealth of knowledge. We've covered
a ton of ground. For folks that wanna stay in touch with you and follow you, where where is the
best way to connect? I'm probably on LinkedIn. I'll be honest. I don't put out a lot of stuff on LinkedIn
myself, but, I'm more of a lurker, which is like, I'll comment on other people's
posts. But, yeah, LinkedIn probably the the best place. And, yeah, I
always I always happy to connect with people, even if it's not necessarily an immediate
opportunity or sale that needs to be done. It's just great to to connect because things change,
and you never know. But, yeah, happy to hear from anyone. But, yeah, we can. One hundred percent. Always
a pleasure, Richard. It's great to talk to you, and, I'm so happy to have you on. Thank you so much,
and have an awesome evening. Yeah. Great. Thank you too for the opportunity. And, yeah, we'll speak soon,
Ty. Sounds good.