Category: Affiliate Marketing Tips

Announcing the ThinkTank 2023 Network Awards

We are thrilled to reveal the categories for the #ThinkTankUS 2023 Network Awards, as well as the ceremony location. 

We are excited and privleged to host the ThinkTank Network Awards for the third time, with this year’s ceremony taking place at Chicago’s esteemed Adler Planetarium. The ThinkTank Network Awards are a small testament to our gratitude for our clients, partners and friends. There’s no better place to honor the Awin Group esteemed collective for innovation, performance and growth over the past 12 months than at Adler, with its stunning views of the Chicago skyline, floor-to-ceiling glass windows and ample outdoor space for enjoing that Chicago summer air.

In addition to revealing the categories and location, we’re excited to share all clients with an active program on Awin or ShareASale are now eligible to nominate themselves or a partner for Best Content Marketing Campaign, Best Use of Influencer Marketing and Most Innovative Use of the Channel. Nominations must be received by May 31, 2023, to qualify. 

Advertiser of the Year
This category is dedicated to active retailers on either the Awin or ShareASale platform. These brands have established a strong reputation for quality and integrity in their affiliate engagement, creativity in their campaigns, exemplary dedication to the channel and overall strength in program performance over time.

Publisher of the Year
These publisher nominees are active members on either the Awin or ShareASale platform and have exhibited remarkable growth over time by establishing strategic brand partnerships, showing commitment to the channel, and program optimization.

Partnership Technology of the Year
This category recognizes a standout technology within the affiliate and influencer marketing industry that helps Awin and ShareASale’s brands, creators and/or publishers meet their channel goals.

Agency Team of the Year
Nominees in this category are recognized for their creative and strategic use of technology and tools within the affiliate marketing channel and specifically on Awin or ShareASale.

Most Innovative Use of the Channel
Regardless of budget, the size of your company or number of individuals on your affiliate team, nominees in this category are recognized for the best performance marketing campaign in terms of creativity and innovation. The winner will be able to showcase linear, out-of-the-box thinking and a desire to move away from the norm for strong ROI, and can demonstrate a bigger return in the long run.

Nominate yourself or a partner for Most Innovative Use of the Channel. 

Best Content Marketing Campaign
This category spotlights mass media and editorial content publishers as well as brands that can demonstrate how they successfully hit KPIs with a performance-based model. Notable efforts can include partner recruitment and acquisition tactics, engagement strategies and unique content-focused promotional opportunities.

Nominate yourself or a partner for Best Content Marketing Campaign. 

Best Use of Influencer Marketing
This category showcases successful influencer marketing tactics from brands and creators in the affiliate channel, demonstrating how they effectively blended their affiliate marketing and influencer marketing efforts for more sales and revenue.

Nominate yourself or a partner for Best Use of Influencer Marketing. 

The ThinkTank Network Awards will also feature our attendee choice awards – Advertiser Choice of Affiliate Partner, Affiliate Partner Choice of Advertiser, and Attendee Choice of Agency Team – recognitions exclusively afforded to ThinkTank US 2023 attendees.

Don’t miss your chance to be recognized for any of the ThinkTank Network Awards. Nominate yourself or a partner for one of our categories and apply to attend ThinkTank today!

All current clients with an active program are eligible to receive a nomination. Nominees will be selected internally after thorough review of program performance on one or both networks.

The post Announcing the ThinkTank 2023 Network Awards appeared first on ShareASale Blog.

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New technologies are enriching publishers’ content recommendation capabilities 

Produced in partnership with Marketecture

The following article highlights an interview between Yaron Galai, co-founder and co-CEO of Outbrain, and Ari Paparo, founder and CEO of Marketecture. Register for free to watch more of the discussion and learn about new available technologies publishers can leverage to optimize their content recommendations.  

While it’s now popular for publishers of all sorts to utilize content recommendations to do more than recommend content for their readers, such as to engage readers and as a source of revenue for the publisher, it was pioneered by Outbrain 15 years ago and continues to evolve. 

Outbrain’s co-founder and co-CEO recently spoke with Ari Paparo, founder and CEO of Marketecture; they discussed the new features Outbrain has debuted and the capabilities at the company’s core. 

How Outbrain enables publishers to optimize their content recommendations

To help keep the content recommendation model future-proof for publishers, third-party cookies are the least valuable data signal within Outbrain’s operating model. Because Outbrain’s system is installed code-on-page, wherever the publisher chooses — web, mobile, apps, etc., it can pull in a large amount of first-party data. 

Because contextual data helps advertisers understand what a page is about and Outbrain’s feed can be installed on every page, the feed — and therefore the publishers — able to determine the contextual signals a user has seen over time. 

The feed is mixed based on each publisher’s preferences and blended with the publisher’s content — organic recommendations — and outbound advertising. This setup allows Outbrain to gather a significant amount of first-party data that can then be used to optimize the recommendations for that publisher’s feed. 

About half of the clicks or traffic generated come from organic recommendations, and the other half from outbound advertising. All clicks generated result in valuable first-party data because the most unambiguous indication of user interest is when they click and engage with something. 

“Our primary model is cost-per-click,” said Galai. “We think this is very important because the focus or secret sauce of a company’s engagement is user engagement. Many publishers’ business models today don’t reflect that like CPC does.” 

Connecting content recommendation feeds to business objectives

Outbrain’s latest introduction to the market — Keystone — builds on years of experience when it comes to understanding user engagement and advertiser objectives. 

Keystone allows publishers to harness Outbrain’s personalization expertise and customize on-site experiences for each user while applying it to their business growth goals.  

For example, many publishers today have a feed of cards, especially when thinking of the mobile setup. Instead of having multiple departments manually manage those cards, Keystone enables a unified experience. The publisher team can choose the cards to be managed and establish the objective for those cards to hit, such as driving subscriptions. To help meet this goal, it’s essential to drive up the amount of organic content a user reads each month, which Keystone can do. For example, when the user hits the seventh story, it can show them a “subscribe now” card. 

In addition to building a robust content recommendation system, Outbrain’s deep roots in contextual targeting and native advertising make it a company intent on making life easier for publishers — unlike many other competitors in the space. 

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Register for free to watch more of the discussion between Ari Paparo and Yaron Galai and learn about new available technologies publishers can leverage to optimize their content recommendations.

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