Singapore – Global marketing and communications group Stagwell has announced the additions of four independent agencies in the Asia Pacific region to its expanding global affiliate network.
These four new affiliate partnerships strengthen Stagwell’s reach in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region, adding additional full-service advertising and design, digital experience, and affiliate marketing capabilities to the network’s suite of client solutions.
Going into detail, the affiliates include Singapore-based design firm Agency, Bangladesh-based dynamic advertising agency Arena Media, Thailand-based digital marketing agency Lodestar Marketing, and China-based digital marketing agency R&D Online Marketing.
Through its global affiliate program, Stagwell aims to provide full-service capabilities worldwide, while ensuring clients receive best-in-class service and solutions tailored to their priority markets.
It is also worth noting that these affiliate additions within APAC come shortly after Stagwell’s affiliate partnerships with Leverate Group from Indonesia, and Octopus&Whale from the Philippines.
Talking about the affiliate partnerships, Lishan Soh, co-founder of Agency, said, “Joining the Stagwell Global Affiliate Network is a thrilling milestone for us. We are eager to collaborate within this family of dynamic companies by adding strategic design as a critical tool for creativity, to generate greater value for our clients and their customers alike.”
Mazharul Chowdhury, group managing director at Arena Media Bangladesh, also mentioned, “We are delighted to join Stagwell’s global network and we are poised to leverage our local expertise and contribute our unique insights to enhance data-driven, culturally-relevant marketing solutions that drive business growth worldwide.”
Jesper Kauth, managing partner at Lodestar Marketing, also added, “This is an extremely exciting partnership for us, giving Lodestar Marketing direct access to companies within Stagwell and vice versa to offer channel support and growth. We look forward to the opportunities to help drive additional revenue for clients within the group.”
Lastly, among the new affiliates, Tony Tang, managing partner at R&D Online Marketing Services, shared, “I am thrilled about our affiliate partnership with Stagwell. This collaboration allows us to leverage Stagwell’s extensive global network and innovative marketing solutions, extending our services within China and beyond. Together with Stagwell, we are committed to driving growth and success for our clients in the international arena.”
Meanwhile, Randy Duax, managing director, Asia-Pacific for Stagwell, commented, “We look forward to adding Agency, Arena Media, Lodestar Marketing and R&D Online Marketing Services’ proven track record and deep local expertise to our Global Affiliate Program. These four affiliates reinforce Stagwell’s commitment to elevating our clients’ businesses with agile, data-driven, and culturally relevant marketing solutions.”
Tag: Affiliate Marketing
Singapore – Travel marketing agency Affilired and partnership management platform, impact.com, have joined forces to provide travel and hospitality brands in Southeast Asia with a powerful solution for affiliate marketing success.
This collaboration leverages Affilired’s deep travel industry expertise and impact.com’s best-in-class partnership management platform to unlock new markets, optimise campaign performance, and drive measurable growth for industry leaders.
The partnership with impact.com positions Affilired to accomplish significant business objectives for their clients in Southeast Asia, primarily focus on expanding their reach into previously untapped markets such as Vietnam, Philippines and also the African continent.
Additionally, they plan to harness impact.com’s solutions to refine affiliate marketing strategies and enhance performance, thereby driving growth and fortifying their foothold within the travel industry.
Talking about the partnership, Diego Gomila, chief executive officer of Affilired, said, “At Affilired, we’re firm believers in collaborative innovation to drive the travel industry forward. Our partnership with impact.com exemplifies this ethos, merging expertise and resources to elevate travel experiences worldwide. Together, we’re not merely navigating; we’re pioneering uncharted territories, shaping the future of travel through our mutual dedication to excellence and innovation.”
Meanwhile, Antoine Gross, general manager, Southeast Asia & India at impact.com, commented, “This partnership creates a powerful synergy between Affilired’s travel-focused expertise and our award-winning technology. Together, we offer a comprehensive solution for travel and hospitality brands, unlocking new avenues for market reach and growth. This collaboration will position Affilired and impact.com as the preferred go-to solution for driving success in travel affiliate marketing across Southeast Asia.”
Singapore – Involve Asia, the martech firm with a focus on Southeast Asia, has expanded its leadership team through the appointment of two senior marketing hires. This comes after its recent fundraising of over US$10m led by Bintang Capital Partners.
Melissa Chan is inaugurated as vice president of brand and marketing, whilst Kylee Yap assumes the position of director of marketing services. With the new leadership, Involve Asia looks to continue expanding its product line and services to its network of clients and partners across the region.
The company’s main value proposition is making affiliate marketing accessible and cost-effective, in order for individuals to small-to-medium-sized marketing companies to enhance their network with global brands. Involve Asia says Chan and Yap will be instrumental in growing its regional brand and marketing efforts and in leading the company’s team across content, brand, public relations, social media, digital performance, marketing, and design.
Chan is most recently the CMO of iMoney Group. She brings with her 25 years of experience including working in teams across the startup and fintech industries. Her vast in-market knowledge spans financial product development, digital banking, loyalty programs, and customer segmentation. Prior to joining Involve Asia, she held key leadership roles at CIMB bank, HSBC, Hong Leong, RHB Banking Group, and TNG Digital.
Meanwhile, Yap is coming off his position as the interim country marketing manager of Meta for Malaysia. Over a span of 20 years with companies such as Meta, Lazada, CtrlShift, Ogilvy Action, and Saatchi & Saatchi, she had been deeply involved in curating and leading branding activities across offline, online, and social media platforms. She had been exposed to many regional and global events which have honed her skills in creating tailored campaigns.
With a holistic background in client management, sales, event management, and branding, the company says Yap will be aiming to strategically grow Involve Asia’s presence in Southeast Asia and enhance its service quality to existing and new audiences.
Yap commented, “We are living in a world that is rapidly growing its digital presence, and the online marketplace is an indispensable staple for most brands and advertisers post-pandemic. Through the extensive network that helps it effectively bridge the gap between brands and audiences, Involve Asia’s platform is uniquely positioned to amplify returns in the marketing partnership space.”
Meanwhile, on the new journey with the firm, Chan says, “Involve Asia has such a captivating story combined with a social purpose that needs to be told. Many brands this year have been reviewing their marketing budgets and are looking for cost-optimised solutions to meet their business and marketing goals. Individuals are also starting to supplement and increase their income by entering the gig economy. I look forward to elevating the experience of affiliate marketing and fulfilling Involve Asia’s missions.”
Along with optimising current growth channels, the firm further shared that both will hold key responsibilities for the development of bespoke marketing campaigns to drive additional revenue streams.
Since the company’s establishment in 2014, Involve Asia has expanded from its Malaysia base into Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, tapping into Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing e-commerce and digital ad market. The company says it is charging forward with ‘ambitious’ growth planned in the coming months.
Singapore – Affiliate marketing platform Involve Asia has recently raised US$10m in funding, which the company will use to acquire complementary tech companies, as well as continuously invest in enhancing its platform and team.
As part of Involve’s plans to scale even more rapidly, part of its fundraise will be used to invest in companies that complement its business and leverage its network of clients and partners. In recent years, Involve has established a firm footing with influencers across the region which has driven strong results for advertisers.
The company also plans to deploy a comprehensive suite of solutions that will increase the avenues for advertisers to leverage on influencers and their highly engaged audience.
It is also expanding the team in line with its aggressive growth plans and hiring across many roles, with almost 50 positions open especially in business development, project management, product and DevOps.
Rene Menezes, president and co-founder of Involve said, “2022 marked Involve’s second chapter of aggressive growth. We’re not sitting around waiting for the global uncertainty to settle. We are in a position to invest and step on the gas while many are focused on consolidation and preserving cash. A number of industry-changing products are ready to be taken out of beta and will hit the market very soon.”
He added, “There is always a need for high impact, brand advertising but even more opportunity exists for marketers who adopt Involve’s platform with its focus on risk-free, highly effective returns on marketing budgets.”
The funding round was led by Bintang Capital Partners Berhad, the private equity arm of Affin Hwang Asset Management Berhad, with a parentage that includes leading global investment managers such as CVC Capital Partners and Nikko Asset Management.
Singapore – Marketing and advertising solutions Rakuten Advertising has launched Accelerate, a fully-managed, affiliate marketing program led by experienced analysts leveraging unique data insights, competitive intelligence, custom campaign modelling, and publisher matchmaking to optimise performance marketing spend with unprecedented speed.
The new affiliate program assumes the financial risk of testing new publishers, meaning advertisers are guaranteed to only pay for performance. By tapping into the company’s network of 150,000 publishers in North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, Accelerate makes it simple and profitable for brands to expand into new markets and drive incremental sales.
The solution offers guaranteed performance-based costs, which allow brands to pay exclusively for performance via a fixed percentage of revenue, while Rakuten Advertising takes on the risks of up-front publisher investments. It also provides first-party data and insights, where the program taps into Rakuten Advertising’s data network.
Moreover, the solution has real-time analysis and optimisation, where all campaigns have a dedicated analyst who draws on data from Rakuten Advertising’s network to constantly improve performance by recommending new publishers, optimising commission payments, identifying paid-placement opportunities, and customising offers and performance incentives.
It also provides publisher matchmaking, where data-led AI matchmaking identifies the best partners from Rakuten Advertising’s network of global publishers to drive optimal growth for each campaign. And lastly, it also offers a fully managed program, allowing Rakuten Advertising’s analysts and account teams to manage every aspect of a campaign, from publisher recruitment and communication to IO execution and paid placement negotiations.
Jeff Wender, Rakuten Advertising’s chief revenue officer, shared that Accelerate allows advertisers to enjoy the benefits of affiliate marketing in a way that only a network of their scale and experience can deliver.
“We’re committed to helping brands capitalise on this period of economic recovery. Accelerate is a valuable addition to our suite of solutions that create innovative, more customised ways for advertisers to interact with consumers, so they can scale quickly and recover their positions while reducing the risk of their digital advertising investment,” said Wender.
Rakuten Advertising said that Accelerate can be tailored for brands with a range of goals – whether it’s international expansion, launching a new business or product, enhancing an existing affiliate program, or re-focusing in-house talent. By leveraging Rakuten Advertising’s dynamic commissioning rules, Accelerate account teams reward publishers for delivering targeted brand goals, and personalise campaigns to align with consumer interests and publisher content to create a more positive ad experience.
Singapore – Affiliate marketing service provider Rakuten Advertising has recently published a new blueprint called ‘A 5-Stage Blueprint for High-Performance Affiliate Marketing’, which aims to educate and inform both advertisers and publishers about the strategic role that the affiliate channel is now playing in marketing strategies.
Said blueprint is based on input from members of the Rakuten Advertising International Collective (RAIC), comprising affiliate marketing specialists from leading advertisers and publishers around the globe including Asia, Australia, Europe, the US, and Latin America.
For advertisers, the blueprint demonstrates how different affiliate models can be combined to enable them to find and influence new customers throughout the customer journey, from discovery to conversion. For publishers, the blueprint offers guidance on how they can enhance, extend and further monetize their offering, building deeper relationships with existing advertisers and attracting new brand partners.
“The affiliate channel has transformed over recent years, and our goal in creating RAIC was to bring together some of the leading thinkers in the affiliate industry to unlock the insights and best practices that are driving innovation in this space,” said Stuart McLennan, senior vice president for Asia-Pacific at Rakuten Advertising.
He added, “The open and willing sharing of their direct experiences and strategies as advertisers and publishers has formed the basis of this blueprint, and highlights how unique the affiliate channel is in driving collaborative partnerships to meet respective commercial objectives.”
The blueprint can be summarized in these points: aligning affiliate KPIs to business objectives, making the best use of the available data, aligning affiliate strategies to the customer journey and brand positioning, integrating existing and emerging affiliate models, and analyzing, learning, testing, optimizing and proving their marketing strategies.