Tag: Rakuten Advertising

Singapore – Performance-driven ad solutions provider Rakuten Advertising has named Sydney-based e-commerce growth partner and digital agency The Thoughtful Agency as its first Platinum Agency Partner in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Thoughtful Agency has been recognised for delivering ‘comprehensive and industry-leading’ solutions for their clients through the Rakuten Affiliate Network.

“We are delighted to welcome The Thoughtful Agency as our first Platinum Agency Partner in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Nicola Murray, director of advertiser and agency development at Rakuten Advertising.

She added, “The team’s dedication to driving success for their clients aligns perfectly with our mission to empower the digital advertising industry to outthink and outperform through performance. We can’t wait to see what the team will achieve—this is just the beginning.”

The Thoughtful Agency’s Chief Growth Officer, Prav De Silva, also expressed his excitement about becoming Rakuten’s Platinum Agency Partner and the opportunities it brings for its clients.

“We are honoured to be recognised as Rakuten Advertising’s first Platinum Agency Partner in the Asia-Pacific region. This partnership will allow us to continue to drive innovation in the affiliate marketing space alongside Rakuten Advertising and leverage its innovative solutions to drive even greater value for our client portfolio,” he added.

Rakuten Advertising’s Platinum Agency Partner program is an exclusive community of the company’s partnered agencies. The program is designed for agencies that have a deep understanding of Rakuten Advertising’s products and services and have demonstrated their ability to leverage these solutions to deliver exceptional results for their clients. 

This follows Rakuten Advertising’s launch of Accelerate, a fully-managed, affiliate marketing program led by experienced analysts leveraging unique data insights, competitive intelligence, custom campaign modelling, and publisher matchmaking.

Singapore – Performance advertising company Rakuten Advertising has announced the appointment of Neil Cao to the position of commercial director for China. His new role is part of the international leadership team and will support the growth of an incredibly dynamic and innovative region for affiliate marketing.

Based in Shanghai, Cao will be responsible for leading the Rakuten Advertising business across China by developing and implementing performance marketing strategies for clients and accelerating growth in the country.

His background spans over a decade of experience in the digital ecosystem, ranging from e-commerce, to consumer electronics, to app and gaming. As an advocate for full-funnel performance strategies, he has leveraged various media channels including search, display and programmatic to help clients drive engagement, sales, loyalty and beyond. 

Cao has a proven track record in digital advertising and business development, including successfully selling programmatic advertising to new-to-DSP Chinese merchants and hitting the one million-dollar milestone with MiQ. He has also managed the monetisation of mobile apps, leading to a successful NYSE listing with Cheeta Mobile.

Speaking on his appointment, he said, “I am thrilled to join Rakuten Advertising where I will have the opportunity to collaborate with the world’s leading brands in a thriving Chinese market. My goal is to offer invaluable in-market insights and empower both local and international merchants to connect with their target audience. I’m excited to work together with our clients, partners and team to leverage our performance-based advertising solutions, unlocking growth potential in this challenging yet exciting era.”

Meanwhile, Stuart McLennan, senior vice president for the APAC region at Rakuten Advertising, spoke of Cao being a perfect fit for the company.

“We are delighted to welcome Neil to the team at Rakuten Advertising. With his extensive knowledge of the digital landscape and a proven history of success working with both advertisers and publishers, he is perfectly equipped to help our Chinese clients and partners thrive in their next phase of growth. Under his leadership, I am confident that we can help local and international brands outthink and outperform in a dynamic and highly promising Chinese market,” McLennan said.

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 – Marketing and advertising solutions Rakuten Advertising has expanded its relationship with Xandr’s Global Supply Evangelism Team (GSET), and will also be extending its partnership for the adoption of Xandr’s Monetize SSP. 

Through Monetize SSP, premium inventory that sits within Rakuten Advertising’s unified portfolio across connected TV (CTV), digital video, and native will be available in the Xandr marketplace. 

Across APAC and LATAM, excluding Brazil, Xandr’s buyers will be offered CTV and video inventory across Rakuten Viki, which offers primetime Asian entertainment, and inventory on its messaging app Rakuten Viber. The portfolio will be promoted globally through GSET and have monetization services and deals set up for buyers in-market on their behalf.

The GSET is a team of programmatic experts at Xandr dedicated to servicing strategic publishers by extending their sales efforts to global markets and promoting a publisher’s programmatic inventory, available via Xandr’s Monetize SSP. 

Xandr said GSET has been a unique addition to their offering, where the team provides a three-part service to publishers including in-market sales, monetization services, and marketing services

Ulrik Morell, the VP of Global Supply Evangelism at Xandr, said, “With the advertising ecosystem facing many upcoming challenges, Xandr is proud to be partnered with a major global publisher who is focused on directly benefitting their marketers and agencies.”

Meanwhile, James Collins, SVP of Media at Rakuten Advertising, commented, “We always seek to align our partner opportunities to serve our customers’ best interests. Whilst we have a global network, it has always been important to us to operate through the open internet and ensure transparency with advertisers we work with.” 

Xandr has also recently announced the expansion of its video inventory in APAC which includes top OTT platforms Viu, iQIYI, and True Digital.

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.