Episode #41 – The Performance Marketing Spotlight with Adam Ross

Marshall Nyman [00:00:03]:
Hello and welcome to the performance Marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Nyman, founder and CEO of Naimon Company. Each episode I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they highlight their experiences within the industry. Today I have a special guest, Adam Ross, CEO of awin. Welcome to the podcast, Adam.

Adam Ross [00:00:26]:
Hey Marshall. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:28]:
Of course. Excited to have you on today. And let’s get right to it. Can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience?

Adam Ross [00:00:36]:
Sure.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:37]:
Yes.

Adam Ross [00:00:37]:
I’m Adam Ross. I’m the CEO of awin. I am based in London but do a lot of traveling of course, for work. I got two young kids. My daughter Ruby who’s seven, my son Milo who’s five. They keep me pretty busy outside of work and that’s basically yeah, my, my, my, my life consists of work and then lots of, lots of great fun stuff with the kids at home.

Marshall Nyman [00:01:02]:
That’s my life 24 7. So how did you get your start in affiliate marketing?

Adam Ross [00:01:09]:
Purely by luck really because I actually studied dentistry at university, believe it or not, but I am not a dentist so don’t come and ask me about any teeth related problems. But I was always into tech and building websites as a kid. I probably should have studied something related to that at university, but I didn’t and I ended up going down the dentistry route. That didn’t work out and I was really looking at whether I should go back to college or whether or what I should do. And I purely by chance found what was then a really exciting, fast growing startup based in southeast London called Affiliate Window. I met the founder, we hit it off. I absolutely loved the business model, the great mix of technology and commercial that exists within our great industry. And yeah, I loved it from, from the first moment and that’s really where it started.

Adam Ross [00:02:14]:
But I didn’t know anything about affiliate marketing before it. I just learned to love it and, and yeah, I’ve been there ever since.

Marshall Nyman [00:02:22]:
And what were you doing in your initial role as client service director for Affiliate Window?

Adam Ross [00:02:28]:
Yeah, well, well actually I started off, you know, really doing integrations, so getting clients, you know, integrating the tracking technology and getting clients onto the network. So that was a great foundation. I think it’s a great way to learn about affiliate marketing to really understand those technical fundamentals. And then I became client services director and my job was really about getting our customers to really take advantage of the great technology that we had and building out service teams to help them with that. Because back then, I mean, affiliate marketing was just not very well known. And people sort of saw it as a good opportunity, but didn’t really know what they were doing. So really saw it as my job to build out the teams that could help people be successful. And that’s what I spent the next few years doing as client services director.

Adam Ross [00:03:20]:
Multiple teams, whether they were technical teams, account management teams, or general, just customer success, that was what my role was all about.

Marshall Nyman [00:03:29]:
And then you had the opportunity to move into the COO role. What led you to take on that role?

Adam Ross [00:03:36]:
So after building out those teams and bringing some really fantastic talent up through the organization, the focus of our founder back then was right, he wanted to sell. He saw great potential in the future of the business and needed to get investment and also wanted to realize some of the equity that he put into it. And so he formed a board, me and a couple of colleagues. And our primary task at the moment was positioning the business to sell. And I was, you know, part of the team that eventually sold the business to Axel Springer, who still really owns it today.

Marshall Nyman [00:04:15]:
And then four years ago, you took the helm as CEO. What has been your focus since taking AWIN over?

Adam Ross [00:04:24]:
So I was very conscious of having been at the business for a long time and not wanting to just keep doing the same thing. So when I took over, I wanted to launch a big transformation program which was primarily around investing more in our technology. You know, AWIN is, you know, 20, 25 year success story. A lot of acquisitions, a lot of mergers, a lot of bringing businesses together. There’s a huge amount of effort and time that goes into that across every aspect of the business. And I felt that we needed to refocus on the core product and invest as much effort as we possibly could in building out the platform. And so that’s really been the focus since taking over. And I think we’re really at the point now where we’re releasing new features on a seasonal basis.

Adam Ross [00:05:15]:
It’s really moving in a great direction. So I’m super happy with, with the work that everyone’s done since I took over.

Marshall Nyman [00:05:22]:
Tell us who the AWIN Group is and what is the core focus of your business.

Adam Ross [00:05:27]:
So we’re an affiliate marketing platform, we operate in multiple markets. So I consider our mission to be really empowering businesses of any size to partner and grow together. So we really try and have a platform and an experience that appeals to both startups and small businesses right the way through to big enterprise level multinationals. And we have over 30,000 customers on our books across the world. And they really do range from all those sizes. And we also have shareasale in the us. We have a business called Commission Factory in Australia. So we really try and do this an appeal to those customers in every market around the world.

Marshall Nyman [00:06:16]:
So you mentioned Shareasale. Awin purchased that in 2017. What was the goal with the acquisition and what’s in store for shareasale this year?

Adam Ross [00:06:25]:
So the acquisition of shareasale was really, we saw a business that we admired and we’d admired it from afar for a number of years. We loved what Brian Littleton and his team were building and doing, and we had ambitions to grow our presence significantly in the US market. We had done an acquisition many years earlier of a company called buyat, which had a small presence in the us, many may remember. And so we had established a good foothold there, but we wanted to do much more. And so acquiring shareasale was really about doing that. And that’s been a hugely successful acquisition for us. But what we see now is it makes sense for us in the US market to have a single brand and a single technology platform. And so this year we’re going to be upgrading all our shareasale customers to the AWIN platform, which, as I mentioned before, has been through a number of years of significant investment and is now in a really brilliant position to take on all those clients.

Adam Ross [00:07:31]:
And also all the great features that everybody’s come to know and love about shareasale are now either available on AWIN or are in a better state on awin. And so we really consider that this is going to be a great experience for all our US customers, whether they’re shareasale customers or AWIN customers. And I think there’s also a huge advantage in just simplifying our presence and our position in the market. So that’s what you’re going to see happening this year. And we have a lot of experience in acquiring networks and integrating them, and so we try and make this as seamless an experience as possible for advertisers. So there’s no requirement to change tracking. All of that is done in an automated way. We make it super simple for publishers as well.

Adam Ross [00:08:17]:
So no links need to be changed. And so therefore, you know, customers should just get a great new experience without there being much pain involved.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:28]:
AWIN is celebrating a big birthday this year in Portugal. Tell us about the event and why it’s a must.

Adam Ross [00:08:35]:
So, for many years now, Awin has been running local events. We actually, we call them think tanks, which was. Which was a shareasale concept we loved and then rolled out across all our different markets. So we’ve been running these events very successfully for a number of years, but on a local level. So we thought that this year, with it being our 25th birthday, it would make sense to run a global version of this in a beautiful location in Portugal by the sea. And so that’s what we’re doing. And it’s going to be a, it’s going to be a real celebration of the industry, a celebration of our 25 year history. Lots of great business will be done there.

Adam Ross [00:09:17]:
You know, clients love these events because they’re just a great way to meet lots of publishers to have those great face to face discussions. But now they can do it at a global scale in a beautiful place. And we’ve really gone all out to bring some excellent speakers to the event. So we’ve got Scott Galloway is going to be speaking, we have Lily Ray, we just announced Rory Sutherland. So there’s going to be a great lineup of content and I think it’s going to be a superb event. I’m really looking forward to it.

Marshall Nyman [00:09:48]:
Yeah. You recently announced at PI Live Europe about the new conversion protection initiative that you’re rolling out. Tell us what this is and why it’s important.

Adam Ross [00:09:59]:
So we’ve seen over many years now lots of challenges that have come in the way of tracking effectively. And tracking is, you know, the absolute bedrock of our industry. You know, we all love our industry because of its CPA roots and that, you know, the elegance of that model, I think is one of the key USPs of the industry and has been for many years. But if you cannot track effectively and accurately, then you undermine that premise. And so what CPI is about is primarily getting all advertisers across our platform to, to make sure that they have the latest tracking, the latest version of our tracking suite, so that we can guarantee accuracy and we can reassure publishers that all the effort they put in is going to be fairly rewarded. And what we’ve done with CPI is we’ve said that if for any reason advertisers are unable to upgrade tracking, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons for that, and instead of simply sort of shrugging our shoulders and saying, you know, that’s okay, we’ll not focus on that, we’ll brush it under the carpet. Instead, what we’re saying is that by April next year, if tracking hasn’t been upgraded, we’re going to use the vast swathes of data that we have available to assume what sales would have happened, to introduce a probabilistic form of tracking to compensate for where tracking has failed. So that’s what CPI is all about.

Adam Ross [00:11:41]:
And there’s been an incredible response from the market to this because I think it was a problem that a lot of people were speaking about, but nobody was really doing anything about it. And so far so good. We’ve seen, you know, huge groups of advertisers now upgrade to the latest tracking. I think that will accelerate even more as we reach the deadline. But I think the main message really is that publishers can be assured that when they promote through awin, they’re going to get fairly rewarded for the, for the efforts that they put in.

Marshall Nyman [00:12:10]:
Does AWIN have any other exciting platform updates in store for 2025?

Adam Ross [00:12:15]:
Absolutely, and a lot of that’s going to be announced at our Think Tank event in Portugal. But really we’re continuing to invest tons in our technology. So I think you’re going to see new experiences for advertisers and new experiences for publishers as well being announced at that event. Really exciting developments that have been a long time in the making as well as the introduction of AI backed tools and using LLMs to enhance the experience. So I can’t reveal too much because I don’t want to steal the thunder of our, of our product teams who are going to announce this and present this at Think Tank. But just safe to say that we are really excited about what’s going to be presented and what we’re going to release, not just at Think Tank, but for the whole rest of the year. It’s an exciting time to be working in our technology teams and we were just, you know, we just got ranked in the top 50 digital advertising products from G2. So I think that’s a great reflection, you know, reviewed by users, a great reflection of all the work that we’re doing and our intention is really to stay there with lots of the developments that we’re releasing throughout the rest of this year.

Marshall Nyman [00:13:26]:
Congratulations on that recognition. What has been your favorite part of working at awin?

Adam Ross [00:13:32]:
I think it’s the people and I think lots of people cite this. We frequently run engagement surveys and it’s the main reason that people give for why they love to work at awin. And I would totally agree with everybody that answers that way. We have some really amazing talent, some of which who’s been there many years, some of which is new and fresh to the industry, all working or pulling in the same direction or working, you know, for the great cause of trying to help our clients grow and help everyone in the ecosystem be Successful and it’s just a pleasure to work with the team that we have. And it keeps me keeping, keeps me highly motivated.

Marshall Nyman [00:14:15]:
Why should a brand get started in affiliate marketing?

Adam Ross [00:14:20]:
I think affiliate marketing has bags of potential for customers and for advertisers and for publishers. And that potential is only increasing over time. I think it used to be the case that affiliate marketing played in a certain part of the customer journey, was very focused on driving sales and not so much in terms of influence or not so much in post purchase activity or at the point of purchase. And I think now with the range of partners that are available through the space and the amount of innovation that those partners are bringing to the space, affiliate marketing can now solve many more challenges and problems that advertisers have in today’s digital market. And that makes it a hugely dynamic space, a very exciting space, and one that I think people should, should really take a look at because I think that, you know, there’s some misconceptions and myths about it that are, that are just, you know, obsolete now, you know, So I always implore everybody to take a fresh look at affiliate marketing and make sure that if you have a program that you’re getting the absolute maximum out of it and you’re really fulfilling the full potential that the industry has, or if you don’t have a program and you might have some negative perceptions of it, you need to look at it again, look at it with fresh eyes because it’s such an exciting space at the moment.

Marshall Nyman [00:15:50]:
As someone that’s climbed all the way up the ranks, what advice do you have for people looking to grow their career within the industry?

Adam Ross [00:15:58]:
I would say because of the dynamism of the space, because there’s new things happening all the time, new opportunities. You have to stay really close to the action. You’ve got to go to the shows, you’ve got to listen to the content that’s produced. You have to understand how the market is changing, how the industry is changing, read lots, listen to podcasts like this and really stay on top of your game. Because I think, you know, one thing’s for sure in our space that things just don’t stay the same. So you need to keep on top of that if you’re going to be.

Marshall Nyman [00:16:35]:
Successful as things change. Any predictions on what the future of performance marketing may look like?

Adam Ross [00:16:43]:
I’m excited about. You know, I’m sure this is the same for many other industries, but what can we, you know, what advantages are going to come to affiliate marketing from greater adoption of AI and how these new LLMs are becoming much more sophisticated and how machine learning is becoming more sophisticated, what opportunities is that going to bring? I can see new publishers coming into the space, I can see new ways that people shop and how affiliate marketing can be a great monetization mechanism for that. And on top of that, I can see how more intelligent models and machine learning can bring huge efficiencies to the way we work on a day to day basis. Much better forecasting, much better intelligence, smarter platforms. And I think, you know, that’s hugely exciting. So we’re trying to lean into a lot of that. I think you’re going to see that in some of the technology releases that we bring out over the coming months and I think that’s just incredibly exciting. So I’m very optimistic, very bullish about the future of performance marketing.

Marshall Nyman [00:17:49]:
What are some major challenges the industry is trying to tackle?

Adam Ross [00:17:54]:
I think one of the big challenges is tracking accuracy and that’s why we’ve gone with the CPI initiative. As I mentioned, it’s one of the things that underpins the industry. It’s got to be done properly. And I think for too long, many in the industry have ignored that. This is a growing problem. I mean, it’s always been the case that different tracking systems have discrepancies. You know, that’s been the way, you know, the way it is for many, many years. But I think at the moment what we’re seeing now is those discrepancies become much larger and as people become more privacy conscious online, that has posed different challenges to tracking and as browsers try to navigate that and respond to user needs.

Adam Ross [00:18:44]:
And so I think the time has come to really address that, to call it out as an issue and to make sure that all industry players have concrete steps that they’re taking to address that and restore the integrity of the industry.

Marshall Nyman [00:19:02]:
What opportunities do you see for the affiliate and partnership marketing industry over the next few years?

Adam Ross [00:19:10]:
I think there’s tons of opportunity and I think I mentioned it before, I think we’re living through somewhat of a, of another technological revolution with the advent of, of AI. And that I think is going to bring a whole host of new opportunities, some of which we can’t even conceive yet. And that’s really where I think we’re going to see a lot of innovation come in the coming months and years. And that makes me very excited.

Marshall Nyman [00:19:39]:
Definitely feels a lot like the early 2000s.

Adam Ross [00:19:42]:
Absolutely, yeah.

Marshall Nyman [00:19:44]:
And final question, what has been your favorite part of working in the performance marketing industry?

Adam Ross [00:19:52]:
That dynamism you know, I’m somebody that loves innovation, that loves change, that gets very excited when new opportunities arise and new publishers come into the space. New ways of doing things emerge. And for me, this industry is at the forefront of that. You know, if I, if I look at the, you know, the different phases of growth at awin, and if I look at, you know, the top publishers that may have existed 10 years ago versus the ones that exist today, it is a market that is constantly changing and new opportunities are constantly arising. And that for me is just a wonderful thing. Makes it a very exciting space to work. And long may that continue.

Marshall Nyman [00:20:42]:
Absolutely. It’s been an amazing evolution of this channel and I think that’s a great place to wrap. A big thank you to Adam for joining the podcast this week. Some great insights into his background and how you can leverage awin. What is the best way for listeners to connect with you?

Adam Ross [00:20:57]:
Adam, you can get me on LinkedIn. You can email me adamawin.com Very happy to hear from from different people in the market. So please reach out.

Marshall Nyman [00:21:07]:
Thank you to our guest, Adam Ross and to our producer Leon Zonkin. If you’ve enjoyed this content, please give us a like and a follow. Thank you for listening in. I am Marshall Nyman, host of the Performance Marketing Spotlight and founder and CEO of Naimon Co. Signing off. Thank you and have a great day.