We recently announced our seven-person advisory board as we continue on our mission to promote and advocate for the affiliate and partner marketing industries. The advisory board will play a crucial role in shaping the direction and effectiveness of The APMA, ensuring it serves the needs of its members and the industry as a whole.
In this series of interviews with each member, we wanted to let you get to know them a bit better and showcase why we invited them to be on the board, what they’re most excited about and what they’ll bring to the table. We’ve heard from Eitan and Rich, this time it’s the turn of Julia Stent.
Tell us a little a bit about you…
I’m a Strategy Advisor and Board Member for technology intermediaries, spanning partner marketing, SaaS, and marketplaces. I support companies with their strategy, go-to-market, team formation, and monetisation plans. I’m particularly passionate about supporting great leaders and work closely with the CEOs I partners with. My experience spans nearly two decades in the performance marketing industry, across 30+ companies from startup incubators like the London Mayor’s Innovation Hub to PLCs like Uswitch and Comparethemarket. I’m a board member of Genie Ventures and Rightcharge, and a strategic advisor to Uniqodo, Mention Me, and the National Support Network (not-for-profit).
What made you want to be on the strategic advisor board of The APMA?
More than a decade ago, I was heavily involved in the IAB Affiliate Marketing Council. After this ended, the affiliate industry was missing its centralised voice to push forward progress and protect our revenues. When Kevin decided to set up the APMA, I jumped at the chance to support him. There are so many issues we need a collective voice to tackle – from opportunities like AI and education to existential threats like tracking and attribution. I’m a big believer in the power of collaboration to get things done, and I also see up close that this can be difficult for the individual companies I work with without one central place to coordinate their efforts.
What do you think you’ll bring to the table? Literally and figuratively!
I hope the breadth of affiliate experience I bring can be an asset, I’ve worked with 30+ companies over the last decade related to the performance channel. This is largely leaning towards the publisher side of the industry, especially from companies like Uswitch, Genie Ventures and Uniqodo, but with a dash of agency, network and client experience too. In my advisory work, I do a lot of strategy workshop facilitation and so far I’ve been able to bring that to help the APMA, such as facilitating workshops from large and varied groups of members to identify our strategic goals for the year.
What is one of the biggest challenges facing the affiliate channel you think we need to solve?
I think our industry could be significantly better at payment facilitation. There’s a huge imbalance between when publishers need to pay for traffic versus when advertisers eventually pay through networks. Just try telling Google or Meta you want 70+ day payment terms like publishers receive… I don’t think you’d get very far. I’ve seen time and time again that this creates hurdles for growth or hampers valuations on affiliate companies due to working capital requirements.
What are you most excited about for the future of The APMA and its members?
The element I value the most with the APMA is the chance to connect regularly with senior decision-makers from right across the industry. I’m excited that we have our quarterly face-to-face events, that are not only a solid update on our progress but also a chance to network with our members. I’m on a bit of a personal mission to get more publishers to come along – if you’re a publisher and you’re interested in trying out an APMA event, drop me a note to come along as my guest for free.
Tell me a little known fact about you, or something our members might find interesting!
Working with one of my long-term clients involved becoming an expert on pet nutrition… if you want to know what to feed your puppy, hit me up!
Thanks to Julia and welcome!
