Next up in our Meet the Member series, we speak to Anthony Clements, Managing Partner of Adtraction, one of our founding members. Anthony talks all things Adtraction, why they’ve joined The APMA and what trends he thinks will be important in 2024.
Tell us a little bit about Adtraction
Adtraction is a partner marketing network. Which basically means we help businesses that want to sell goods or services on the internet to connect with other businesses that want to help them market and sell their products. Adtraction is headquartered in Stockholm, where we were founded in 2007. We now have local offices in 12 markets across Europe. We work across a range of e-commerce sectors, as well as Finance.
What do you feel you bring to the affiliate mix?
For those that don’t know Adtraction, we are considered the largest partner network in the Nordics. Across Europe we are seen as an alternative partner marketing provider to the open networks and SaaS platforms. We provide account management to all our clients, which means service delivered by an experienced team is an important reason why businesses enjoy working with us.
When you speak to your clients, what is their general feeling towards the affiliate and partner marketing channels?
We hear words like ‘cost-effective’, ‘predictable’ and ‘low-risk’ used a lot. The commission-based payment model is the channel’s key differentiator in the minds of advertisers. Because of its profitable return on ad-spend advertisers normally want the channel to grow, but can often get frustrated when it runs out of headroom to support that growth. We find advertisers don’t often understand that spend isn’t directly linked to output in the partner channel, in the same way it might be in Search or Display.
What could The APMA be doing to help build closer relationships with them and secure bigger budgets?
We see education and research as being important parts of The APMA’s role. We hope The APMA can bring more insight from across the channel into the public domain to prove the value and effectiveness of the channel at driving sales and reaching new customers.
Why did you want to become a member of The APMA?
Partner marketing has badly needed an organisation that can talk independently on behalf of the industry. In the past this role has been filled by the channel’s biggest companies, which is no bad thing, but inevitably is done with vested interests in mind. An organisation that represents the channel’s interests in an independent, positive and collaborative way is what really attracted us to The APMA.
Are there any specific APMA projects that you want Adtraction to be part of?
Any projects that can demonstrate the channel’s growth, effectiveness and importance for advertisers that want to reach more customers and find new ones.
What is the number one topic you think the industry should be tackling in 2024?
GA4’s treatment of the partner channel. It has shone a light on the dreaded topic of attribution, which the channel has found very prickly in the past. If partner marketing does not lead the conversations when it comes to how it is measured against other channels it will be attributed out of the conversation. It’s the biggest threat to partner budgets in 2024, but also a great opportunity to prove the channel’s value.
What other trends are you anticipating will be front of mind?
I’m not sure it will be front-of mind, but a topic that deserves more attention in the channel is Google’s impact on traffic generation across the major and niche partners. We saw the Helpful Content Update in the early autumn of 2023 have a significant impact on the traffic numbers for some partners – both positive and negative – and it’s a topic that should receive more coverage.
Thanks to Anthony, if you want to find out more about Adtraction, please visit their APMA profile.
