With PI LIVE Europe right around the corner, I had the chance to connect with Nick Fletcher, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Rakuten Advertising.
I wanted to learn more about the network’s Affiliate Intelligence initiative and what Fletcher is most looking forward to at PI LIVE this year.
You can read our conversation below, or scroll right down to watch it.
Sol Wilkinson: First of all, I wanted to say that it's amazing to have Rakuten Advertising back as a premier sponsor this year. Why did you decide to sponsor PI LIVE Europe again?
Nick Fletcher: Well, to be honest, for us, we see it as the event in performance marketing, certainly in Europe. It’s got a great mix of what’s important to us as a business. The content is great—you have a wide selection of different speakers and panellists from all parts of the industry. You’ve got networks, agencies, technology partners, publishers, advertisers—it’s just a great mix.
We’re also there for networking, which is a hugely important part of the affiliate industry and business in general. The event nurtures that environment, (it encourages) those open conversations. It’s hugely valuable for us, and we feel it’s a great return on investment for our marketing investment.
SW: At your stand this year, you're going to be talking a lot about AI, but it’s not the AI people might expect. It's Affiliate Intelligence. Can you explain what that is?
NF: Yes, so it is closely linked to AI—as in artificial intelligence—but for us, Affiliate Intelligence really encapsulates what we see as the future of affiliate marketing.
From what we can see, we have more transactional data going through our platform than any other network globally. This gives us a huge amount of data, and we believe data is really at the heart of what the industry should be doing. It powers insights and analytics, and it’s absolutely core to the entire industry.
For years, we've had a dedicated advanced analytics team, who are data wizards, but also client-facing. Their job is to not only understand the data but explain and visualise it to our advertisers and publishers.
With the advent and explosion of artificial intelligence, we started to incorporate it into our product roadmap. Affiliate Intelligence is our data-first approach to affiliate marketing, and AI plays a big role in that. dxs
We’re also lucky to have Rakuten Inc. as our parent company because they have a strategic partnership with OpenAI. That gives us a significant advantage in incorporating AI into our business.
When you combine that partnership with the data we have globally, it makes for some really exciting products and insights. Affiliate Intelligence reflects our vision for where we see the affiliate marketing industry heading and our direction as an affiliate network.
SW: One thing that stood out to me on the site was the mention of the Affiliate Conversion Journey, which ‘looks beyond the last click.’ Can you explain what that is?
NF: Yes, it’s all about understanding the user journey and how they interact with affiliate marketing before making a purchase. This is something we’ve been at the forefront of for some time.
About ten years ago, Rakuten acquired DC Storm, which was the UK’s largest independent attribution provider. They worked with major blue-chip brands to help them understand the customer journey, and that heritage still exists within our business.
That’s what powers reports like our Consumer Journey Reporting, which you’re referring to. It’s about understanding the role affiliate marketing plays throughout the consumer’s journey. Now, there has been a perception in the past that affiliate marketing is purely a lower-funnel, conversion, or new customer acquisition channel. I think that's an important part of what affiliate marketing can do. But it’s not the only thing it can do.
We’re seeing more and more advertisers recognise the value that affiliate marketing can drive throughout the entire purchase funnel. By working with publishers that target consumers at different stages, they’re seeing results beyond just that last click. Our advertisers want to understand, on a publisher-by-publisher basis, where they’re interacting with their customers and the value that each publisher brings beyond just the final click. So, it’s about answering those kinds of questions.
SW: So, is that about sourcing more data about where affiliates are interacting at each stage in the customer journey?
NF: Exactly. It’s about sourcing that data and then visualising it in a way that makes it digestible for both our advertisers and publishers. Ultimately, we believe that the more data we can provide to the people we work with, the better decisions they can make.
The conversion journey report is part of a section on our platform called the Insights and Analytics Portal, which pulls in a huge amount of data from across our global network and visualizes it in different ways. There’s conversion journey analysis, but we also do things like forecasting. Our data science team has built models that help advertisers understand what will happen if they change their budget—whether they invest more, spend less, or move spend to a different area. And it’s not just guesswork; it’s based on billions of dollars’ worth of transactions that we see each year.
SW: Amazing. I wanted to know a bit more about how Rakuten Advertising will be aiding brands and affiliates for Q4 this year?
NF: Yeah, so, Q4 is becoming increasingly complex. You’ve had things like Prime Day this week. I know that’s an Amazon initiative but a lot of retailers are now also following that as a promotional date. You’ve had things like Glamour Shopping Week in Germany or World Mental Health Day promotions. It’s no longer just about Cyber Weekend; it’s really a promotional period that runs from the start of Q4 through to the end of the year, and different regions have their own key dates.
There are two parts to it for us: proactive and reactive. The proactive part is planning for these key dates and working with our publishers and advertisers to understand what promotions they want to run. A lot of this planning was done months ago and is already baked into the plans.
Then there’s the reactive side—advertisers and publishers constantly monitor their performance, tweaking their promotions as needed, pulling back on some and pushing others. They expect us to help them be reactive, which means providing them with real-time data so they can make quick decisions during key promotional periods. That’s where we step in, providing insights and recommendations based on what we see happening in real time.
So, yeah, it’s a crazy period. It’s a period where you need all hands on deck. You need to be communicating extremely well with your publishers, your advertisers, and your colleagues internally. It's a really big team effort, and a lot of hard work goes into it, but when you get it right, it pays off, because it's such a key period for retail in particular.
SW: Definitely. Especially for the affiliate channel, since so much of this period is based around discounts, deals, offers, and promotions. Affiliate plays a huge role around this time of year.
NF: Yeah, totally agree with that. And like we said earlier, affiliate is no longer a lower funnel marketing channel. There's a brand awareness aspect to it. But it's still very, very good at converting customers and driving them over the line for that purchase.
When you’re competing for every pound, dollar, or euro in a consumer’s wallet, having a channel that’s ROI-effective and highly reactive like affiliate marketing is really powerful.
We see a lot of advertisers relying on affiliate marketing for a successful Q4 because it allows them to be flexible and responsive to what’s happening in real time. So, it’s absolutely a key channel for the end-of-year push.
SW: Yeah, it's been nice that as we head into this really busy period of the year, affiliate has also seen some pretty big wins as of late. There was a recent update from the ICO around affiliate tracking, specifically cashback cookies. What’s your view on this, and how will Rakuten Advertising support its customers with tracking challenges going forward?
NF: As you said, it’s good news for the industry. One of things the industry’s always battled with is cookie consent and GDPR. This particular update relates to the ePrivacy Directive (PECR), but GDPR is also tied into it. I think the spirit of those directors is to prevent things like building user profiles and behavioural targeting, and affiliate gets caught up in that to some extent, even though it’s not generally doing any of that. It’s relying on cookies to track sales
Cashback and loyalty sites, where users click expecting to be tracked so they can receive their reward, have been especially affected by this. The ICO’s new guidance is a welcome update for publishers in that sector. It's not a huge surprise, as the French data authority (CNIL) has already said cashback and loyalty cookies can be considered strictly necessary.
Our role is to educate our publishers and advertisers. Ultimately, it’s up to advertisers to decide if these cookies are necessary. They're the ones actually dropping the cookie.
But we should be drawing their attention to this guidance and helping them understand, if they do want to make some changes at the back of that, how they're going to implement that.
we provide different solutions to help our advertisers make exceptions and treat cashback and loyalty reward cookies as strictly necessary if they want to, and that's a discussion that we have with them on a case by case basis.
SW: PI LIVE Europe is just around the corner. What are you most looking forward to?
NF: Probably my panel, you won’t be surprised to know. (Laughs.) It’s not just because I like the sound of my own voice. I’m really lucky that the panellists on the panel are a great mix—advertisers from Superdrug and Oliver Bonas, and on the other side of the fence, we’ve got List and Customer First Digital.
I’ve had some initial conversations with them, and the insights they’ll bring are going to be really interesting for everyone attending. They’re very open about the challenges and opportunities in the industry right now, so it should be really interesting. The panel is at 10:20 on Tuesday, and I’d recommend everyone come along.
Beyond that, I’m just looking forward to the networking, talking to as many people as possible, and absorbing as much content as possible. It’s going to be a crazy couple of days, but something I’m really looking forward to.
SW: Final question—what can we expect from Rakuten Advertising in 2025 - if you can nail that down?
NF: Well, as I mentioned earlier, Affiliate Intelligence is a big focus for us, and that will continue to be key in 2025. We’re going to be doubling down on how data and technology can push the industry forwards.
Relationships are still very much the core of affiliate marketing, but data and AI can help enhance that.
Our product roadmap will be building out a lot of features around artificial intelligence, using the global data we have, and removing some of the heavy lifting and guesswork that our advertisers and publishers go through daily. This will free up their time to make more strategic decisions about how they want to grow their affiliate marketing program, ultimately building their confidence in scaling it.
We’ll also continue building on what we’ve already talked about—expanding the recognition of affiliate marketing as not just a lower-funnel marketing channel, but something that genuinely influences the consumer across the entire conversion journey.
If you haven’t yet got your ticket for PI LIVE Europe next week, head over to the site and secure one of the remaining passes now.
