Last month, Nordic media houses and networks gathered for an event held in Oslo. The idea was simple: get the industry together, share ideas, and spend time with each other.
The final session on the agenda was the "8 Minutes Network Battle". Each network had eight minutes on stage to answer one straightforward question: Where is partner marketing in the Nordics heading over the next three years, and why should media houses choose your network? Humour was encouraged, slides were optional, and most of the audience was already one beer in.
Adtraction's Country Manager in Norway, Øivind Brunsell, had a simple answer.
A perspective
"Things are always changing," Øivind said. "It just helps to split everything into two piles: macro and micro."
The macro pile is full of the loud headlines. AI steals all the traffic, TikTok Shop takes over e-commerce, Meta eats Europe, cookies are dying and the list goes on.
The micro pile is much quieter. A colleague changes jobs, a newspaper launches a browser extension, a media house tests a new format, a retailer finally decides to try partner marketing, a partnership that has been discussed for months suddenly comes to life.
His point was simple: we can't control most of the macro headlines, but we can influence what happens in the micro pile. That's where the work gets done, where the opportunities are, and where relationships and partnerships are built.
And that's exactly why we're local. We've built a European business, but we still believe partnerships are built locally in each market.
What will actually drive incremental sales in 2026 and beyond?
Our mission at Adtraction is simple: we help brands across Europe grow sales at a predictable cost, while helping partners monetise their content and traffic. This is similar to the core message of other networks.
The more interesting question is where that growth actually comes from. Is it AI visibility tools? AI-driven partnerships? An AI-driven platform? Or perhaps even an AI data lake? Of course not.
And don’t get me wrong, all networks should explore new things. AI has already improved a lot of things and probably made some other things worse. Technology will continue to evolve, and so will the macro headlines.
But what is truly driving sales is the same thing that always has done: meaningful and profitable partnerships. The growth we see comes from the micro pile; partners who know how to deliver valuable traffic, brands who want that traffic and local teams matching the right brands with the right partners.
It really is that simple. The macro headlines may be global, but the partnerships are local.
And that's why we continue to believe in being local.
