In March at DealMaker, Nick Fletcher, SVP, EMEA at Rakuten Advertising, launched a call to action for marketers in the performance space. It focused on looking at the channel more holistically, using more forms of probabilistic measurement and understanding the channel’s wider impact. Seven months on, progress is being made, including on the brand side.
“The brands that we work with and we talk to are evolving their measurement,” said Fletcher. “I think they understand that deterministic measurement isn't necessarily good enough for the channel and undervalues the channel a lot of the time.”
And as more advanced forms of measurement are adopted, there will be more opportunities and spend flowing into the channel, Fletcher said, noting that the industry’s arsenal is also “arguably wider than any other media channel out there.”
This is especially pertinent as AI begins to feed into every facet of the industry.
Partnerships, trust and LLMs
“As with any industry, the impact of AI is absolutely massive on our channel. I think it does present a huge opportunity for us,” said Fletcher, including from the brand side.
“More and more brands that we work with are turning to our channel to help understand how they can drive visibility within LLMs,” explained Fletcher.
One aspect of this is that brands have invested significant budget into building their brand with media they control, but this control is absent within LLMs.
“I think the advantage that we've got as a channel is that partnerships are more and more trusted by those LLMs. So they're increasingly turning to content [and] what people are saying about their brands rather than relying on what brands are saying about their own products and services.”
Here, the channel has a “massive opportunity” to take advantage of the AI revolution, Fletcher said.
Capitalising on the performance opportunity
Indeed, according to Fletcher, Rakuten Advertising is now working with more publishers that are driving performance within LLMs.
“We are then taking that, we're understanding what publishers drive that performance within LLMs and citations within LLMs, and we're feeding that data back to our clients and our publishers and starting to incentivise our publishers to drive that sort of behaviour and visibility.”
And the opportunities within partnership marketing? They’re “bigger than ever,” and “rapidly expanding,” said Fletcher.
Setting the record straight
In tandem, Fletcher set the record straight on a misconception — one he said has been a constant battle in the past — that the channel is lower funnel.
“I think a well-run performance marketing program will always be full funnel and the evolution of measurement in the space is allowing us more than ever to bring different types of publishers, different types of media into the space working on a performance basis but not necessarily always optimising towards a last-click-wins basis,” said Fletcher.
“We are a full funnel marketing channel, and if we can deliver that successfully then the industry is in a brilliant place and will continue to grow.”
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