Affiliate Nerd Out

Live fro PI Live in Miami with Jennifer Goodwin & Jade Mayberry

April 28, 2024 Dustin Howes Season 1 Episode 84
Live fro PI Live in Miami with Jennifer Goodwin & Jade Mayberry
Affiliate Nerd Out
More Info
Affiliate Nerd Out
Live fro PI Live in Miami with Jennifer Goodwin & Jade Mayberry
Apr 28, 2024 Season 1 Episode 84
Dustin Howes

Embark on a journey through the dynamic landscape of affiliate marketing with us, as we sit down with the illustrious Jennifer Hoodwin on Affiliate Nerd Out. With over 15 years of trailblazing in the field, Jennifer pulls back the curtain on her remarkable career, from the early days at Brad's Deals to her influential role in the acquisitions of Definitive Deals and Honey. Her pivot to consulting and her drive to inject fresh talent into the industry through her agency, High Energy, highlights a story of innovation and growth that's paving new roads in the affiliate space.

As co-founder of High Energy, Jennifer Hoodwin takes us behind the scenes of a unique agency model that partners with avant-garde publishers. Our discussion traverses the agency's organic expansion and its strategic approach to client engagement, from triumphs in France with Joko to weaving AI and super apps into the fabric of affiliate marketing. The conversation is peppered with insights into the agency's careful client selection and the agility required in today’s fluctuating business environments.

This episode isn't just about the mechanics of affiliate marketing; it's about the heartbeat of the industry – the people and relationships that make it thrive. We delve into the symbiotic relationship between affiliate marketing and influencer partnerships, the art of networking, and the importance of community and mentorship. With special guest Jade Mary Berry from Dentsu sharing her affiliate marketing journey and the significance of community events like PI Live, this episode is a treasure trove for anyone looking to navigate the affiliate marketing world with finesse and camaraderie.

Dustinhowes.com/affistash

The Markable platform is fully synced with Amazon, Target, & Walmart creator storefronts. Creators don't need to copy and paste affiliate links since every item & collection from their storefronts are on auto-sync and ready for content creation. Go to dustinhowes.com/markable to learn more

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Embark on a journey through the dynamic landscape of affiliate marketing with us, as we sit down with the illustrious Jennifer Hoodwin on Affiliate Nerd Out. With over 15 years of trailblazing in the field, Jennifer pulls back the curtain on her remarkable career, from the early days at Brad's Deals to her influential role in the acquisitions of Definitive Deals and Honey. Her pivot to consulting and her drive to inject fresh talent into the industry through her agency, High Energy, highlights a story of innovation and growth that's paving new roads in the affiliate space.

As co-founder of High Energy, Jennifer Hoodwin takes us behind the scenes of a unique agency model that partners with avant-garde publishers. Our discussion traverses the agency's organic expansion and its strategic approach to client engagement, from triumphs in France with Joko to weaving AI and super apps into the fabric of affiliate marketing. The conversation is peppered with insights into the agency's careful client selection and the agility required in today’s fluctuating business environments.

This episode isn't just about the mechanics of affiliate marketing; it's about the heartbeat of the industry – the people and relationships that make it thrive. We delve into the symbiotic relationship between affiliate marketing and influencer partnerships, the art of networking, and the importance of community and mentorship. With special guest Jade Mary Berry from Dentsu sharing her affiliate marketing journey and the significance of community events like PI Live, this episode is a treasure trove for anyone looking to navigate the affiliate marketing world with finesse and camaraderie.

Dustinhowes.com/affistash

The Markable platform is fully synced with Amazon, Target, & Walmart creator storefronts. Creators don't need to copy and paste affiliate links since every item & collection from their storefronts are on auto-sync and ready for content creation. Go to dustinhowes.com/markable to learn more

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Dustin Howes:

All right, I hope we're live. It looks good, I don't know. Can you see it from here?

Jennifer Goodwin:

Hi it looks good. It's just a little bit shadowy. Yeah, it's shadowy.

Jade Mayberry:

Shadowy yeah it does?

Dustin Howes:

I can hear it in. I think that's just because of the lights. All right, well, we'll figure this out shortly. I don't really have captions. Resign.

Jade Mayberry:

Do we want to do it with the sun in front of us, not behind us. That's too late now, okay. We're going to run with it Okay.

Dustin Howes:

And see what happens. We could always shut that curtain too. It's just not that it's a ton of extra, but it at least would block the sun out of your face. All right, just says, all right, we're gonna figure it out. Uh, we're gonna roll and we are live. Welcome to affiliate nerd out. I am your narrator, dustin house. Spread that good word. We're going to roll and we are live. Welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I'm your narrator, dustin Howes. Spread that good word about affiliate marketing and we've got a special edition here of a live version of Affiliate Nerd Out over at PI Live in Florida. And my guest today, jennifer Hoodwin. Thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jade Mayberry:

Awesome. Let's start out with yeah, thanks for having me Awesome.

Dustin Howes:

Let's start out with what you're doing in this industry. What's your story?

Jade Mayberry:

My story goes back about 15 and a half years.

Dustin Howes:

All right.

Jade Mayberry:

I've had a few other careers in my lifetime and I had a friend whose husband owned Bradstills and asked me if I'd come in and consult for a little bit. I told her I knew nothing about affiliate marketing but she was confident that I could do it. So he called me in. He hired me. I hired a PR firm. We worked together for about three months and I realized very quickly, after talking to the seven people that were working there, is they needed a partnerships team. There was no one in contact with the advertisers, the networks. No one was responding to emails. It was very, very easy for me to suss that out without knowing anything about affiliate marketing. So we started there, grew the team out. I was there for about three and a half years and then I left and went to Definitive Deals.

Jade Mayberry:

I was at Definitive Deals with Chris Aragon who was honey he was on honey, matias Larson and Rob Goff and they ended up selling pretty quickly. I came on knowing we'd sell, but we sold in like 10 months and we sold to couponscom. So then I moved to couponscom a lot of time out in LA I mean, I was living in Chicago but doing a lot of commuting. Couponscom brought us in and I worked for them for about three and a half years trying to help them understand affiliate marketing. I don't know that they ever fully understood it and then they recently shut the program down. But from there I went to PMX, which then became Forward PMX, which is now Assembly, and I helped Christy Frazier run her affiliate team there for about almost two years and then I was asked to go to Honey.

Jade Mayberry:

So I was lucky enough to be part of the Honey team for about one year and we were acquired in 2019, right COVID and then worked there for four years, have been out of PayPal for about a year and started consulting. I just kind of rolled into it. I wanted to take a break and not work. I was going to just focus on myself. It didn't last very long. I think I had a week that I rested and then I got a phone call and so I started consulting and I've loved it and it's been really fun. And my partner, dexter Devmers he was at CJ for a really long time, he was with me at Honey as a director senior director as well, and we both just started talking about what's missing in the affiliate space and we know that there's the networks, the publishers, the agencies for mostly advertisers.

Jade Mayberry:

There's a few people that are consulting in the space on the publisher side, but no one's created an agency like a true agency. So we've really been honing in and focusing on bringing new people into the space. We have seven clients right now, which is great. It's been really exciting. Some of them we're doing beginning to end, where they're actual, the arm of their team and getting them into programs, getting them in front of them doing roadshows. Ok, you know, going in and doing links. You know, you name it, we'll do it all.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah.

Jade Mayberry:

We also help hire. If you want to use us for a couple of phases and then you want to have an internal team, then I will. I'll go in and give you resumes and help you hire. Like a really amazing team.

Dustin Howes:

That's a nice. That's a nice add on. So, uh, as you tell that story right before we started, um, oh, wow, uh, can you go to the next tab? I want to make sure that we are still hot. Oh my God, there. It should say there we go.

Jade Mayberry:

Okay. Still live live, we're live, we're hot and live good call.

Dustin Howes:

I mean at least half of the room. Yes, is the full room. Is live great um I. You asked like how have we never met before? Yeah, in person. And the reason is I've never touched the coupon realm.

Jade Mayberry:

There we go, and I was in it for a very long time. That's all you've done from your entire story there. So that's incredible.

Dustin Howes:

So you got to be a part of that acquisition I did.

Jade Mayberry:

I was very, very lucky.

Dustin Howes:

That was an interesting one in the industry, one that actually scared me a little bit.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, I think it scared everybody I think it scared us. It was a really amazing time to be a part. I've been a part of two acquisitions, which is really exciting for learning and understanding and equity.

Jade Mayberry:

I was only at Honey for a year when we were acquired. Then we were acquired for $4 billion. Then the world shut down. Like literally just a few months later I was their first remote employee honey. They'd never had one, and Chris was able to somehow make that happen, which I was super excited about. But then, you know, a few months later we shut down.

Dustin Howes:

So everyone was like it was a yeah, you guys shut down, but like business boomed.

Jade Mayberry:

Oh insanity.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, we worked more.

Jade Mayberry:

You know, I think back to COVID and I know so many people were really struggling and depressed and had nothing to do and lost, you know, lost the just the sense of being organized and structured. For us it was tenfold. We were working 50, 60 hours a week because PayPal didn't understand honey and they just acquired us. So we had so many internal calls trying to explain and train. And then we were also booming and all of our advertisers were like we're going from 30% online to 100% online and we need you to work now. And so we hustled Great, yeah, I mean I have to thank.

Jade Mayberry:

I thank God I had a job like that, because I think I would have really struggled. I had two kids at home in eighth grade who were depressed. I had a mom they had Alzheimer's that I was living with. I moved into Michigan. We all drove quickly, got into Michigan and helped her, and then and then my husband worked at the Chicago Bulls and he he's never not been very regimented and he had barely anything to do, you know. So I was just lucky that I was busy and could use my brain for a while.

Dustin Howes:

Is he a power forward on the Bulls I wish he's not, he's creative, very, very creative.

Jade Mayberry:

He helps run their graphic design team.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, awesome.

Jade Mayberry:

I know I used to lie and say I'd name a player and pretend I'm too old. Now I can old, now I can't do that anymore. I guess I could go for the coaches you can just say 13th man like no, he doesn't get in, like nobody knows his name, he wouldn't know him.

Dustin Howes:

But yeah he's, he's played overseas quite a bit, love it. Uh well, very interesting journey and I love your pivot here. Like how did you go from the coupon realm into that? Like, I totally agree with you that this is an underserved market right now and I'm seeing some fresh faces get into it, especially in the consulting realm, but you're the first real agency helping these folks. So how did you transition from what you were doing into knowing that you needed to get into this space?

Jade Mayberry:

Well, so I started with one client by myself, and then Dexter had a client that he asked me to help him on.

Jade Mayberry:

It was a company called Reup. It's been acquired by Croissant and we worked together on these projects here and there and we both started talking a lot about there's a real need for this, not a huge need. It's a little different than advertisers, right? Because, yes, there are new publishers coming into the space not as quickly, not as many, but there are new publishers and we've been blessed. I mean, we have all seven of our publishers are pretty new. You might know two of them, but the other ones you've never heard of before, which is really fun to take to the advertisers.

Jade Mayberry:

You know, when I get to talk to Walmart or Target or you know, or anyone that normally doesn't return your emails or phone calls, they're excited because they're like is it more than just an extension browser? It doesn't do just coupons and they just want to know what else is out there. Some of our clients are using AI, a lot of them have super apps and then some of them post transaction Just really interesting new companies that are really excited to get in this space. Okay, and we were lucky enough that someone would give them my phone number and they would call me and then we'd have a meeting and they would ask me what you know, tell me what they're trying to do, and I would lay out a plan for them and and then we would agree to it. And that's that's really how Dexter and I decided this is definitely a real opportunity and we need to create high energy.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha, and like the publishers that you're working with, they're not necessarily influencers or content media sites that just haven't embraced affiliate yet or maybe not doing it right.

Jade Mayberry:

No, these are all brand new sites.

Dustin Howes:

Oh, okay.

Jade Mayberry:

There's. We have one client, joko. They're out of France. They were one of our very first, second, second client. They are a super app. They've got 3 million users in France and have just crushed it year over year. They reached out to us through through some contacts and we have been working with them. We're on phase two with them, so we're on our second six months with them and we're just we haven't even launched yet. We've really been just getting all the advertisers onboarded into the app, doing a lot of roadshows to introduce them to all the big players in the space and make sure that all the networks and our agencies understand what we're doing and who each of our clients are. So I go in as Joko, right, I'm emailing under Joko, depending on what client I have, and then high energy is obviously where we keep all of the publishers together, but I really try to just be an extension of each one of these teams.

Jade Mayberry:

And same with the people we have working with us.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha. So lead generation for publishers like this, it's got to be a little bit difficult, I would assume. Is it more inbound, like word of mouth coming to you? That's all it's been, yeah.

Jade Mayberry:

I mean I I yes I'm a little concerned when I have to start Auslan to find the new leads. I mean I definitely think there's a lot out there. I think what we're seeing in a lot of the conversations today there's a huge shift going on and affiliate has finally gotten a little bit of respect in the industry. Right, everyone's losing the budget, affiliates being given more budget, and so I do believe that there are players out there that would be interested in coming into the space. It's going to just be a lot more of hunting and really thinking through cause. We want to be really careful and thoughtful with who we bring on. We want to have a very specific type. They don't have to be the same. I like that. They're all different, yeah, but we really want to work with people that are like-minded, that like us, that we really have fun together and that we can collaborate and really help them grow.

Dustin Howes:

And so we've been really I mean we've been lucky Knock on wood, yeah, and so you guys are growing steadily small, like seven clients so far, yep.

Jade Mayberry:

Seven clients.

Dustin Howes:

Okay.

Jade Mayberry:

There's Dex and I we're full time and then we have five 1099s Okay, and we, you know, we hope to be able to bring a couple of them on in the next six months.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, cool, cool, don't want to get too much overhead, all right. And then, uh, what's a like ideal world, like who is? Who is a publisher that you're looking to work with, essentially? And is it, is it pre-revenue, uh kind of publications or apps you mentioned?

Jade Mayberry:

it's so interesting that you say that. I mean, we're really. We have all new publishers, for the most part, yeah, outside of Joko and Carrot I don't know if you've heard of Carrotcom.

Dustin Howes:

Is that a geo? It was there, yeah, yeah yeah, absolutely, and they're.

Jade Mayberry:

They've done something different. They're now doing dupecom, which is insane. You put dupe with a forward slash in front of any skew or any picture and they will immediately lay out. With AI you know another 20 to 30 of the identical at different price points. It's pretty insane.

Dustin Howes:

That's very interesting.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, it's been very interesting. I think for us we're happy to help any publisher in the space. It doesn't have to be a new publisher. I mean, I am happy to help the older publishers that are saying we're losing revenue to all these new publishers coming in with AI, with extension browsers, with super apps right, a lot of these, you know old school publishers can't keep up and slowly and surely they're starting to lose some of the commission, and so we're happy to help them too.

Jade Mayberry:

I think sometimes it's just about having someone come in and audit and really be able to say what you're doing is excellent and we love it. But we've got a few things up our sleeves that we learned that we think would help you drive more revenue, be able to kind of do a little bit of a twist and freshen yourselves up and make sure that everyone remembers who you are. Because I think oftentimes we all get real comfortable in the affiliate space. We all become good friends, we trust each other, we pass each other information and help each other get you know clients. But we're not working that hard to like go out and seek. So we're definitely, you know, going to have those conversations, but we also don't want to get so big that we can't manage it.

Jade Mayberry:

We want to really be in control of how quickly we ramp up.

Dustin Howes:

I mean that's got to be one of the biggest challenges for any agency, like the ebbs and flows as we talk through it, like any OPM. That is hey, we got a bunch of business, now we got to hire. Oh, we lost business, now we got to fire. Like it's a tough challenge.

Jade Mayberry:

It is, and that's something that Dexter and I spoke a lot about and reason why we started with 1099s. I mean, I honestly think we'll be able to get a few good employees on board full time, but I also think that we have so many amazing people in this space who are so good that want to be a 1099 employee. So, you know, we'll always be looking for the talent and and I think you know, we're definitely looking for really people that are interested in doing something different and new. Every day is different. You know, I've worked at a lot of publishers and everything was, by the time I like, mastered it. Every day was pretty the same Different fires, we were putting out, different deals, we were creating, different revenue we were bringing in but this is a whole new ballgame. This is like building it from the ground up and really making sure that we do it right and don't have to backtrack to fix.

Dustin Howes:

Right, right. So your journey with what are kind of the not necessarily your ICP, but like starting points for when the clientele that you're taking on you have to turn some away.

Jade Mayberry:

I would assume, because they're not a good fit. We have we've had a few qualifiers. Yeah, I think lead gen is really hard for us. Okay, just giving us commission based on sales and you're a brand new company. We're absolutely not going to do that.

Jade Mayberry:

The amount of effort and time and energy it takes to start a company with, with a actual company, and we're an extension of them. It's massive the amount of work that we have to do and we're putting in that first three, six months. That's like kind of your make it or break it time, Like we've got to get into all the programs. We've got to make sure that we're compliant. We have to make sure that everyone knows what we're doing and so we have turned away people and not because we didn't want to work with them. We don't have the bandwidth, especially when it comes to just commission or lead gen.

Jade Mayberry:

We just can't do that, so we've turned away a few of those.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah. So let's turn it to those that might be publishers or thinking about being in the affiliate space out there, that are considering the affiliate world. What are some of those tips that you can give them as first steps? Like, in my opinion, like using something like pretty links on your WordPress site to generate affiliate links, and like cloak them and keep that track of them is one of those good practices. What are some of the things that folks can do on their own, like yeah, I mean, I think it's one.

Jade Mayberry:

We have all have Google and we all have AI right. So if you don't understand affiliate marketing, now more than ever you can get as much information at your fingertips.

Jade Mayberry:

So, it's actually taking the time to really understand what affiliate marketing is. My family just kind of now is starting to understand what I do, 15 and a half years later. It's just a little bit unique. It's just. It's not a traditional sale. It's not traditional marketing. It's a kind of a pay to play model which we all see has worked throughout time and now a lot of the display money is now coming to.

Jade Mayberry:

Okay, we can do it this way. So I think what we do is we educate first. We do affiliate 101, we do a deck, we walk through it with them, make sure that they understand that this is what we'll be getting into and this is what it looks like and here's how the revenue comes. We also explain that it takes time. There are phases. You have to be patient. You're not going to make a million dollars in six months.

Jade Mayberry:

Some of these guys are ready to rock and roll but, like, as long as we get them in the great programs and they've got, they've got quality traffic, then I think that it's. It's a win-win. So it's really whatever they want to. You know, we ask them what are your KPIs? What are you looking for? What do you want out of us? How can we help? You be the best publisher in this space, and so we kind of take that time to get to know them, to understand them, to understand how they're, if they have another company and they've successful. How have you done it? How have you been successful? We'll definitely try our best. France is a little different than the U? S, so it's going to look different here than it does in France.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah.

Jade Mayberry:

And so it's also reminding them that too, just cause it works in France, it might be a little harder here, because it's we have a saturated market in a lot of ways.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha.

Jade Mayberry:

But um, so we just kind of talk through everything that they might need and answer any questions. I mean we respond all the time. We're on calls different hours of the night, just cause we've got an Australian client. We have France clients, so we're getting used to not having a traditional eight to five job.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, uh, I, I don't know that I ever had eight to five in affiliate marketing.

Jade Mayberry:

But at least I could turn off the computer and say okay, I'm taking a little bit of a break.

Dustin Howes:

I try.

Jade Mayberry:

I try to do that now, but it's harder in the beginning. It's a lot easier on a W-2 than it this side of the business. Two, to know like, okay, we've got to be so frugal and so smart and we can't instantly start hiring people just because we're making money, because we could lose that money in a month. Startups are also a risk too, so we want to make sure our portfolio is not completely just startups, because we want to be able to make sure that we keep the players in the space that have been here for 20, 30 years okay, there's a lot of them.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, they're still around, right, and I'm seeing some kinds of shifts in the market with, like hearst, for example, is switching their model a little bit here, uh, which is a little bit mind blowing. But do you see this trend of more people coming towards affiliate rather than skipping away from it?

Jade Mayberry:

I think more people are coming. I think we just cracked the door. I think that I mean, I've had so many VCs come and talk to me when they found out what I'm doing, which I find very interesting. No one 10 years ago. People would have just laughed at us and be like, oh good luck, you know, and I think I think we cracked the door, we got a little bit of respect. We're not, we don't have all the respect, but we got a little bit of respect and that's good enough for all of us, because that's all we wanted was to say we really are doing a great job and we're helping the advertisers, we're helping the publishers, the networks, like we're doing everything we can to make sure that this industry is well known, and I feel like it's just starting to even be talked about. So I do, I think.

Jade Mayberry:

I think it's just the beginning. I think a lot of the ad spend is going to change. I think we're going to get a lot more revenue coming towards affiliate, because, let's be honest, you don't have to pay. You literally have a link, and if someone can't drive a sale for you, what's the loss? Right, You're not losing anything. You're trying and testing, and so that's kind of what we talk about is everything's not going to work the same for each of our publishers.

Jade Mayberry:

So we have to be really thoughtful about how we do everything.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and speaking of your publishers and, like you know, starting that revenue stream, do you suggest other things outside of affiliate, like display if they have enough traffic, or you know we were starting.

Jade Mayberry:

I would love to have like three different arms. I hope to eventually have that, but we're going to start and really focus on the publisher side. We want to master that first and then I think we'll start to have better conversations about what's our next arm of the business and where can? We also continue to help the publishers in the space.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, gotcha.

Jade Mayberry:

Not yet.

Dustin Howes:

And your company name.

Jade Mayberry:

High Energy Agency.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha, and what's this name origin?

Jade Mayberry:

Well, this name origin is I have a lot of energy and I have been in this space for a long time. So I was talking with Dexter and we came up with a few yeah, and I sent over high energy, probably in the middle of the night and he's not crazy high energy, but when he wants to, he's got that energy and he's like I really like it and I think it shows like it's really like hi, like we're introducing you to the space and we're going to help you be successful, but it's also I have very high energy as well, and so we're going to work hard and we're going to work fast and we're going to always be like innovating and re-innovating and figuring out ways to continue to grow and build.

Dustin Howes:

So the folks that are helping bring this word of mouth to you. Who are those folks? I wouldn't see networks being able to send you leads. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's no networks.

Jade Mayberry:

It's not agencies, it's individuals. It's people that maybe I worked with in Australia, that were with me at one of my companies. It's people and they don't call me. They give my name or number to these people or they give it to Dexter you know, give Dexter's information, and so it's really been just kind of a word of mouth.

Jennifer Goodwin:

All right.

Jade Mayberry:

So far, so far. That's how it's been.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome. I don't know what our time looks like. We've got a few minutes left. How do people get a hold of you?

Jade Mayberry:

Jen at highenergyagencycom is my email. Um, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so I always respond. Unless it's like a paid, then I forget to respond and get in trouble for that. But, um, I'm pretty good at responding and reading through my messages. Now I used to forget that they were there, but now I'm like, okay, I've got to be on top of that so you can reach out to myself or Dexter, dexter Detmers, he's also got Dexter at highenergyagencycom. And yeah, we're I mean, we're happy to have conversations with anyone that's interested in at least understanding what we were doing and we can kind of like take them through the process of how we operate and what we plan to do and how we would help them.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha? And what about outside of publishers, influencers with a big social following that need help, like starting to move that traffic into a website and collect email addresses? Are you helping those folks as well?

Jade Mayberry:

We're very close to that.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, we're very, very close to that Like that. Definitely I see the shift right. I look at content. We all know content is king right now. Everyone wants to be able to quantify how many sales are coming through content, which isn't fixed quite yet, but it's starting to be and we're starting to see that. And influencers are everyone's leaning in. Gen Z millennials get their information from TikTok not Google, not AI, sometimes AI, but yeah, I think it's, it's that for sure.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, it's coming and I've started to dabble in this, taking on a few clients in that capacity, and it's a much easier conversation than being on the affiliate manager side of the brand and begging people to promote you.

Jade Mayberry:

That's true.

Dustin Howes:

You're on the other side and brands want to work with you, so your response rates gets exponentially higher.

Jade Mayberry:

I mean, I think it's funny, like you, look at the younger generation and how much they've been able to just dive in with influencer. They're great at it, right? I don't know that anyone's mastered it quite yet. In the affiliate space, I know that a lot of the networks are creating these, these um influencer platforms, and I feel like everyone's racing to be in the lead. For the influencers. I don't feel like there's a real true winner quite yet. I mean there's.

Jade Mayberry:

There's definitely companies that are doing very very well but I don't know that we as an affiliate space have mastered it quite yet. I feel like it's pretty new.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and like Pat Flynn comes to mind. I don't know how much you know about him, but incredible story of you know starting this blog of passive income and teaching people about affiliate and what he's doing and what's winning.

Jade Mayberry:

I've listened to one of his videos. Okay.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, but he keeps on transitioning. He built a community and then one day he's like I don't have any YouTube followers, I'm going to start a YouTube channel. Yeah, and he did lives for like a hundred straight days.

Jade Mayberry:

That is commitment right there.

Dustin Howes:

Until he mastered it and, you know, got 500,000 followers and then he can slow down, but, like now, he sells a course on how to build your YouTube channel, right? Yeah, I love those stories and I think we're going to find a lot more of those influencers turning into those smart characters that learn this way, right?

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, I think that. I think that there's a lot of really talented people out there that are just starting to get into the space, that are influencers or content and like even live live shopping. I think live shopping will be entering the affiliate space. Um, I know that it's much slower here in the U?

Jade Mayberry:

S right to, to adapt, compared to, like China, where it's a trillion dollar business, um, but I'm starting to see a lot more of that happening, especially with Tik TOK. You see a ton of Amazon, you see a ton of it. But I think eventually the actual advertisers, if they really want to stay top of mind, they need to start doing that and they need to have maybe someone that's an expert within their organization, that gets trained, that understands it and then can go and pitch it. If you're working for Prada, why wouldn't you want to have someone that's in your store every single day, that knows ins and outs of everything that you do and what you're looking for? Right, they're going to be able to speak to the product so much better than someone that's just coming in because it's Prada and it's a name brand. So I do think that that like listen, everything moves a little bit slow, it takes a little bit of time, but I definitely think, with influencer and live shopping, I think we'll start to see a ton more of that.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, awesome. I'm excited for the future of this and what you're pioneering here. So why come to these conferences? What are you getting out of PI Live here.

Jade Mayberry:

You know, it's my second year at PI Live and I, honestly, I was coming, joko was coming and I was coming with them set up a bunch of meetings and they had you know, business gets busy and they had something that came up, so they were not able to come. So, and then I was asked to help host the impact stage today. So that was great. I mean, I got to meet a lot of people and listen to a lot of really good panels and then I meet, I meet with a lot of people. I'm not. I'm not here looking for business, but I wanted to see everyone. Yeah, I want to talk to people about our clients and see if they're interested. So I've been having those type of conversations to get them onboarded.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah.

Jade Mayberry:

With a lot of different brands, and I love affiliate Like I never thought when I got in here 15 and a half years ago I'd still be here. Yeah, and I love it. I like.

Dustin Howes:

I and a half years ago I'd still be here, yeah, and I love it. I like I definitely will probably end my career in affiliate. You know, I got, I got a few more years to go, but, yeah, yeah, a few more years, right, all right. Uh, I I feel the same way, like as I watch the folks that I uh started with at cj and impact and like other companies that I've gone through in my career. They move on to other marketing venues, channels and uh expand into the digital marketing realm and, uh, I like staying in this channel. I, I'm, I'm well, everybody says it's not a channel, but whatever, I'm going to second that it's a channel.

Dustin Howes:

All right, thank you, uh, but uh, this community of folks I am very interested in staying with, I like yeah, it's such a special community. Yes.

Jade Mayberry:

I mean, I have some lifelong friends that you know, that I met on day one here and most of my friends are my, are my competitors, right? So when I was a publisher I hung out with all the other publishers our top competition, yeah publisher.

Jade Mayberry:

I hung out with all the other publishers our top competition, because there's enough business in the affiliate world for all of us to win. I don't think it should be like that we're worried about someone's going to steal something from us. I mean, listen, I'm sure it happens, right, people steal clients from each other all the time, but in my mind I feel like there's enough work to do and enough clients to have that we should all be able to be successful and happy and kind to each other and help each other, and I also love mentoring, and so that's been really fun, honey.

Jade Mayberry:

I got to do it a lot and I've continued to do it because, this younger generation, like they're going to be, you know, at the helm pretty soon and they, they're great and they're all really hard workers, but they're new into the space yeah somebody's got to help them, like, really understand all of our acronyms and uh.

Dustin Howes:

That brings up an idea like there's a thousand uh courses out there teaching affiliate marketing and like how to be a millionaire and like, uh, some of them are fraudulent. I would just say much more. Some are more respectful of people's like ambitions, and others Sure.

Jade Mayberry:

That's fair.

Dustin Howes:

That's the nicest way I could put it, I guess.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, that's fair.

Dustin Howes:

Some of them are turds.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, absolutely lead generation.

Dustin Howes:

like pairing up with those folks that are building those courses and like, if you need to get that next level, my friend over here over at high energy is is doing great things and can help you get there.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, and then, like, that's the stuff we've talked a lot about. Like there's so much I want to do, but first they have to get successful and make money to like be able to sustain the company, to then be able to do things like that, which would just be like to me. That's just fun that case study.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, build that out first. I hear you absolutely, um, all right, uh, we should be about at time here, and oh, jade is on her way, so, uh, we'll wait until she gets here.

Jade Mayberry:

This has been so great, yeah, I'm so glad I got to meet you in person.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, I'm really loving this venue. Pi Live.

Jade Mayberry:

I love it.

Dustin Howes:

I heard so many good things last year that I had to come here this year and I'm really excited that I am coming here. But I've heard in her and from the folks in the industry that this might be the next networking spot, rather than an ASW and ASC kind of thing.

Jade Mayberry:

Oh please, dear God, I hope so. I love ASW. I have to take that back, asw. I get a lot of business done. Don't ask me to go to ASC ever again. 10 years and out, I'll never go back. You can't pay me. I mean, maybe if you offered me a couple million I'd come, but that's the only way.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, they would have to pay for all my traveling and speaking. Like some, something would have to be dramatically, but I love West. I'm just a gambler and I love that that, that environment. But this is this. I'm coming here next year.

Jade Mayberry:

Absolutely. I think that this is really interesting and I've I've helped judge some of their you know their, their awards and things like that. I think it's a unique play. We've needed somebody else to come into space. Obviously, we have the CJs, the Rakitins, the impacts, the partner eyes you know, you name it. We've got them. But it's nice to have somebody doing this as well and giving us another venue to like, gain knowledge, listen to other people on the panel that we maybe would not see at an ASW or ASC, and that's been really exciting.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, awesome, all right. Well, thank you so much for your time. We're going to have Jade Mary Berry on her way over right now and she's going to come on in. We'll switch places here. Stay tuned, hang in here and while we switch out, great Is this your water.

Jade Mayberry:

It is.

Dustin Howes:

Thank you, switch out. Is this your water? It is. I've been so harsh talking on the mic. Yeah, it was a good speaking session, or like you were just hosting, right? I?

Jade Mayberry:

hosted. She told me I had 20 minutes and I was like what? She's like, hey, give me whatever you want on there. I'm like give me 10. I'm not talking, but I did and it was fine, it was great. I'm like, give me 10. I'm not doing 20. But I did and it was fine, it was great. I really just talked about relationships and how we can talk about how excited I am about affiliate marketing and all the trends that are changing, and I can get numbers and stats and we can talk about AI, but to me, the relationships is what keeps me here. You know, also being successful in the business helps, but I think it's when you're kind of people, you work with other people.

Dustin Howes:

Well, I think that you can do anything and that just happens, naturally. Hi, funny you. You only want to do 10 minutes. 20 minutes was not enough time for Jim Nichols. I open this door, or should I just leave?

Jade Mayberry:

it, should she come that way you? Think yeah, yeah, yeah All right, yeah, and I can sneak out to say well, it's so nice to meet you.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I really appreciate it Great hanging out, yeah, and I love your podcast.

Jade Mayberry:

It's great. Appreciate you Absolutely and are you here tonight and tomorrow too.

Dustin Howes:

Uh, I will be here tonight and I'll leave noonish tomorrow, so um, I hope I see you tonight.

Jade Mayberry:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Dustin.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Talk to you soon, all right.

Jade Mayberry:

Later. Come on in. Come on in. I'm sorry, I'm late. You're not late. Where is this.

Dustin Howes:

Come on in. Come on in. I'm sorry I'm late ah you're not late where is this again? I'm sorry, were you calling me I?

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean, I was actually talking to just direct me in the right area awesome, all right.

Dustin Howes:

Our second guest today is a Jade, mary Berry, over at Dentsu. Thank you for coming to the Nerdatorium today.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Thank you for having me. I'm so very excited to be here.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, you've been such a great supporter of the show. I really appreciate all the likes and the comments throughout the last year here. Thank you so much. And we're PMA buddies? Yes, we are, so I think that's how we met over the years here.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Yeah, I mean, I probably knew you before you knew me.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Through your education in the workspace.

Dustin Howes:

Okay.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Through your podcast, just posting and sharing ideas. So everybody knows who you are, Dustin. Well, everybody knows.

Dustin Howes:

I'm getting popular. Yeah, I'm starting to break that. It's really nice to hear everybody just random people walk by me like hey, dustin Ellis, I'm like I don't know you hey.

Jennifer Goodwin:

You're such a great advocate for others, for the showcasing work, for sharing insights, and you don't gatekeep anything, so you're a good source for knowledge and insights. We always are watching what you're doing and what you're saying and following you Well, I appreciate that.

Dustin Howes:

Thank you so much. It's my praise. Awesome. So tell us about you. Let's go back. Let's start this career. How'd you get going in affiliate?

Jennifer Goodwin:

Oh my goodness. So I mean, like everybody else out of college, I was at Guthrie Rinker for a while and I wasn't directly managing affiliate but knew of it. I think we used Cake at the time and we would have a lot of influencers. We did a lot of celebrity and talent sponsorships over now and then we'd pull links from there. But it wasn't until my time at One Stop Internet.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I came in with predominantly a paid search background and that's where I met Marshall Nyman, who is the founder of Nymo Co now and he was running affiliate email by himself, looking for somebody to help him scale affiliate. And I went in and I interviewed for the paid search role but was like I can do all of this, so what's up with affiliate? And he's like, okay, I like her. So he brought me on and together we built out the affiliate division at One Stop Internet, which was acquired by Branded Online, which I think is now called Noggin. So I really got to know the legacy Pepper Jam, which is now Ascend by Partnerize. But I learned a lot from Aaron Killian. I learned a lot from all those people over at PJ slash PZ. So I would say that's where I really got my knowledge and how.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I really, you know, became like officially within the affiliate industry.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, cool, and I mean, that doesn't sound like it was that long ago.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean, don't date me, but it was a while ago, you know, seven, seven years ago and yeah, from there, once one stop got acquired. I was consulting for a little bit, because once you kind of as you guys all know, once you kind of know everybody in affiliate and they know that you're good at what you do, then brands are just like can you just manage my affiliate program?

Dustin Howes:

for me.

Jennifer Goodwin:

So I kind of just naturally went into consulting and freelance work from there because I wasn't trying to commute from LA to the OC. You live in LA, you know that's like, you know, a death dilling blow. And I met the founders of Mute6, which is now a Dentsu agency. They acquired Mute6, I think, at the beginning of 2022. And they did not have an affiliate offering. They said that their clients kept asking about it and they were like, who should we need to find someone that does affiliate? And apparently my name came up a few times. So I went and initially was consulting for them and they're like why don't you just stay and just like build off this division? So I've been working with Mute6 for over six years now and now Dentsu has five agencies under their umbrella, so Dentsu X, which was formerly 360i, iprospect, kara, mute6, and Dentsu Creative, and we also have Merkle, which is more of our data site. So our team services, all of those Dentsu agencies.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And so I get to oversee that, which is really exciting.

Dustin Howes:

That sounds like a lot. Very interesting how many rebrands you've gone through in your career in in the short span of time. That was uh, uh, and you remember all the names. It's uh, really impressive.

Jennifer Goodwin:

That's, that's a lot of babies you gotta do. They're like never go away.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, they just keep accumulating beautiful uh, and tell us what you do like densu, like what's your team look like and who are you servicing out there?

Jennifer Goodwin:

Yeah, so our team is growing rapidly, especially being at a holding company where affiliate tends to be a lot smaller.

Jennifer Goodwin:

You know we're not an OPM or affiliate only agency that has like thousands of clients and 100 team members. We are at 11 team members now, which is large for us. We've never been this big before and what happened is there would be like one affiliate manager at iProspect, me at Muse6, two over at Kira, and so what they did was they brought us all together, streamlined everything and made it where we're not sitting at the different agencies, but servicing all of the Dentsu agencies. So that really helped grow our team quickly, and so, under the guidance of Bruce Williams and Mike Feldman, we've been able to hire the best in the biz.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And so now people know who we are. At first people were like Dentsu has an affiliate team and we're like, yeah, and now they're like, oh, dentsu has an affiliate team.

Dustin Howes:

That tone is changing around here and you've been helping the cause. I can't look on LinkedIn without seeing you getting another speaker opportunity and I am just so jelly all the time Like dude Jade come on, oh man.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean I do like to talk.

Dustin Howes:

Well, you're so articulate and you're elegant about all of it and I really enjoy it. I tune into a lot of your stuff as well, so I enjoy hearing your thoughts, which is why you're coming on here today, because it's my first podcast, so thank you. Oh, first podcast Wild, wild Okay.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I waited for you to invite me. Only took two years.

Dustin Howes:

So tell us about your involvement with the PMA, Like how did you get rolling with that?

Jennifer Goodwin:

So, like how I mentioned stalking you, I was looking at all of the industry, greats, right. Like, what I really love about the affiliate space is we are all so connected. It truly is a community and so, being in the MarTech record Slack channel and then joining the PMA and joining that Slack channel, it was great to be able to access. You know those who have been in the game longer than me, who were willing to just share and answer questions. I set up a coffee call with Sarah B. I was like hi Tricia, hi Jim, and so I just reached out and started talking to everyone and they all just so happened to be like on the board but so so excited to speak about affiliate, excited to talk about challenges, like they were not shying away from the more difficult questions. You know everyone's like that's a good question. I don't know, but I know someone who does.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Let's have a call with them over here. And so it just sort of snowballed into this like regular cadence of just talking shop and just bouncing ideas off of each other. And so as I got to know everybody, I just naturally organically became more involved. And now here I am on the executive board. You can believe that.

Dustin Howes:

I can believe it. You're on that fast track in the affiliate and I love it. I love seeing you succeed in this space and everybody's listening to what you're saying and I've got a big question I've been thinking about lately and it is this realization that and this sounds totally sexist but females are better affiliate managers than males. I take it Like it is, it's unquestionable, like I only know a handful of male affiliate managers that are good at this job.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And if they are, there's probably a woman behind it. No, I'm joking.

Dustin Howes:

But my big question is why is that? Why do you think that is?

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean I don't know the answer to that question, but I think there are a lot of males. I think they may be more so on the publisher or the network side, maybe not so much managing a team or managing like a client portfolio, but I think women just naturally like communicating and are patient and like affiliates, multi-channel, it's like a million and two different things happening at once and by nature, a lot of women are multitaskers.

Jennifer Goodwin:

So maybe you know it doesn't bother us, it's like we're doing 50 million things at once, but I really don't know if that's the case. I think that there's a good representation of, of, of male energy, you know, throughout um, but yeah, I mean, oh, to be honest, a lot of the people I've learned from are our guys, you know like, okay, jim nichols, marshall. So I know a good amount, and maybe that's just my position being in la and the access that I have and the visibility that I have. But yeah, I think it's pretty, it's. I don't see a lot of Females, of like minority females or women of color in the space. I don't know, I don't like who. I was looking at me and I'm just like where are we at? But that maybe hopefully can change, moving forward too. So Interesting.

Dustin Howes:

You know, that's something I've never even thought about in the in that grand scheme of things. But on the, on the female side of things, like the organization there, my mind just doesn't work in an organizing way. I I I am great at theory work in an organizing way. I am great at theory. I am great at strategy. I'm great at audits. I am great at recruitment of affiliates. I am God awful at being an affiliate manager, managing all those relationships. It is not my strength and I stay away from it, but it's something that you thrive at and what you're teaching your generation.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Yeah, and you know, not by choice, it just sort of sort of happened. We do have an all female leadership team, um affiliate leadership team at Dentsu. Shout out to Samantha Duncan and Caitlin Fletcher holding it down with me. So I definitely cannot take all of the credit, it's just by chance. You know we were hey guys where you at Come through Dentsu's hiring, but yeah it, it just so happened that you know they're both moms. I'm not. They can handle certain things, I cannot, so I lean on them for a lot of things as well, and together we just make it work. So so yeah, we're, we're running strong with the all female leadership over there.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, gotcha, we're running strong with the all-female leadership over there, okay, gotcha. So you mentioned Sarah Mundy and like she has been such a guiding light to like everybody. She helps just about everybody that asks her a question and is always genuine about it, and I really love her energy and she's starting something new. Are you involved at that at all? Okay, uh, well, it's uh, a female empowerment. I don't know exactly the uh, the gist of it. It's uh, it's just starting up, but like, would you be looking at, like, uh, on the uh, the color scheme? I don't know how to call it.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I apologize, but yeah, no, it is what it is. I think sometimes it can be the elephant in the room, right? People sometimes will even ask me things in a way where they just want to get my POV because like there's really nobody else to ask, yeah, and so I think with that, it's something to consider when there's an opportunity to teach anybody that's interested and just sort of diversifying the space a little bit, and maybe it's just more so just having that invitation out.

Dustin Howes:

Okay. Yeah, maybe that could be your legacy, like pioneering that side, and I'll fully support whatever you want. I'll send traffic your way, I'll help whatever I can. I believe in you and what you're doing, so tell us more about. Like your man, I forgot all the questions that I was supposed to bring to the table today. I'm so sorry.

Jennifer Goodwin:

No, it's okay. I know you were asking me about like just our leadership style at Dentsu. You know how we approach career progress, advancement, advice around stuff like that. Um, and just our approach, how it differs maybe from other agencies and things like that okay yeah, I can talk about that all day long perfect.

Dustin Howes:

Let me find a question here how do you guys differentiate yourself from the other OPMs that are out there?

Jennifer Goodwin:

essentially, yeah, I mean, I love this question.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I talk about it all day long.

Jennifer Goodwin:

It's like the holding co versus affiliate first agencies, if you will, and obviously there is a place and a space for everybody, right?

Jennifer Goodwin:

I think that for smaller SMB brands that are just starting out, they maybe don't have as big of a budget, for the larger holding company names do well to start off with an OPM or an affiliate first agency. They tend to have more clients and to be able to be a little bit more flexible around pricing. But ultimately, as you grow, as you scale, as you launch in other channels and you want to do that real, true cross-channel collaboration, you want to do more full funnel, you want to leverage the agency's portfolio, if you will, and the buying power, then you might want to consider transitioning to a holding company where they do everything like under the sun from building websites to retail media to, uh, you know, managing all of the channels, because what you want is that visibility, um, into knowing what, like the right hand that's doing right hands doing the left hands doing like, how can you work with paid social if that sits at another agency?

Jennifer Goodwin:

um how can you collaborate closely with search if that's at another agency as well?

Jennifer Goodwin:

so you're not going to be as efficient, both spending budget wise and also just performance wise, with results if everything's sort of parsed out, you know, at different agencies, yeah, and people aren't able to collaborate because of you know like privacy restrictions or whatnot yeah so there's a point where when you you know that you kind of hit where you need to go to the next level and when you're ready to go to the next level, you know you talk to me or you talk to Patricia Marin Jay at Group M.

Dustin Howes:

I'm sharing your media world.

Jennifer Goodwin:

But yeah, we are kind of the two that have the stronger teams that are like leading for the holding companies right now, and that's what we see. We don't.

Jennifer Goodwin:

We do a lot of net new, we do a lot of war rooms and the pitches but, honestly, we get so many organic leads it could be just brands looking to have everything in one place at one agency will come to us. So the leads just sort of come because brands are just wanting to just not have to deal with 50 million different agencies and again, there's a time and place for those that specialize in that. But ultimately when they're beyond the point and they're looking for a true partner through and through and just can get everything in one place, and that's when they come to like a dead soon.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, yeah, and it is great that you guys are doing all of the assets. Well, like, I think there's a affiliate gets a bit of a black eye, because there are some agencies out there that might do PR or digital marketing and they get asked to do affiliate and they're like sure we can take that on and they do it irresponsibly, they don't know what they're doing and then they eventually either white label or outsource it out to an agency that does they call this the consulting freelancer?

Jennifer Goodwin:

That's like what I was doing before, yeah.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, exactly, and I think that's a problem that you guys are essentially solving for those bigger companies. Yeah.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Yeah, it also gives us the opportunity to really learn a lot, to test a lot of new things too, because we just view affiliate as partnerships, right? So no account or client looks the same in our portfolio. They're on different networks. We might be pulling different levers and responsible for different parts of the business for one client than we are for the other. So we have a client that has, you know, a PR comms agency. We're working really closely with them and it could be that we just have swim lanes in place and they're like hey, can we kick this over to you? And you do this? You know content top of funnel Yep, we got it.

Jennifer Goodwin:

You know we have some to that. Hey, we want to test all of the new Amazon influencer stuff. We want to do Amazon creator, we want to launch, you know, amazon influencers. They see the word affiliate and it gets kicked to our team and we're under retail and commerce at Dentsu. So we work so closely with the retail media team, we just collaborate on it. We're like, yep, we got you, and we'll just tap whomever's overseeing Amazon and all of us will join the call together with the Amazon rep. I'll take this, you take this, you take that and we'll figure it out. So, um, there's not a lot of limitations because we have access to those team members, into those other channels. You know that we're able to anything new that's coming out. Oh, what brand wants to test that?

Jennifer Goodwin:

okay, let's see how that's going okay I'm going to get with pacer so we can do tick tock shop affiliate together, and that's how we're able to be the first in testing all of this new tech that's coming out in social commerce.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And then you would be able to if you were just unable to have access to whomever is managing or overseeing that channel, and just because someone adds affiliate to it, they start looking for the affiliate manager and it's totally managed an app on that social commerce and they're like, well, I would do it, but I don't have access to, you know, the TikTok account. You're going to have to ask the paid social manager. I'm like I don't do affiliates as affiliate, you do it, so we don't have those issues. It's really nice to just be fluid like that.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and it's great that you guys are combining the services as well, because a lot of companies at least in my consulting portion of the they're a bit hesitant about giving all the the information the google analytics and you really need that to be effective on the affiliate side, so you guys getting full visibility is really nice yes, it definitely is, and I think too, you know there's been a ton of talk about privacy, about about data the cookie apocalypse is finally supposed to actually happen this year.

Jennifer Goodwin:

We're still waiting on that, but people are nervous. They're trying to have a more robust and sophisticated reporting and analytics dashboard, and that that kind of leads us to. You know Dentsu just launched Mercury for Media. That kind of leads us to. You know Dentsu just launched Mercury for Media. That's a proprietary tech that we have that is essentially allowing our clients to own their data insights for their brands, for their company, and you really need to have that zero party, first party data and to be able to build your audience and target, not rely on these third parties, not rely on cookies, not feel like, well, if the cookies go away and I don't have access to this or I stop partnering with this company or this agency, I'm going to lose access to everything.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Those who are going to remain leaders in the space own their own data insights. They own their actual audiences and they know how to target and to use that across all of the channels, and so we're able to do that at a level that everyone else cannot, and so you know we're very future thinking and very forward thinking, and that's something that has been they've been working on for years coming out of Merkle. Merkle has over 30 years worth of data, and so people will come to partners just just to get that that uh access to, to the mercury for media media uh set up too, because everyone's just like what's going to happen. We need to own our own data, so it's it's very important.

Dustin Howes:

This is how we market, it's how we deliver and target our ads so you mentioned that, um, apocalypse coming along, and uh, every time I come to a conference it seems like it's getting closer.

Jennifer Goodwin:

We've been waiting since 2018 in the affiliate channel.

Dustin Howes:

Sure, I mean, and they're doing their job, and I feel like Google's absorbing more of the affiliate channel than anybody else right now, which is terrifying. How are we adapting as an industry? What are your thoughts on places where we can go next?

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean, I think that we shouldn't be scared, affiliate being multi-channel at its core, it's just make sure you understand search, make sure you understand social.

Jennifer Goodwin:

As we can see, everyone is having their own affiliate program, right, like we have, uh, all the social networks having their own affiliate program, like there's a a big sort of like merging of all the channels. The overlap is insane, and so you kind of are forced to learn the different channels. You need to be able to be nimble and to pivot, and so if search is absorbing a lot of that, okay, maybe you need to educate yourself a little bit more on search, figure out how to work with the paid search partner. Maybe you need to go hang out with that Google rep for a little bit and just know how to remain relevant and how to activate initiatives and campaigns that may need to live in an environment or space that you're not exactly used to. But that's why I feel is great, we're crazy, we all love like a challenge. Oh, you want to go over there, I'm coming over there too. So you know you got to have that fire and not lose that courage to be able to learn something new.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Retail media is getting huge right now. Right, we're probably so used to running traffic to, you know, the advertiserscom, their e-commerce site, and it's like now we're going to run traffic to the retailer site. You know, it's like we've all been trying to get that extra button for thecom and try to beat off Amazon or, you know, nordstrom or whomever else. But maybe you should learn retail media too, in case you know you need to do both or you need to collaborate, and so I would say, just be open-minded. It's a time for learning, it's a time for watching, it's a time for humility and asking questions and just paying attention.

Jennifer Goodwin:

If you see something you don't understand it say hey, what is that? Why did you do it like that? What was the result? Okay, I see what you're testing now.

Dustin Howes:

so, um, I think humility and courage are very much needed in times of transition and change absolutely, and and just like you go to college and you major in something, you should also be minoring in something, just in case your first option, way to put it right several minors, at least five I mean, you'd be that full stack marketer like and uh, I, I have a pretty decent background and knowledge in seo at this point.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, I'm terrible at uh, paid media like. It's just not in my, my wheelhouse yet, but it's something that I've tried and played around with. I just need more education, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What are you here at PI Live for?

Jennifer Goodwin:

To see all of you guys and to see all of my industry friends. No, I'm here to meet publishers. I'm here to learn about a lot of the new tech that people are launching. Met with Moonpool, learning more about them. Met with Link Connector, learning more about what they're doing, and obviously, the content is amazing. I'm really excited about this. The live podcast this is something that PI Life has had before. I think it's extra PI Live this year so.

Jennifer Goodwin:

I mean the content's outstanding, like shout out to Hello Partner for getting everything together, and I mean you see so many people online that it's always just really great to see people in person. But this particular event is a little bit more. It's it's not small, but it feels more intimate. It feels like you get a lot of really great experts in a setting where I can just walk down the hot hall and hey, hey. I saw this I saw that.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And you know ASW, asc I'm. Sometimes I don't see anybody. It's a lot more people. You feel like you're just trying to get through, but here it's just like one big networking event it feels like. So the energy is completely different and you can go and find those speakers at the end of the session and can keep the conversation going. So there's so much opportunity to network here, um, and the access is just amazing. So, honestly, it's my favorite event my favorite event.

Dustin Howes:

Wow, that's bold, yeah, uh, amazing, uh, this is my first pi live and I heard yeah, I know right, uh, I heard so many working. I see instantly like I'm already on the payroll.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, it's amazing. Uh, have you been taking pictures? So no, you have, you, don't you? I like that seems like a good post for linkedin anyway. Uh, you're, like, you're spot on I. I really love what they've done with this event and I'm really impressed by how early it is for them to be this good. Yeah, like asw has had. I will never miss an asw because I just love the environment. It's still like the networking hub for all of us to come together and hang out. But, uh, I'm hearing buzz of like this turning into that essentially, um, but asw, every year it uh, there's a few missteps somewhere. They didn't get it all right. And I'm looking at this venue and like the tables that they set up and the places and the meeting set up, and like the app. Everything's on spot and I'm really impressed by all of that.

Jennifer Goodwin:

Yeah, it's like one word access, okay, and I think we know, hello Partner, we know the PI Live team from the amazing show they put on in the UK and. London, I still need to go Give me a ticket no, I'm just kidding.

Jennifer Goodwin:

And so they've been known for putting on a good event for a while. It's just not here in the States, and so now they're really establishing their name here in the States. Come to LA next. But yes, I think that having everything at the same hotel and the venue allows for you to get to places like quicker, but also just to kind of keep the conversation. I mean, I've sat in the lobby till 2, am talking to people about all kinds of stuff because we're here. I think it's comfortable, I think it's smart logistically. I had blisters in the back of my feet after ASW I don't know about next year because you know you meet in the form and you have to leave and walk out and go meet at the different restaurants and everything was very spread out, and so yeah they really know how to create like a more intimate environment where everyone can just be in the same area, if you will and just kind of make the most of it.

Dustin Howes:

Honestly, Totally agree. Love that aspect of it and we're around time. Tell us how to get ahold of you.

Jennifer Goodwin:

You can reach me in the PMA. So if you're not a part of the Performance Marketing Association, please join. The Slack channel is lit. You can DM anybody, including me. I'm in the MarTech Records Slack channel. You can find me on LinkedIn, jade Mayberry, and you can email me at jademayberry, at densucom.

Dustin Howes:

Beautiful. Thank you so much for spending some time with us there, appreciate you, and that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this live episode and we'll see you out there. Keep on recruiting. Take care folks. Woo, all right. So I was. I was oh, yeah, we're, we're not off live yet. You hold your, just hold your money for a while there. So yeah, just checking out the the chats.

Affiliate Marketing Industry Insights
Transition Into Affiliate Marketing Agencies
Affiliate Marketing Trends and Tips
Affiliate Marketing and Influencer Partnerships
Affiliate Marketing and Community Building
Dustin Ellis
Growing the Affiliate Marketing Team
Navigating Agency Options and Data Ownership
Networking at PI Live