Dustin: 0:28

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerdout. I am your Nerdorator Dustin Howes. Spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here on LinkedIn Live every Thursday at 12. 15 Pacific Time. Mark it on the calendar. my guest today, Pawel, Mazurek, CEO over at TakeAds, welcome to the Nerdatorium, sir.

Pawel: 0:51

Hi, good morning, good evening, it's nice to be here, thank you.

Dustin: 0:54

We'll figure it out, everybody's on their own time zone here. Thanks for joining me, man, this is gonna be a spirited adventure of a topic. Everybody is very aware that I am pretty anti coupon and loyalty sites. And so bringing you on here in the coupon and loyalty space is going to be a good time. Without further ado, tell me Pawel, who are you?

Pawel: 1:19

Hi, my name is Paweł. I'm 43. I'm running a company called Take Ads, and we work in the affiliate industry. The company was founded in 2009. For many years we worked as a typical subnetworks, and then we migrated to delivering our own products, our own formats, and our own ways to distribute the content for the players that we work with. So I'm in the online industry for 14 years officially, unofficially about 20. I was doing my day job and then doing after hours in digital work. I was more focused on the, display and branding part of the digital industry, but now I'm in the affiliate sphere and I'm loving it.

Dustin: 2:06

tell us about your company, TakeDeals. What do you guys do and who do you serve out there?

Pawel: 2:11

Yeah we've noticed that people online are more savvy in terms of looking for discounts, looking for the best possible offers and actually getting the best possible deal What we do is we distribute coupons and discount codes we work with affiliate networks, aggregate the coupons, do the cleansing, check the volatility of the coupons, look if they're okay, and distribute them to the publishers. And those can be of multiple categories. That can be a content website that uses the JS code and the frame that we're showing coupons to. And that can be, of course, the pure coupon players, the websites that are specializing in coupon distribution. we aggregate on all of the markets that we work with and we work on 17 and even more markets, officially 17 markets of the planet. We aggregate the coupons from the networks, we look at the validity and we deliver them. Either to the players directly as a coupon or as an advertising format that is being controlled and decided by us, what coupon on which website, which user to show, which is the best, the foaming one, but the best suitable one for a given user. Stop me because I can go for hours.

Dustin: 3:23

I'm known as a coupon hater. I know that this is an absolute necessary need in this industry, and I'm glad that you're doing it. one of the biggest reasons I'm anti coupon is that the sites that are putting up coupons are out of date or don't work and making a bad user experience. And it sounds like you guys are eradicating that with your service.

Pawel: 3:47

Let's be honest, there are two categories of coupon players, the ones that don't care and the ones that do care about user experience. And we tend to work mostly with the users or look for the partners in this view that take care and look for the user experience. Because if everybody, if ever you were looking for a discount code or the coupon or, a special price on a product that you're looking for, you've encountered this, then You know, you're typing in into search engine of your choosing name of the brand and coupon and you end up with results that can be organic results that can be paid result doesn't matter. You go to a given website, you look for a discount code, there's a name of the brand you were looking for. There's a big button, discount 15 percent or whatever. You're pressing the button and nothing happens simply because There never was any coupons and this is something that's actually putting a bad name on the whole coupon industry. I was there myself. I'm riding a motorcycle. I was looking for food packs for my KTM, And you're clicking for, food packs, KTM discount. There's billions results and none of them works simply because they're like free producers of the food packs and none of them is using any discount codes, any coupons. But still, if you look at the coupon websites, there's plenty of offers.

Dustin: 5:03

it doesn't work. I appreciate that you guys are trying to fix that issue in the industry. And yes, there's gonna be good players and bad players wherever you go, but my concept is only work with coupon sites. If you're gonna put 'em in your program that are. going to be attentive to your needs as a brand and be able to update those coupons. And it sounds like you guys are helping that process, which I absolutely love to hear.

Pawel: 5:30

an outdated coupon is something that can destroy user trust towards the brand. Because if you offered me a coupon. and it's you know It's out of date or not valid anymore never was valid. It's of course it's a thing It has to be balanced and that's why we've decided that We can go into the coupon part of the industry We can work with it. We want to work with it because we know that users are Looking for discounts, especially in the economy these days But we want to do it the proper way and the partners we will work with like it's not a secret work of being on the coupon part, They also believe the same thing they would be very Tricked about, we want valid coupons. if we want to show to our users and discount codes, any coupons, any like special offers. We have to make, be sure that those are legitimate.

Dustin: 6:20

Yeah. All right. And I've got a QR code right up here to take you to take deal and check them out and maybe the right for your program. Give them a look. If you're a brand and if you're a coupon site. Could be a great addition to your tech stack. So give it a look. Something interesting about your profile is I don't come across this very often, but you're actually teaching affiliate and digital marketing at a university out there. Tell us what you're doing out there teaching the next generation about affiliate.

Pawel: 6:55

Yeah. thank you for that. And thank you for bringing that up. 11 years ago, I was at Prosper University in Warsaw, Poland. They were setting up the part of education towards digital marketing. I was invited to become The leading person of the whole division and I said yes because I fully understand You know that there's too many marketing gurus out there who have like limited knowledge But they pretend to know a lot and grants from time to time Use the services So for 11 years, it's just 22 semesters. I'm teaching students about digital and the more internet is getting popular the more people are like You Wanted to tie the life with the internet industry and the digital industry. The more people would have joining the courses and taking, the five years journey to become like a professional marketeer in digital industry. So I treat it obviously as a hobby and mine but it's great fun and I'm really enjoy it. And, it's not for you and me because we're a bit too seasoned marketeers, but somebody who's like young and just, looking for a Place for them in the world. I think it's a great world. It's a great path I'm happy to do it even though it you know, it takes some time to prepare to deliver the lectures, etc but it keeps me up to date because oh, I whether I like it or not I have to be up to date because young generation these days If they are interested in the topic they can Dive very deep into it. And sometimes it's like interesting conversations. And one of the courses we're having is imagine your own startup and there's brilliant ideas coming from the students. What can be done? What can be a new, unicorn still industry that can be run in marketing. stop me because 11 years of teaching. I can go long,

Dustin: 8:40

What I do appreciate is we have a real cliche about professors universities and teachers And it is, if you can't do it, then teach it. And I feel like you've got enough experience in. Building your own business, that it's super refreshing to see that you actually have the experience, had success, and now you're teaching the next generation. giving your time to teach this is super valuable. There's just not enough education in affiliate marketing, there's some in digital marketing, but they're usually taught by people that know it in theory, but not in execution. Congrats on honing in on that next generation and keeping them going into that next level.

Pawel: 9:26

We need to hire somebody in the companies, right? they might as well be well educated by us.

Dustin: 9:30

that's a good point. That's so smart. Like bringing in your smart kids

Pawel: 9:34

I've had a couple of my former students apply for the job in the companies that I was at. And I must say that some of them managed to squeeze through HR and land a job.

Dustin: 10:31

That's good to see. You must be teaching them something. All right, let's get into our topic of the day. And that is coupon automation and affiliate. This is something That's up and coming more than anything. There's just not enough in it and you guys are serving a purpose. So tell us first about coupons and affiliate. What do you think their place is?

Pawel: 10:55

it's a question as big as the continent, that you can answer for a very long time. But I would keep it pretty simple. if you look at the behavior of the user, with many years of experience I tend to look at how people are doing stuff. if you look at how people are doing stuff or how they approach the things they want to do, you can provide them some kind of a service. there's a big group, especially now the group is growing. People that are very price sensitive. So they know a product that they want and they're looking the best possible way to purchase it, meaning the cheapest. the fastest way they can get their hands on a given product and That can be done in a multiple way. So if you look at the sales funnel, so there's Brand awareness that is consideration then this purchase etc So coupons is a perfect place for the for attracting people that are not yet decided on where or which product to buy Then you play with the discount. So there's a place for everything and with discount codes with coupons this is something that For a very specific group of people, it would work the best way possible. I wouldn't say, we don't need them. One is more than enough for a given problem, et cetera. But if you look at the behavior and what the people are looking for, they look for discounts.

Dustin: 12:14

I understand I'm a big proponent of content sites, influencers that are going to drive incremental value to your brand. But I completely understand that your coupon strategy needs to be apparent in your program. I like to give a general number like no more than 20 percent of your affiliate program should be affiliate coupon generated. as long as you're keeping it at wraps altogether, then you're running a solid, portfolio of partners. You can't complain about that as a brand essentially. I just wanted to hear. Your side of that thing, but coupon sites in general in my opinion, in lots of people's opinion out there, last click Steelers they stand in front of a cash register and hand out coupons when they were gonna cash out anyway. But you have a different opinion. Are they more than last click Steelers?

Pawel: 13:11

Yes and no. Yeah, there's, there's always white sheep and and black sheep, good sheep and sure. So in short. There is always, okay, maybe start from, let's start from last click. Last click is not the perfect attribution model by far. But we do not have anything that would be better working and reliable at the very same time, with weight and attribution or split attribution, it's. Not that easy there's a very low percentage Of brands using split rather than last click. Bearing in mind this one if you choose the players properly the coupon websites, serve a purpose for people looking for the best possible price. They already made their mind They want to purchase a given product. They just want to purchase as cheap as possible. Sure. Or with a biggest possible discount. So of course, I would agree that too many coupons or just 100% coupon websites in your affiliate program might be a bit too much because there's also like the, the brand awareness, the consideration phases up for every single user that there is, but. I wouldn't say click stealers. I would say that we can be very different people from one another. If you're willing to purchase somebody, maybe a post from an influencer or, material in social media will be enough for you to make up a decision that, yes, I want it now. I would probably do the following. I would look it up, look for as many reviews and, and comparisons as I can. Then, Look, if I can get a discount on a given product and then make a purchase decision. And there would be a group of people that if they cannot purchase it with a discount, they will not purchase it at this very moment. So there's plenty of coupon websites that. do not care much about the quality of the coupons they're serving. this is a bigger problem rather than the existence of the coupons website whatsoever. The, as mentioned before, if I'm on the path to purchase something and I will add, I will end up at the coupon website that pretends or claims to have a coupon of the brand I'm looking for, but they actually don't. This would make my user experience pretty bad towards the website and the brand itself. yes. They are last click stealers, but the proper websites, the proper content players that can deliver coupons this is the great thing to do. And bear in mind that what we are doing is enabling non coupon websites. The players are not pure coupon websites to use the coupon. But the whole feature of the coupon and to showcase the coupons to the users. this is, something that would change the idea and maybe your approach to coupons as well.

Dustin: 16:00

I have so many thoughts on this. I feel like you're right. It's not even the coupon sites fault. First off, this is the brand and the affiliate manners failure to move into that next generation of how to attribute. Proper attribution to the proper partner. A large majority of brands out there are using last click. It could be up to 90 percent from what I've heard And that is not just a failure of the networks that they're on. Which is a default of last click but also of a brand just being lazy about it. If the industry is to turn over into split attribution for these models, it's going to be a better spot. So I don't blame the coupon sites by any means. And I think you're spot on. If you're giving review sites and content sites, a closing coupon, They could be going and closing out. And it's up to the brand to make sure that happens.

Pawel: 16:56

They are doing it, but not for every single user there is because user behavior is different from a person to a person. So there can be somebody who's like looking for, there is intent. I want to immediately purchase it. Of course it can be also tied to the cost of the good in question. But in, in terms of do I want to purchase? Yes, now. That's that's FMCG, right? And and, but if it's something like of a bigger value that takes more time to consideration, time to purchase, decide the way I want it or maybe not just now, then you might end up lower down the funnel that you will end up. Okay. Can I get the discount on it? Yeah, I can. I can purchase it if I cannot.

Dustin: 17:36

Absolutely. And that user experience ends up making the lifetime value of that customer even better.

Pawel: 17:42

Or worse, if you end up with the website with fake coupons.

Dustin: 17:45

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. If it turns out to be a working coupon you're going to get repeat customers a whole lot of times. There's good value in it. I don't openly say that very often, but now that we're in this mix it makes a lot of sense. You make some great points here in Pebble. All right. Coupon sites, how many are too many in a program in your opinion?

Pawel: 18:08

The one question is about the quality because in the world we're living, many brands operate worldwide. Since the pandemic, like the, the distribution of goods is worldwide, there's not that many closed silos that, if you're based in Europe, you cannot sell your goods to the U S or if you're based in the U S you can't sell your goods. So I would rather say. Work with as many as you like. Just bear in mind that those have to be of good quality. You can do a manual check, go to a website that you want to work with and look at the coupons they're providing. Are they valid? is the percentage of being like, having proper good coupons, not just well positions in terms of SSEO website. Is it working? And then why limit it? I know that you have a different opinion, but there is, there's people are using multiple search engines in the world. of course, there's one dominant. That's obvious, but there's 20 others. I know most of them because we work with them. But there are heavy users of DuckDuckGo and meta gears of the world they simply, decide that they want to use that one. And imagine that your coupon is not available on the given website that. user is accustomed to and wants to use you might be losing an opportunity, Because somebody else might.

Dustin: 19:25

That's a valid point. I will argue that too many sites is not going to be beneficial for your program. I think you're giving them too many opportunities. I like to do a handful that I absolutely trust that I have a one on one relationship with that. I know we're putting up to date coupons up. my theory is the ones that you do work with, Keep a handful tight. If you're going to do trademark plus bidding allow only one or two and test it out make sure they're doing, keywords beyond just your brand and giving you more value So there's way to work around it. We have difference of opinions here, but that's not a big deal.

Pawel: 20:04

we are approaching the topic from two different sides, but at the end of the day, we were both saying quality to quantity. Balance it out and that's for sure. I would say go with as many as you can, as long as they're good in terms of quality and you're saying, don't go with that much but look at the quality as well. So it's pretty close.

Dustin: 20:23

All right, let's talk about successful campaigns. What have you seen out there that could use case for a coupon site and bringing it into your program?

Pawel: 20:33

We, mentioned, there's the old way of doing business, like the websites that originally you just go. To look for a coupon and they have at least two ways of generating traffic. organic search, and people coming in looking for coupons. And organic traffic using search inside the website. To look for a given coupon we're moving past that working with search engines such as being as mentioned before we're working with like pure offline players that that can deliver the coupon to the user base. So it's going to be like. Online to offline coupon delivery. I cannot say much more, but I will elaborate a bit more later on. So there's plenty of them, but again, quality of delivery. We're seeing that coupons actually are raising the value of the volumes of the users. Going into the website making purchases, but at least from what I've seen in our campaigns we work with 74 Affiliate networks all over the world. we have thousands of unique offers the value of the order can go up if you Properly based and properly targeted coupons for proper users. So I don't have a PDF sheet with the, yeah, this is what we did for the brand and how they rose, blah, blah, because that's my sales team. in my opinion you can't say no to coupons. not in 2024 and the years to follow. People are looking at every single penny. They are more oriented towards how can I get a good, did I really want the best possible value? And this is the growing group of people. And I would say that we need to adapt to the changing world. If it was like 2018 maybe not that important. 2024, 25, every single campaign that uses more and more coupons is going to be a success story. Of course, if you use quality websites.

Dustin: 22:23

I'm going to agree with you on this. average order value is statistically going to go up lifetime value of that customer is going to go up. If they have a good experience, there's some great things about it. control those coupons and keeping it under control, which is why I like what you guys are doing. you are helping that become a more legitimate side of the business. those are the coupon sites I want to work with if I do in turn, but my value proposition altogether is buying content affiliates, recruit them, review sites, listicles, things of that nature. But I need from the brand, the clients that I take on. they need to provide me with a coupon for those content sites to close. Cause it is just so high in the funnel most of the time when we're getting brand awareness. if they supply that then we're both winning in this kind of scenario.

Pawel: 23:14

Exactly. And that's the point. And that's the general idea behind take deal that simply you want to go up in the funnel in terms of coupon delivery. we want to enable the user, Even higher down the purchase funnel to be able to utilize a discount and go directly. at least enable them to bypass part of the lower part of the funnel which will make everybody happier.

Dustin: 23:37

It really will the incrementality looks so much better if they are higher in that funnel for you as a program in general Executives love it.

Pawel: 23:46

Influencers have been doing this for years like, the unique codes on youtube's etc This is like Nothing new, simply we're putting it into a bit of a better and automated way sometimes you look at YouTube content from two years ago and there's a discount code or, a special offer, I guess that it's not valid anymore, but it's still there in the internets.

Dustin: 24:10

Okay. What's next for take ads?

Pawel: 24:15

We're going to reach the moon. it's my strong belief that we need to focus on formats and delivering new ad formats, which means new ways of publishers monetize their content. Okay. The, which will give us two things, full control of what and which website and which program and to which user is being displayed and new possibilities of monetization for publishers. As mentioned before, coupons for a content player. you do have a content website. You're already working with DSPs and RTBs and all of the, placements are already filled in. You work with editorial content, you work with sponsored content, et cetera. There's also an additional placement for you to be able to monetize the content you're having. it doesn't have to be a coupon widget. So you have now new iPhone is out. Obviously, all of the tech websites are going to be having like the reviews about the new iPhones. Obviously, most of them at the end of the website is going to be have like affiliate links automatically added with one of our solutions or manually added with them working directly with the affiliate. Doesn't matter. There's going to be advertising around there. that content will remain as it is. for the next two, three years with all of the links, with all of the photographs as it is. And imagine that somewhere in the content, you're going to be having a box with deals that are relevant to the article on the website. So this is the direction we're moving towards. We're having more programs more advertising formats. one of them is, as I mentioned before a cooperation with Big known company that will be delivering to their users coupons provided to us, and it's going to be an online coupon. Targeted to a specific group of users delivered to them offline in the u. s And as I know, the u. s is in love with coupons for many years the offline ones Especially we're looking forward for this to be an interesting test for both companies And hopefully I'll be able to elaborate more about this. How are we going to print those out on the devices of the users? But that's all I can say for now, but in short, most expensive part of my team is the product one. they are being paid for thinking of the next big thing in terms of what we can do to spread affiliate offers in a proper way amongst the publishers. Publishers earn more the brands have more quality traffic coming their way and we are in control and Get the tiny part of it

Dustin: 26:51

It's funny that you're saying the future is going back to print media But in fact, you see an opportunity gap there that's incredible. And, just QR codes here I think there's a huge opportunity to put these all over the place in relevant places. If you're at a gym, put a piece of workout equipment that you can be an affiliate of, that's a good way to make additional income. So go in that print media world is absolutely futuristic. But it feels like it's going backwards.

Pawel: 27:23

Retrofuturism, if you can say so. Like we've already been there, now let's go back. But it's not that easy. It's a bit more complicated and it also includes targeting on the proper person and the proper interest, et cetera, and geolocation and the interest that they have in given products or services. So it's not going back to the paper and you will just open a newspaper and there's going to be an ad.

Dustin: 27:44

Yeah.

Pawel: 27:44

people are buying online more and more, We all know what happened through the pandemic because we were unable to purchase anything offline, We want more control in terms of where the affiliate links of our partners are being shown. we want our partners To earn more money. at the end of the day, we will end up earning more money as well, which is good.

Dustin: 28:06

Last note here since you're in the print world I've got a million maybe billion dollar idea. build a printer that doesn't jam doesn't run out of ink and works when I want it to. And doesn't make me want to throw it against the wall. Just make a printer that does all these things and this world would be a lot better place. I've gone through. More printers than cell phones throughout my life The one time a month I want to use it. It just doesn't work. It's so infuriating

Pawel: 28:40

Okay, I think it's 10 plus years old. It's an old ink printer and it's like reliable as Hell like I can highly recommend like probably you need go to a museum to purchase one because or I don't know where because ebay or craigslist don't have them anymore Like they're too old. Oh my gosh, but this is something that simply works And yeah, if somebody would you know print out a coupon for me or that I would be my intention will be that actually what that what's that and if it works and if those coupons are relevant for me

Dustin: 29:15

All right. As we wrap things up, how do we

Pawel: 29:18

connect with you? You can go to take us. com and I'm there. You can find me on LinkedIn. I have a typical Polish name, Paweł Mazurek. my face there is very similar to this one that you have here. So yeah happy to talk a bit more about coupons and the rest of the affiliate stuff we do in Take Ads. Because US is one of the strongest markets that we're in. Western Europe is the, I would say the bigger but we're there and we're growing. We do new things. I hope that they will earn money on them.

Dustin: 29:46

I'll let you get to your family time. Really appreciate you taking a late night efforts here. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with us and appreciate you.

Pawel: 29:58

Thank you. It was a blast. Thanks for having me. All right, folks, keep

Dustin: 30:01

We'll see you out there. Take care.