A handful of teammates from Wildfire attended this year’s CJU conference in Santa Barbara. In this annual meetup, hosted by the CJ affiliate marketing network, over 1,000 performance marketers (including those from the brand side, the agency side, and the platform side) get together to meet in-person and discuss macroeconomic trends, cover performance marketing topics, and network with fellow affiliate pros.
Here are a few of the takeaways our team noted:
Michelle Wood, SVP of Merchant Development: Many of the top retailers we met with are now interested in taking advantage of the paid placements Wildfire can offer. To boost exposure for the critical Holiday ‘24 sales period, these merchants want to go deeper than just delivering cashback offers at the moment a shopper lands on a merchant website.
In addition, they are looking for ways to increase top-of-funnel impressions and create that brand awareness so that when shoppers go to make their purchases, that brand will be their go-to.
Kristin Beers, Sr. Product Manager: I met with some CJ product managers who filled me in on the technicalities behind their server-side tracking. This is such an important topic, as third-party cookie tracking becomes less dependable due to adblockers (and major browsers blocking them too, with Chrome still in flux for their 3P cookie removal date). Implementing server-side tracking for affiliate marketing is so much more reliable than 3P cookies, and it’s on the merchants to implement it, so it was great to learn more about CJ’s solution and how the whole industry will benefit from more merchants adopting this method.
Then, I had a separate meeting with other CJ product managers on their roadmap and technical challenges they’re facing with their infrastructure. We also took some time to share how we use some of their data in the platform, which might inform design on the CJ side. It was really helpful for us to explain that we have actual humans using the rate descriptions, so seeing a bunch of random stuff in the descriptions, listing out all the exceptions, is not that useful to the end user shopper. I’m hopeful that those discussions will lead to more enforcement on their side to give merchants inputting their rate data on CJ, a bit more guard rails that will improve the experience for shoppers and reduce confusion about cashback-qualifying products.
Dennis O'Reilly: VP of Business Development: Browser extensions have become ubiquitous but the way partners want to leverage them could not be more unique! Some partners want to deliver item-level rewards offers; another to help users become more financially literate around credit improvement. There’s a new extension in the market that acts as an ad-blocker, rewarding users in the process.
Companies are pushing the boundaries with what an extension can do, helping to fortify browser extensions as a bonafide channel, not just a cash-back companion.
These are just a few of the meaningful insights and happenings in the affiliate marketing industry that our team wanted to call out. During the show, we had many other separate and productive meetings with major online retailers, affiliate marketing platforms, and fellow rewards providers of different types.
We’re already making plans for next year, and look forward to implementing some of the ideas and insights we took away from this year’s CJU. Thanks for hosting, CJ!
