APMA + Revving

Roz.

Rob: [00:00:00] Hi Roz.

Roz: Hello. How you doing?

Rob: I'm good, thanks. Um, I wanted to talk to you today about money etiquette. So can you tell me what was the last thing that you bought using Cash

Roz: Day today? I do not use cash at all. I have a smartwatch, so just all of my payments from my smartwatch. So

Rob: it's like a wrist tap.

Roz: Yeah. Love a wrist tap. But I was [00:00:30] off with the kids last week.

Rob: Mm.

Roz: And we went to an arcade.

Rob: Oh, you had

Roz: cash for that. And yeah, you literally cannot enjoy an arcade without cash. 50 Ps were needed. Pound coins were needed.

Rob: Where did you even source these from? Because like I would have to go to

Roz: a bank

to

Roz: get 'em

Rob: out.

Roz: Well, yeah, there's cash change machines all over the our cage. They're not gonna

Julia: let, of course, yeah.

Roz: They're not gonna let you get out With that being an excuse for not giving them all of your money.

Rob: So welcome to the podcast, Roz. Would you mind giving listeners a quick introduction just on [00:01:00] your day-to-day role at Awin?

Roz: So, I'm a regional managing director here at Awin and sit within our managed services business unit. So that means I lead teams across the UK and UX and France, all working with staff who provide service to our clients. So planning, publisher, exposure. Finding opportunities and providing strategic guidance for growth.

So all the good stuff.

Rob: You are actually here though today to talk specifically about payments.

Roz: Yes. It's a topic that's quite front of mind for a lot of us [00:01:30] in the industry right now.

Rob: Why do you think that is?

Roz: Well, I think it's been creeping up for a while, but more recently it's because of the launch of the recent advertiser payments code of conduct, which was put together by the local trade body, the Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association.

Rob: Right, and you are gonna be speaking to the APMA today?

Roz: Exactly. So we're gonna deep dive into that new code, find out what it actually means, and joining them. We've also got the ad tech payment solution revving, who helps speed up cash flow across the affiliate industry.

Rob: Well, it sounds like you've [00:02:00] got two sides of the same coin there, you might say.

Roz: Was that intentional? Of

Rob: course it was.

Julia: So I, uh, stumbled into affiliate marketing pretty much straight out of university, and I actually started out at Awin.

Roz: That's Julia Stent, board advisor to the APMA.

Julia: And for the last 10 years I work as, um, an advisor for companies like Junior Ventures, reward Gateway, Eden, red Uwit. Altogether I've worked with about, um, 30 [00:02:30] companies in the affiliate space, helping them think about how they grow, how they set up their leadership teams and their revenue strateg.

And for the last two years I helped out launching the Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association, the APMA. Um, and I support their team as a board advisor.

Chris: I've had quite a circuitous route into affiliate, so my background is as a lawyer and a structured financier.

Roz: Also with us is Chris Petit, CEO, and co-founder of revving.

Chris: And then about eight years ago, uh, my. Co-founder and [00:03:00] I happened upon the extended payment terms and the complex supply chain that is affiliate and were introduced to Awin and we, my first journey into affiliate was meeting with the Awin senior management team and finding out about the problems that the affiliate community was having with payments generally.

Mm-hmm. And slow payments. And so we set about building an entire ecosystem and model around affiliates and how a one's customers were suffering from this problem.

Roz: We're here to talk about affiliate payments, and they've [00:03:30] always been a discussion topic within the affiliate world, but it seems that more recently they're coming more of an acute problem and they're much more front and center of different conversations.

Julia, with the work that you do. With the APMA, what type of themes are you seeing at an industry level?

Julia: Uh, I think, as you say, it's been a really big issue for a long time, and it doesn't surprise me that that was the conversation that brought you in eight years ago. Yeah. Um, to getting involved with payments in the industry.

But I think you're right that in the last [00:04:00] couple of years there's been a lot of. Broader economic pressure. Okay. Particularly on brands. And I think that then trickles down into the other parties that are involved. And we could definitely feel a lot of this, but we've also done quite a lot of work to validate that too.

And at the end of last year, we did a big survey of hundreds of publishers called The Voice of the Nation through the APMA.

Roz: Mm-hmm.

Julia: And in this we asked publishers how much payments were impacting their business, and over half of the publishers that responded said that it significantly [00:04:30] impacts their commercial progress and growth.

We also asked them the other version of that question, which is, if payments were better, what would the impact be? And that was really interesting because half of the publishers were saying it would have a direct impact on our ability to reinvest in campaigns. And I think if you think about.

Collectively that our industry drives 19 billion pounds worth of revenue for brands. If half of the publishers that originate that revenue are saying they could do more if they got paid faster.

Chris: Yep.

Julia: That number could be [00:05:00] astronomically

Chris: bigger. Yeah, bigger. I completely agree.

Julia: Yeah,

Chris: and I think that's interesting because when I've.

First got into affiliate. The main talking point was just the flow of payments. Yeah, so actually the technology that was enabling the flow of cash through the ecosystem, right, that that was a bit broken, it was fixed. No one was really talking about how long it was taking. And interestingly, Awin from the very outset has always been front and center transparent about.

You know, payment timings how long it takes for publishers to get paid. Mm-hmm. But I've certainly seen over the last, definitely three years since probably the APMA [00:05:30] set up and we started talking about this. Mm-hmm. It's become an acute problem and I think that's partly about the macro economic situation and the fact that companies are having to reinvest and access to that cash is really, really important.

Mm-hmm. At this particular moment in time. But I think if you go down to a micro level. Your point about reinvestment. Mm-hmm. And working with programs and brands that are really live to the fact that if they can get the cash working through the system more effectively and quickly, those publishers are gonna be reinvesting their money with those programs because they know that they're gonna get paid more quickly and it [00:06:00] becomes a virtuous circle.

Julia: I think there's also a really interesting human part to this as well, because one in five of the publishers that responded also said if they were paid faster, they'd be able to create more jobs. And at the moment, we're in such a difficult situation with redundancies. Yeah. And employment. So the fact that we could actually be helping people have somewhere meaningful to work if payments were faster as well.

Yeah.

Chris: Can I anecdotally add something to that? Mm. I was at a Philly Fest in Margate last year and a. Publisher that we were working with, uh, came up to me and it [00:06:30] wasn't someone that I was dealing with day to day. They just knew that we were providing the funding to the company. Mm-hmm. And they came up and said, hi, you are Chris.

I'm X so nice to meet you. Thank you. And I was like, oh, that's very kind. What have I done? And they basically just said, look, I wouldn't have had my job six months ago if you guys hadn't stepped in and helped accelerate cash flow into the business. The business was fine. They just didn't have the cash flow, the free cash flow to be able to make sure they could meet payroll.

Every quarter. And so from our perspective, that was probably the first time I really [00:07:00] realized the human impact. Mm-hmm. Of payments generally and what we were doing. Yeah. And it was a bit of a eyeopener. 'cause I think we always think about it in, you know, money moving across screens. Mm-hmm. But when you start to talk about the impact it has on people's reinvestment and ultimately the challenges companies have got with just.

Employment generally at the moment. Yeah, that's a real benefit, I think, to just getting cash moving more quickly.

Roz: Yeah, and I think it's that connection that advertisers don't always see, and it can be disconnected. The advertiser side with different procurement teams. Talking about the [00:07:30] contracts and the payment terms, the finance teams releasing the payments and the commercial teams, and managing the affiliate campaigns day to day.

Is there anything else that you are hearing from affiliates more recently? They're obviously saying thank you.

Chris: Which is very nice. Yeah, no, I think what I hear most is payment times aren't changing.

Roz: Yeah.

Chris: They're not changing quick enough for them. Mm-hmm. So, you know, you are not finding that the net 60, net 90 negotiations that are happening with brands are changing and you're not getting brands coming back to the table and [00:08:00] saying, we want.

Payout on shorter payment terms. So I think, sadly, I would say that they're saying nothing's really changing. What's happening is behaviors. Those learned behaviors sometimes are getting a bit worse. But what they are saying is there are brands that are. Taking this seriously now. So it might be, you look at the industry as a whole and okay, things haven't really changed much.

But what is changing is there are seeds of light being shone on certain brands who I think will set the tone mm-hmm. For the future. And I [00:08:30] think if you can just get a handful of those brands to, you know, change their behaviors, speed up payments, just work with Awin to really address this problem, you're gonna create a.

Well, we are doing it. Why aren't you doing it? And then you can start to call bad actors out a bit more. Yeah.

Roz: The APMA didn't just highlight the issue. They really stepped forward and tried to, to tackle this head on and they brought forward a a formal payment code of conduct, which was released earlier this year.

So can you explain what this [00:09:00] is and why? It needed to exist.

Julia: First of all, the APMA has been around for two years. We're still relatively in our early days of our industry having an active trade body. Mm-hmm. And I sort of think about how we develop along the different strands of what we do in three phases, the sort of figure out how things work and what the problems are, set the standards for best practice, and then look for ways to make things better.

And. Drive innovation.

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Julia: So with this particular issue around payments, we started out with a sort of [00:09:30] foundational layer, uh, back about 18 months ago with a big payment survey that we did. So this was a survey that was compiled with the help of about a dozen different affiliate companies asking all the different questions about how payment systems actually work at networks.

Roz: Yep.

Julia: We went out to the 12 biggest UK affiliate networks and they all completed the survey for us. So we compiled all of that information into a guide on our website. So you can go to the APMA website and download the payments report, and that tells you [00:10:00] how to validations differ between Awin and Rakuten and CJ and impact.com.

How does the terminology differ? How do the different processes differ? And from working with publishers that work with the majority of those 12 networks, they really, really do. Differ, um, proudly

Chris: sponsored by Revving.

Julia: Yes, absolutely. So revving were our sponsor for that piece of work, and they were actually our first content sponsor that we'd had.

Okay. Within the, okay. shameless plug, sorry. That was, that was a big deal for getting that bit of work done. Yeah. Um, off the back of [00:10:30] that, we got the same publishers together again, and we really wanted to think about how we can set best practice for that. So we determined that the way forwards for that was to make a code of conduct for advertisers.

Mm-hmm. So it's a voluntary code of conduct. Advertisers can opt in, and it's designed to really outline best practice in payments. And by payments we mean everything from the moment that a sale has tracked until the cash lands in the publisher's bank account. So all of that bits, validations, approvals, [00:11:00] invoicing, payments, that's the bit that the code of conduct.

Covers. And really the idea here is that if you are tackling a payments issue, you are no longer a lone voice explaining how things should be. There's now the industry collectively getting together and saying, this is what good looks like.

Roz: Amazing. So it seems like there was quite a drive from publishers themselves through the survey and then through the work that they did.

Really bring it together and drive that momentum,

Julia: which is Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we had a lot of different publisher companies involved. So we started out with, [00:11:30] um, a publisher round table where only publishers were in the room. We had about 30 publishers in attendance. And we talked about what the big issues were that were impacting our businesses.

And it was really interesting because I think a lot of people hadn't been in a forum where they could have that. Honest, a commercial conversation because you know, there weren't parties that they transacted with.

Roz: Yeah.

Julia: To have that commercial pressure in the room. And there were a lot of stories similar to what Chris was talking about earlier.

You know, there were people saying, our biggest advertiser decided after Black Friday to completely [00:12:00] change how that validations work. And we literally weren't gonna be able to pay our staff. Yeah. In that instance, revving scoop them out. Mm-hmm. Um, but. Other things like, you know, most businesses in that room have at least one person who is full-time employed just to unpick where on earth validations and payments have gone

Roz: where the money

Julia: is.

Yeah. Um, the, the resource burden is massive. We then had about 20 companies actually help write the code of conduct, and we drew on real sort of specialist experts for it. So, for example, top [00:12:30] cashback helped with the part about. Transaction queries. Yeah. Broadband Genie helped with the part about compensation and how to calculate that fairly.

So there was lots of different inputs coming in, and then we reached out to another 20 or so companies, including some of the networks. So for example, Awin spent a lot of time giving feedback to check that it would actually work for the majority of their advertisers. And that was a really, really important part.

We wanted to validate that what we were saying would be accessible technically for 90% of [00:13:00] advertisers in the uk. And then we signed an open letter basically saying, come on everyone, let's do this. This is important. Uh, and the code of conduct came to life.

Roz: So there's quite a lot in the code of conduct.

It's quite a detailed document. I think it goes to show the somewhat complexity of the issue, and as you said, the different elements of what we talk about when we're talking about payments through from the track sale all the way through to the actual payment hitting the account. We've got advertisers listening and they want to know more about what's in the code and what it's asking of them.

What would be the highlights?

Julia: Well, I [00:13:30] think rather than explain everything that's in it, because this could turn into quite a long podcast, um, instead just to talk a little bit about sort of the ethos of it. Yes. So if we took a sample clause, so for example, validation windows. So a validation window means from the moment when a sale has tracked, how long does it take before you tell the publisher whether or not.

That sale is approved for invoicing.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Julia: Um, and what we basically say is choose your validation window that works for your business as an advertiser. Clearly [00:14:00] publicize that, put that in your program description, communicate that to your publishers, and then once the window has expired, auto approve those sales and then stick.

To the decision that you've made. What we're not saying is every validation window must be 30 days, and that has to be what works for your business because businesses are just so different. If you're a retailer with a 30 day returns period, maybe that works for you. If you are a travel brand or a mortgage company, you might need a validation window that is in the years, not the days.[00:14:30]

So rather than being prescriptive, we're allowing for those differences in how brands work. And we're basically saying the key is clarity, communication, and predictability. Mm-hmm. That's really what publishers need.

Chris: It's a sort of a call to action for advertisers in all of those segments and saying, wait, if your competitor is coming out and saying, well, I can validate.

60 days. But actually you think, well, I can validate on 30 days. Well then mm-hmm. You are gonna be out there pushing to do that because publishers vote with their feet. I think we want to [00:15:00] create a degree of competition. Right. I think it's really important. Mm-hmm. That people know that this is a problem.

And you are also saying to advertisers, no, this isn't the norm. Now the norm is this, and you are outside of the norm. For me, what's critical, and we see a lot of the data is we can't name and shame, right? We're not going out to the market and obviously nor and awin and we don't do that. But this is a way of just holding people accountable.

Mm-hmm. And I think it's really important that you set your stall out and say, I'm gonna pay on net 90, but I'm also gonna validate on 90, and that's what I'm sticking to. That's all people want. I think it's [00:15:30] just the certainty. Mm-hmm. So that the people that are working with you can actually plan and run their businesses.

Yeah. Align to that.

Roz: Yeah,

Chris: that's all people want. I don't think publishers recognize that different businesses do different things. They just want the certainty. That's the mood. Music I always hear is we just need to know

Roz: and just as importantly, what is the code not trying to be.

Julia: One of the really important points to talk about here is it's a code of conduct for.

Advertisers.

Roz: Okay.

Julia: It's not a code of conduct for publishers, agencies, or networks. That is not to say that can't exist in the future. Mm-hmm. But this was [00:16:00] where we chose to start. It's also not regulation. The APMA is not a regulator. This is not something that's gonna be enforced. And equally, this is not something that we expect networks to police or enforce.

This is about advertisers voluntarily opting in. Mm-hmm. As Chris explained, to be able to get that commercial advantage and different levels of adoption is okay. Sincerely hope that advertisers will see that opportunity of going, you know what, I'm payments code of conduct compliant. Let me shout that from the rooftops so that publishers know [00:16:30] they can invest more in my campaigns.

Yep. But actually the reality of some situations might mean that partial adoption is more appropriate for some advertisers. Okay. And that's still good, like being able to do as much as you can Yeah. Is still good.

Roz: Yeah.

Julia: Um, and being able to shout about that as a benefit of your program. And one of the other bits that I think it's important to say in terms of what it's not.

Is, I don't think this is the end of the payments projects.

Roz: Yep.

Julia: I see this as our next step. So we've done our foundations, how does everything work in the payments report? We've [00:17:00] set out our best practice in this code of conduct. Mm-hmm. And maybe other codes of conducts will be needed for other areas of the industry.

And now it's onto, okay, how do we make things better? How do we drive innovation? How do we speak to the networks about product innovation ideas that came out of the. Publish a round tables. How do we help give people the right case studies for what things look like when they're brilliant? Yeah, so there's a lot more to come.

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Roz: Whilst it's really clear that this code helps set expectations and really gives the advertisers clarity in what they should be doing, it's probably not gonna magically fix everything, and there's probably gonna be some areas where there's still bigger gaps.

Julia: Mm-hmm.

Roz: From your point of view, where do you think the biggest gaps are now?

Julia: One of the big [00:18:30] gaps that I can see is the difference between the day-to-day contacts working in the affiliate program and procurements and CFOs. An affiliate manager might be totally bought into the code. They might wanna do all of the best things by their publishers, but they might be hampered by, you know, global organizational policies.

Yeah. About how payment terms should work. Yeah. And we understand that that might be the reality that they exist within. Okay. So brand payment speed overall. Is probably one of the [00:19:00] biggest issues that is the hardest to change. But if your procurement is pushing for longer payment terms, how we can work together to give that affiliate manager the backing to explain why that's a problem, so that perhaps it's not just having to be the network that's having that conversation, but you can have publishers behind you, the APMA behind you to help drive that forwards.

And equally the other side of that same coin, I think is the investment in technical resource to help with this. Okay. Networks can have APIs for validations. Mm-hmm. And [00:19:30] technical pilots to help with speeds for things. But if the brands can't secure the resource to be able to integrate that from their technical teams, they're gonna be hampered in how much they can do that.

So again, that's about us helping to sort of untie their hands. By giving them that collective weight to work together. Yeah. To influence those senior stakeholders, I think.

Roz: Yeah. So Chris, this gap between the affiliate managers and maybe their commercial and procurement teams is probably quite a lot about revving and and why you exist.

Chris: Yes.

Roz: I suppose, is there anything else that you [00:20:00] can add to that development of revving and, and maybe talk a little bit more about what revving is and actually the services

Chris: that you provide. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's probably a good starting point actually. Yeah. So for people that dunno, revving is. The oil in the affiliate wheels, we are basically, uh, we enable publishers to get access to any of their pending or approved commissions, um, instantly.

And we normally do a weekly run to all of our customers. Okay. But it basically means that if we can see it in the system. Even if it's pending, then we'll advance either a portion of it. So obviously with [00:20:30] pending there are return windows, there are dilution. So from our perspective, we'll advance as much as we possibly can on that.

Soon as it's approved, we advance 90% instantly. So what that sense will be doing is just collapsing those payment terms. We're enabling any publisher to get access to those commissions instantly. Mm-hmm. So they can recycle, reuse that money and reinvest it in their business. However they would like. We don't place any conditions on how they use that money.

We're not a bank. We don't take out loans, we don't take corporate security. We try to keep it as really [00:21:00] simple and as flexible as possible, so our customers dial up and down how much they need, either due to seasonality or just what their business needs require. Mm-hmm. The whole premise of when we set revving up was I want to create as flexible a model as possible.

That mirrors what I saw when I was an entrepreneur in my previous business, which is. Working capital is so important. Mm-hmm. And I want to give fds CFOs the ability to access that capital in the most flexible way when they really need it. And that could be inter month, it could be monthly, [00:21:30] it could be every six months.

It doesn't really matter. Mm-hmm. And I think what I have always found through my career is that your traditional funders, lenders, banks, they operate at a very generalist level, right? Mm-hmm. They have a, a model that. Appeals to a broad church, but they're never really sector specialists. So the critical thing for me is really understand the industry, understand its pain points, learn from the people in it, be part of that community, and try and develop a product that really works.

Look, Awin does this every day. You have an amazing suite of [00:22:00] products and services, and you are constantly listening to your customers and the people you work with. Exactly the same for us. So we spend, yeah. Three years getting to know the affiliate industry to really understand the pain points. And that's why we moved from just an approved model, which would've been the obvious thing.

Like something's approved, we pay on it. Yeah. But actually the pending is what really is so much. Yeah. Money locked up in pending. Yeah. And so if we could find a way to do that, then we're really, really changing the game when it comes to publishers accessing capital. Mm-hmm. And so that's what we did. [00:22:30] We found a way that we could get comfortable with the numbers.

Mm-hmm. With pending commissions and release them. That was our starting ground, and we worked with Awin from the very beginning to find a way to do that. And we are constantly evolving, but our core model's not changed. Yeah. It's the how quickly can we get the most money to our customers and getting back to your.

Previous question around, you know, your account managers and the CFOs are talking a different game in an advertise level. Yeah, they are like, we can't deny the fact these are big corporates, big names. They have corporate policies and they are not encouraged in the main to [00:23:00] release cash unless they. Need to and are required to contractually.

Mm-hmm. So we have to all be aware that these big businesses are not going to change and bend for a number of affiliates 'cause they're much bigger businesses than that. Mm-hmm. However, back to my previous point, that transparency, that traceability and that certainty you deserve in your business relationships to have those three things.

And I think payments hasn't been like that for quite a long time and that's caused distrust. Misunderstanding. Probably lack of people coming into a sector. Mm-hmm. That would've [00:23:30] ordinarily done it, but they just couldn't. Because you start up a business today, if you know you're not gonna start seeing any revenue for half a year, that requires quite a big cash outlay.

Mm-hmm. To weather that first six months while you grow a business. You know, we should be encouraging new publishers to come into the market and I think that's the message that I feel is now slowly resonating. Not with all brands, but with some brands. And I think we'll probably touch on it in a bit, but you know, them changing their philosophy about how they engage with this [00:24:00] topic is something I'm seeing at the coalface as well.

Julia: Yeah, yeah. I think that's particularly interesting, having hung around in the affiliate industry for a while. Mm-hmm. And I guess if we look back over, say a decade ago. There was a lot more sort of entrepreneurial spirit to the affiliate industry and a lot more affiliates that could grow out of their own cash flows.

Whereas I feel like a lot of the businesses now, there are brilliant new publishers launching. Absolutely. But a lot more of it will typically be VC backed. The access to capital that's [00:24:30] required is significantly bigger, so there's less of that sort of, uh, smaller innovation that can happen. Mm. And I think that's because of the changes in payment speed and the uncertainty that goes with that.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, it's just access to liquidity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. In that first six to 12 months of any new business, if you know you're not gonna get paid for six months, you've gotta find someone that's willing to provide the whip to do that. Yeah. And that is gonna discourage some of those entrepreneurs from starting those businesses up.

Mm-hmm. Or they're gonna have to give away chunk of equity day one. And so what we see is as soon [00:25:00] as basically most of our smaller customers, you know, once they hit a threshold. We will start to support them pretty early on in their journey, which candidly, we really make no money on doing that. But I think it's really important to set the tone amongst the whole community.

Yes. You're hoping the guys that have already established, yes, you're helping the bigger players who can, you know, benefit substantially, but we try. Every week to onboard customers that are coming through and without our money, they would be having to give away, [00:25:30] you know, 20, 30% of their business to someone just for that whip.

And I think that's really important to note. I think it's a really good point, Julia, and I'd like to hope we are really an entrepreneurial industry. It's like. Built from the ground up on people, getting out there, knowing people, meeting people, building networks, building communities. It would be a real shame if we weren't seeing new talent coming in and new people setting up businesses off the back of it.

Everyone would lose out on

Roz: that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 'cause at the heart of it, that's such low barrier to entries that the nature of the fact it's performance, that you can work [00:26:00] through a network, start working with these big brands, form relationships. It's relatively easy for publishers to to start work. They can't start work if you write.

If not, if it's gonna take six months to then mm-hmm. See anything back from that?

Chris: Could we have a quick chat about creator? Because I feel like that like bleeds into what we're talking about quite nicely.

Roz: Yes.

Chris: The creator economy is obviously booming and there's a huge s swathe of affiliate commissions that are being generated for the creator economy.

And it's something you obviously Awin is heavily pushing into. There's huge [00:26:30] budgets being spent on it.

Roz: Yeah.

Chris: They are freelancers, right In the main, they are the smallest of publishers. Really? Yeah. They run their own small businesses and we see. All the time that those types of people are really struggling when it comes to getting access to cash flow on a month to month basis.

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So we are setting up a number of initiatives where we can help the sort of intermediation platforms like Awin mm-hmm. And other big creator intermediation platforms to give them the cash. Quickly so they can get it downstream to their creators. We've gotta [00:27:00] remember that our industry is changing.

There's a big democratization of affiliate now, and we've gotta think ahead to what's the industry need today, but what's the future industry gonna look like and can we set it up for success there too?

Roz: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So it seems like there's quite a few different types of publishers that you work with.

Would you say there's any particular types that you really think benefit the most from the work that you do with them?

Chris: Anyone spending money on media? No. Anyone? Yeah. Full stop. Anyone? No. Uh, no. I think the obvious customer of [00:27:30] ours is someone who's got a payer supplier. On 30 days. Mm-hmm. Let's just say they've gotta pay Google, right?

It's a pretty big one. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of media spend. You're driving traffic to whoever you are and you've gotta pay that on 30 days, but you know that you're not gonna get paid on that for 60, 91, 20 days. So that means you as the publisher or the float.

Rob: Yeah.

Chris: You are the bank. You are effectively every month having to hold to one side enough money to wear that two, three month period, possibly longer.[00:28:00]

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So classic customer for us is anyone that's caught in between those two things pay out quickly waiting to get paid. Mm-hmm. And unfortunately, because of the extended payment, terms of validation periods, et cetera, most people are sort of suffering and acting as a bank in some capacity. Mm-hmm.

Most of the fds and CFOs we talk to, what they're really interested in is can we free up that cash flow? Because there's so many great initiatives we wanna do as business. There's a whole load of new people we'd like to hire. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But I'm really sorry. Commercial team, we've gotta keep this float available, um, pending, you [00:28:30] know, getting paid in a few months time.

So whenever we can collapse that, and obviously revving is doing that because. The industry sort of requires it. That means that those people can release the purse strings. Mm-hmm. And the commercial teams are happy because there's more opportunity to do innovative, great things as a business and reinvest as opposed to, you know, just sitting on cash.

Mm-hmm. Because you've gotta do that.

Roz: Yeah,

Julia: so I'm, uh, I'm part of the board at Genie Shopping, and they, revving has been a really important part of some of what's happened over the last few years. So I think it's [00:29:00] easy to have this perception that you might need to turn to financing solutions when things aren't going well.

Genie Shopping has actually had the exact opposite problem where they've been growing really fast. And they doubled in size from 2024 to 2025 in terms of revenue. So if you are bringing in all of that revenue much faster, you've gotta pay Google within 30 days. You are not getting paid from the advertisers within 30 days.

No, and exactly like Chris was saying, if we are wanting to reinvest in growing the team, if building out our data science, building out [00:29:30] our UX team, we need to have that certainty around it. Yeah. And the realities of being a publisher that operates on that sort of model, you have so much uncertainty built into what you're gonna get paid.

Mm-hmm. You don't know how quickly you're gonna get paid. You dunno exactly what percentage you're gonna get paid. Yep. So to take an appropriate measure to look after that cash flow, you have to take a conservative estimate on all of that. Which means that you're hampering the growth of that campaign.

Roz: Mm-hmm.

Julia: Because it might actually come out much, much better than that. And you could have had all that extra margin to reinvest,

Roz: but you [00:30:00] don't know.

Julia: So you don't know. Yeah. And this is exactly why predictability and certainty, as Chris said, is such a big factor. Yeah. Um, and in those moments where growth really was hampered, having revving to turn to was a big key to unlocking that.

Chris: And we loved helping you and it was good. 'cause it's a, it's a really positive story, a growing company that can grow even more. Mm-hmm. For doing the right things as opposed to your cash strap. You know, you just need it because you need to keep the lights on. And I think there are companies at all stages of their growth cycle and journey generally, who, you know, [00:30:30] working capital cash flow is critical for a whole lot of different reasons.

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Getting back to how advertisers are changing their mindset. About nine months ago, we started working with a, uh, creator platform, and it became apparent really quickly that the brands were willing to effectively cover our costs to get creators pay more quickly. Mm-hmm. Because they saw that they couldn't change the infrastructure, they can't change the big account.

Processes they have, it just doesn't make sense. [00:31:00] But they have large marketing budgets. They're spending them on all of these creators who are doing great things to promote their brands, but those creators are still having to wait months to get paid. Mm-hmm. And so there was a real friction point there. A few of these brands came along and said, well, we're prepared to cover the cost of you speeding this whole process up.

Mm-hmm. Getting creators paid. 'cause we can see that's a real benefit to us and a real benefit to creator.

Roz: Yeah.

Chris: Light bulb moment. Why isn't everyone an affiliate doing the same thing? It is like if you could convince those advertisers to spare a little bit of their [00:31:30] budget, that they're already wanting to speed up payments to publishers, two things will happen.

One, those publishers will love those programs because they know they're getting paid quickly. Yeah, and they'll reinvest their time and money into it. But secondly, we've sort of starting to solve a bunch of the perception problems as well. So I really hope. And my hope over the course of this year is we can see a bunch of advertisers who we can start to name that are using us to get publishers paid.

Mm-hmm. And are covering the cost. So it [00:32:00] isn't another cost that's being passed downstream. Yeah. It's actually just business as usual. You know, we want to see our industry getting paid so that they can reinvest. And funny enough, all those programs that you wanna work on will then get, people will double down their stock.

Yeah. Doing good, more and more good things. Mm-hmm. And they'll become more and more loyal to those particular brands. Yeah. So that I think is my big hope that the work that Julia and the APMA are doing, the work that we are doing combined is just a wake up call for, let's [00:32:30] just sit down and figure out some good ideas as to how we can make this better.

Roz: That's a really interesting, quite new development that brands themselves. Are looking to pay for their own partners to get paid quicker. 'cause they know they can't change things within their structure. It'd be brilliant, maybe in a year's time that we've got some case studies around the real impact and benefits that we can share more widely.

Is there any other case studies that you both can bring to life about the real impact and benefit that brands can see when their publishers can reinvest quicker and they're being paid faster?

Julia: So I think if we. Look again at some of the [00:33:00] experiences that Genie Shopping has had. Yeah. And this is actually a case study that they've been working on with Awin.

Roz: Yep.

Julia: For Genie Shopping, as we've talked about, the faster that they can understand how much they're gonna get paid and when they're gonna get paid, the more confidence they can have to reinvest in their campaigns. And Warwick, their CEO has basically said where we've got that certainty, he can authorize his team to have twice the confidence to invest in the campaigns for that brand rather than taking that conservative approach.

Roz: That's a huge impact.

Julia: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. So we're not needing to [00:33:30] play it all safe. We can actually turn the full taps and unlock that revenue for them. To give you an example, we worked with Awin, where basically Genie Shopping came to the Awin product team and said it would really help. If we could offer to brands that we could get paid on a hundred percent of sales and to almost separate that out from the rest of their validations.

Mm-hmm. And say for example, you are a retailer and maybe you have a 3% returns rate, you factor that into the commission rate. Yeah. So the brand is paying exactly the same. It's a [00:34:00] predictable model through Google Shopping. So it's not open to. For example, customer fraud. So you can have that confidence to reduce the CPA and pay on a hundred percent of sales.

Mm-hmm. So Awin went away and actually built a system to let Genie Shopping do this, um, their direct approvals process, which is now available to all publishers. So the publisher has to have a commercial conversation with the brand to explain why they wanna do this, and then work with Awin to get that set up.

For that brand. So in for [00:34:30] example, some of the early pilots that Genie Shopping has done with this, they worked with a retail brand. They put in place the A one direct approval pilot, and throughout 2025, they drove a 20% revenue increase for the same ROI as the year before. Just from having that faster payment cycle, and this is just one example, and obviously we're talking here about CSS.

Roz: Yeah.

Julia: But I really think this applies almost universally. You know, I've heard similar sorts of stories from national editorial publishers, from cashback [00:35:00] publishers talking about the impact on their members. If you can pay them faster, they can invest more. Yeah. So I think as an industry, we need to be shouting that message, making case studies about that, and really helping.

Those affiliate managers have that conversation with their CFO.

Roz: Yeah.

Chris: Yes. It's actually, you're right, it's, it's completely about the confidence that A CFO has every single month. Mm-hmm. To say to their commercial teams, that works. Go again. There's no like prerequisite, okay, actually we've gotta be cautious because we don't have the cash [00:35:30] flow to enable us to do that.

Being able to double down, and that's obviously talking with Warwick and. When we were working with you on putting this strategy in place in the first place, that that's the best part of it is if you can see the direct impact that immediately has, hmm. And then communicate that back upstream to all of the partners that you're working with.

It creates a degree of confidence between people as well, and with confidence. We all know. Breed success. Mm-hmm. I think that's the challenge is a lot of people are just lacking in confidence, being able to make key decisions and you know, if we can give [00:36:00] confidence to a, an FD and they can give it to their commercial teams, you can then sit in the boardroom every quarter and say, this is working.

Mm-hmm. This is actually happening. And that instills confidence in all of your stakeholders and it becomes that virtuous circle. I think that's the thing about, as a topic, you talk about, we just say payments. It sounds dry, right? It does. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing you're gonna get excited about, but when you think that you can influence decisions in meetings every month about strategy, and the commercial teams can go, [00:36:30] wow, if we can do this, then we can unlock a whole bunch of new initiatives.

That is exciting. Yeah. It's trying to make sure. On podcasts like this that we're joining the dots. Yeah. It's not just a dry thing that CFOs and fds need to worry about. It's actually something that impacts everyone and can really transform a business.

Roz: Yeah. It's the fuel, isn't it? That's gonna drive the next level.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, you know, has a really clear, tangible link for individual brands and some great stats there from some Genie group affiliate networks, like a obviously sit in the middle of all of this, the payments [00:37:00] flow through us and and other networks. The work that we do, therefore really important within this kind of a whole ecosystem and the environment, affiliate payments.

Is there anything else that you think networks are doing well or should be doing to improve payments in the industry?

Julia: I think there's two things that networks can really do to help, which is first of all, education and secondly, innovation. Okay. So education is partly to brands like we've been talking about here.

Yeah, but actually also to some of the client facing teams. When you're in a client facing team, [00:37:30] your day is filled with. Sales, revenue commission, gross profit, and, you know, yeah, I've done that job admittedly quite a long time ago. I, I remember how demanding that can be. But things like cashflow, overheads, being able to unlock cash to get faster to a publisher, doesn't as much come into that day-to-day world.

And I think that's partly perhaps on the networks, but not in isolation by any means. I think the APMA can help with that. Mm-hmm. I think publishers can also help with that by having those conversations [00:38:00] more frequently. Yeah. To help kind of uplift that overall conversation.

Roz: Brilliant. Anything from your side, Chris?

Chris: I think more of the same. I mean, I love Erin. And they believed in what we were doing. Mm-hmm. Right at the very beginning and saw the benefit to everyone in the ecosystem. So from my perspective, just having that information and sharing it mm-hmm. In a transparent way is so powerful. And I think for me, the more we can do that collectively.

Mm-hmm. And obviously the more networks can share information that will. Enable publishers to make informed decisions the [00:38:30] better. Wherever you can increase transparency and traceability, that's gonna, for me, is always gonna be moving the needle with a publisher.

Julia: Mm-hmm. Definitely. If I could add something to this as well, I think quite an important point for me here is that I don't feel like this is all on networks, and I think sometimes.

That can be an easy finger to point within the industry. Mm. I think there's a huge role for agencies to play in educating their advertisers. I also actually think the really key piece in this is the publishers themselves. And for example, something I would really encourage every publisher [00:39:00] business to think about is to look at that code of conduct and think about which parts of that they're gonna adopt as their own standards.

Which parts of that are they gonna say, if you wanna work with us. It works like this. Mm-hmm. Are there commercial benefits to which parts of the code get adopted by advertisers? Are there consequences if others don't? And that's an individual commercial decision for each publisher to make based on what's right for their business.

But I think sometimes publishers can underestimate the power that they've got in this conversation and the weight that they can have, uh, [00:39:30] with advertisers by pushing forwards what they actually need to grow.

Roz: Yeah, that's a good point. I think that could really help with the momentum that. The code is adopted and for advertisers just really understanding the importance and the impact.

Mm-hmm. Definitely to have those conversations. So looking forward, 12 to 18 months time, the code's been around for a little while. Hopefully lots of advertisers had a chance to look at it. Publishers have had a chance to review how they want to push the adoption of it. What would you ideally like to see?

What would good look like?

Julia: I think a really interesting thing for me will be what happens with peak [00:40:00] period. In 2026? Yeah. In 2027. Okay. And without uttering the words, black Friday in January, I'm sure we're all still recovering slightly mm-hmm. From last time around. Yep. Peak period came up again and again and again in those publisher round tables as the times when things just get thrown out the window.

Okay. Advertisers normally pay within 45 days and they decide just to make it a hundred days for November and December at the time when the publisher has spent more than they ever do throughout the year. Yeah. So that's the real critical time. And maybe you see some of this on the,

Chris: we see

Julia: it saving end.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, [00:40:30] so I think the more the advertisers can adopt some of this best practice and communicate about what's gonna happen over peak periods Yeah. And how publishers can then use the code of conduct to set their own standards for what happens off the back of peak periods. Yeah. That's what I'm really hoping will have a positive impact this year.

Chris: It's definitely when the system is under stress, how does it perform?

Julia: Yes. Yeah,

Chris: it's, it's like set the stall out, everyone adopt it, but when it's under pressure, that will be interesting to see. That's a really good point.

Julia: Yeah. That's a good way of putting

Chris: it. Yeah, definitely. Back to my [00:41:00] previous point, I would just love to see.

Advertisers trying to be part of the solution. Mm-hmm. As opposed to saying, this is the way it's always been, this is the way we've got to do it. Because I think there are a number of options available now. We talked about a few where they can actually have a material impact on the whole industry without doing very much actually.

Yeah. Um, so for me, I think I will judge success over the next 12 to 18 months on how much are advertisers engaging in this topic. Are they actually doing something commercially tangible that actually benefits [00:41:30] downstream? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And who's it benefiting? And are we able to measure a growth in the sector because they are doing exactly that?

Julia: Yeah, definitely. I think we can see there's been a real rising tide in this conversation over the last couple of years. And I think quite quickly the people that come out and. This fast and make a noise about it will be the winners. And there was those that don't engage in this conversation, I think genuinely do risk getting slightly left behind.

You know, publishers can vote with their feet as to which advertisers they promote. Yeah. So I think [00:42:00] that will also play out over the last next couple of years.

Chris: It's a great USP. Yeah. I mean, literally it's such an easy thing for people to think about and do you move something and you stick to it when it comes to payment.

Terms or timing or working with reving or whatever it is, it's gonna make a material impact straight away and people will vote with their feet. They already are actually. Mm-hmm. I think there is visibility around poor payment performance generally, and people just won't put up with it anymore. I think they haven't got the time and they don't have the budgets to be able to do that, and I think they are [00:42:30] really keen to work with advertisers that do what they say they're gonna do.

Yeah. I think that's as an industry. Really important.

Roz: Mm-hmm.

Chris: That we're actually not afraid from top to bottom to say, no, you're not actually performing particularly well. You could do better, but commercially, if you're at the bottom of the supply chain and you're a new publisher starting out, it's really hard to know that, and it's really hard to have the confidence to do that, which is why, you know, the APMA and generally this whole topic being embraced top to bottom, I think is people a degree of like, we're all in it together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not just an [00:43:00] outlier trying to say this and do it myself.

Roz: Huge thanks to Julia and Chris for popping into the studio to talk all about the important topic of payments with us. It really is the lifeblood of the industry.

Rob: Yeah, that was a really fascinating conversation you had there, Roz. Um, I was really struck by Julia's point about how slow payments could hamper the entrepreneurial spirit of the channel and prevent new, innovative startups from actually emerging within it.

Roz: Yeah, exactly. And [00:43:30] I, I hope the combination. Of the work the APMA are doing, plus the access to capital that companies like revving provide, do go some way in reversing that trend though.

Rob: In the meantime, thanks so much for listening to this episode, and thanks to you, Roz, for taking on hosting duties. If you'd like to check out the AMAs code of conduct, then we'll include a link to it on our episode landing page,

Roz: and if you're an Awin customer, keen to find out more about revving we'll.

Also drop a link to them on there too.

Rob: I'll be back in a couple of weeks time with another [00:44:00] episode. This one will be focused on brand partnerships. So we've got a great collaboration featuring two advertisers in the form of THG, ingenuity and Simply Cook.

Roz: So until next time, thanks for listening to Awin-Win marketing podcast where we show you how partner marketing always offers Awin-win.

Rob: Bye.