In a spotlight episode of The Rebooting Show, I spoke with Affinity Global CEO Lavin Punjabi for his view of how publishers adapt their affiliate operations. Affinity operates NucleusLinks, an affiliate operations platform that serves as something akin to Google Ad Manager for affiliate operations. Some takeaways:

• Many publishers are playing catch up. Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest internet business models, with its growth turbocharged by the ease and rise of e-commerce. Many legacy publishers were behind in adopting affiliate models, seeing performance ads as scraping the bottom of the barrel compared to impression models. “The biggest publishers in the world are scrambling to compete in this area that they kind of ignored for a generation,” Lavin said.
• Affiliate stresses silos. The entire idea of affiliate runs contrary to the notion of church and state. At one of The Rebooting’s dinners focused on commerce, I heard a large publisher lament how the editorial team would battle to control personal finance reviews rather than the commerce team. They were basically working against each other internally. "Some publishers it's the main thing, but for a lot of marquee publishers, it's a department, and they have to figure out where it fits because it's not really editorial, but it's not really sales."
• Dotdash Meredith is an anomaly. Dotdash Meredith is the manifestation of these worlds colliding, with the internet-native Dotdash taking over the legacy Time Inc publications. It’s telling that as publishers sound the alarm over AI, DDDM has weathered this storm and returned to growth. "They came from a commerce first angle, which is operated with CPS for a large degree. And then eventually with Meredith, which was CPM, they tried to find middle ground."

that simple little humble link that we thought was simple actually involves you got to deal with about 20 different parameters or 20 different variables business variables, day to day, on each link and now imagine that times 50, 000 or that times 100, 000.

Coupled with a team that is probably one or two or three people.

So now you're dealing with a large complexity and this is why a lot of affiliate businesses, if you ask me.

don't do a very good job at their operations because they're just, they underestimate the amount of work that's required in dealing with links.

They think that it's a link.

Oh, it's simple, but it's not.

So

That's probably why they got into it.

so now, so now Brian, think of it this way.

You've got,

I love SIPL.

I love, you know what I love?

I love passive income.

I think the reality is it doesn't, it's not out there.

But I love the idea of passive income.

Welcome to the rebooting show.

I'm Brian Morrissey.

This week's episode is a spotlight episode where I speak to one of the rebooting's partners.

in this conversation, I talked to Lavin Punjabi, the CEO of Affinity, which operates an ad network as well as an affiliate SaaS platform called Nucleus Links.

Lavin and I discussed the state of affiliate publishing.

I find this part of the publishing ecosystem fascinating because it's What I consider the digitally native internet publishing businesses and the legacy publishers, an affiliate used to be thought of as something of a backwater, a scruffy or third cousin to the marquee publishing businesses that focused on the top of the funnel while affiliate publishers duped it out at the bottom of the funnel.

Well, that's all changed.

The funnel has collapsed.

Publishing businesses can't be content to stoke demand and burnish brand image alone.

They need to provide receipts.

And Levine and I discussed the challenges of publishers shifting their mentalities, operations, and skill sets from a CPM world of impressions to a CPS world of transactions.

That requires nailing the details of internet marketing, something that in many ways, legacy publishers are playing catch up to their pure play competitors who have affiliate as part of their DNAs.

This is an age old story in many ways, and we also get into why AI's collision with search doesn't have to be a bad thing for publishers.

In fact, it could end up To be a benefit to the old guard strengths.

Hope you enjoy this episode.

Thanks to Levine and affinity for their support.

I always want to hear your feedback.

You can send me a email at bMorrissey@therebooting.Com.

And if you like this podcast, hope you do leave it a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else that takes reviews.

Now here's our conversation.

Levine, thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Thanks a lot, man.

I'm so glad to be here.

Okay.

So for, for those who don't know Nucleus links, cause you have like two sides to the business.

Just give us a little, quick background or on, on the business and each side.

Sure.

So broadly speaking, we're Affinity as a company.

We operate two themes of business.

One is the ad network theme, and one is the SaaS theme.

Within the publisher SaaS theme, because we've been working with so many different publishers, You know, within the ad network side, we've been operating with different kinds of publishers from, you know, affiliate publishers, buy now, pay later as content, you know, coupons, so many different types of publishers over these years, as we work very closely with them over these years, we realized that there's Lots of technological gaps, product gaps within these publishers.

And so we said, you know, we were like, okay, I think if we built technology for them and that's really at our DNA, right?

We build a lot of technology as a company.

So we're like, Hey, why don't we build technology stacks for these publishers?

And that's how we began our SAS business about two years back.

So, you know, broadly speaking.

Two themes, ad network and SaaS.

Publisher SaaS is relatively new.

And here we operate Nucleus Links, which is our AI for affiliate ops, simply speaking.

you know, we think that the ops specifically within the affiliate industry is broken.

and I say broken because I think everyone's taking a very simplistic view to ops.

And I, I'll dive into that as we chat more deeper about that problem.

But I, I, the way I see it is AI can solve a lot of the broken problems or broken challenges of affiliate links, and that's where nucleus links really emerges.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this just because a definitional sort of thing.

Do you make a difference between affiliate and commerce?

Because they've sort of melded between.

And I think a lot of times it's, it kind of reminds me of performance marketing.

Cause you know, it's a guy with a little bit of gray, all right.

A lot of gray in the beard.

I, I hear a lot of people talk about performance marketing.

I'm like, are you talking about direct marketing?

Because I used to write about direct marketing and a lot of what you're, you're talking about sounds like that.

And kind of similarly.

You know, I, I, when I was in the direct marketing, like space affiliate was like sort of original business model of the internet, you know, I mean, when Amazon started its whatever Amazon associates program, it really kicked off affiliate.

And it was always this.

Part of the, the publishing ecosystem that sort of stood apart from the, the regular, you know, ad systems and double click driven and, and, and whatnot.

And it was, I don't want to say it was looked down upon, but it was kind of like direct marketing.

It was like super below the line.

Right.

And I think what we've seen now.

With performance eating sort of the entire industry is like the funnel has collapsed and now publishers, the biggest publishers in the world are scrambling to compete in this area that they kind of Ignored, I want to say for, for a generation.

yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

I mean, I'd say it is, interchangeably used quite a bit in the industry too.

commerce affiliate.

You know, performance marketing.

It's all to me.

It's all one thing.

if you ask me, I don't really come at it from a different lens.

no, they're all the same thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so basically, you know, a lot of times publishers have been monetizing through, through ads.

And so it's like ads or subs, you're either selling like access to your users, your users are paying for access.

and affiliate became very popular as.

I don't know if it's a third, but I think a lot of times, and I think this is sort of the issue, it's sort of treated as a, a sort of side.

I don't wanna say side hustle, but in some publishers, it is some, some publishers is the main thing, but for a lot of like marquee publishers, it's a department and they have to figure out where it fits cause it's not really editorial, but it's not really sales.

what, how are you seeing with the maturation of publisher affiliate businesses?

Like what, what are you seeing on that front?

Well, you know, so my view of affiliate.

is relatively broad if you ask me, and this is because you know, I don't just work with one.

I mean, we don't work with one kind of publisher, which is just a content or, you know, again.

So I mean, what you just mentioned about, you know, how some for some publishers affiliate is sort of second or third, not really not primary.

Those are usually the content publishers at large, right?

Because they have, you know, the whole big Google chain of revenue, like all the display revenue, and then they have direct sales and they sell branding.

Those, but for the, a lot of those publishers affiliate becomes very hard to deal with because remember you're, you're selling CPMs and suddenly now you're making CPS or CPA.

That for a lot of publishers is just.

You know, mind boggling because you gotta you're not operating.

So think of the layers, right?

So you show you at, you show an ad that CPM, then you show you pay for the click that CPC, and then only if the person converts, you get paid CPS or CPA.

Now going from really top funnel all the way to the bottom.

For a lot of content publishers, that's just mind boggling.

Like they find it very hard to get past to the other side.

The publishers who have really moved fast enough specifically within the content space, you know, you have the cases of like, the dot dash Meredith guys who were acquired by What was the company called again?

well, dot dash acquired

Meredith.

dot dash.

Sorry.

That's what I was looking for.

Sorry.

I blended them, but dot dash, right?

Like they came from a very commerce first angle, which is they're like, they operated with CPS for a large degree.

And then eventually with, with Meredith, which was CPM, they kind of, I feel like they kind of try to find middle ground, but point is, you know, there's a lot of publishers outside of also content.

So yeah.

So while content.

You know, there's the whole CPM, CPC, and CPS, and this is where most publishers have difficulties, but there's a whole host of other publishers in the industry from, you know, there's the loyalty and cashback guys, there's coupons and deals, there's price comparisons, there's There's influencers, there's email lists, there's extensions.

Now, a lot of those publishers have never actually seen CPM ever have never seen branding sales and never seen the other side of the business.

They've always existed within the affiliate.

They started in affiliate, they grew with an affiliate and they continue to thrive with an affiliate.

So when you say affiliate, it's really

And also, by the way, and also, by the way, they're really good at affiliate, right?

Like it's not their side hustle.

they don't have the sort of, I don't want to say baggage, but yeah, it's baggage of having lived in a CPM world.

And all of a sudden you're living in a CPA, CPS world.

That's, that's a different, it's, it's different muscles.

I mean, they might be related, but they're different muscles.

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

So, you know, coming to, the affiliate world.

So I, so my view is actually very broad.

It's not just content and even within the content that's I would consider content to be broken down into the old guard and the new card by the old guard.

I mean, you know, publishers that are, you know, the regular, you know, the well established journalistic entities and names that we're all used to, right?

Like the New York Post, the New York Times, CNN, Review, You know, the big names.

And then you have the new guard, which is the YouTubers and the influencers who also producing original new content and pushing it out on these platforms.

And then somehow connecting that to affiliate more recently.

And we've seen that as a big emerging trend, you know, at these conferences that I've been seeing where influencers are now being tied closely into affiliate.

Because, you know, if you, if you track the growth of the influencer industry, at first they started off by selling directly to advertisers, but.

They were always, you know, yes, you'd have one or two, you know, you have a few star influencers that would make it big and could really, you know, claim the big bucks from the advertisers.

But then there's a whole host of mid to long tail that don't get the big deals.

And a lot of them are now leaning towards affiliate to somehow say that, Hey, if I can drive the sale, you pay me then.

And it's.

It's actually a growing, emerging space within the affiliate industry.

Yeah.

And I think this is something I talk about all this, I like to call it the information space because there's no like media ecosystem in it.

I mean, there is a media ecosystem, but it's, it within a larger space in which the competitors that quote unquote, we used to call publishers, which I think of content publishers, you know, they often have offices and all these kinds of things, you know, who they compete against now are.

You know, not just other publishers, obviously not just the large tech platforms, they, they compete with, you know, everyone under the sun.

You see retailers taking so much, money out of the system that that comes from somewhere.

It's not just all shelf taker budgets.

And then you see creators.

It's like a death by a thousand cuts.

And I think one of the big questions is, let's just stick with content publishers for a a minute.

That sort of old guard, I believe you called them, this is a nice way of putting it, dinosaurs.

but how does the old guard compete?

Because I think a lot of their.

In my view, kind of unearned competitive advantages sort of get stripped away.

And you really get close to the metal with, with when you get down to CPA and CPS, you, you, you're either driving sales or you're not driving sales.

It's kind of binary.

You can put, All kinds of packaging on it and pizzazz and, you know, take, take people out to Minetta Tavern, but like you either convert or you don't.

right.

That's right.

And so before we move forward, as much as I did reference them as the old guard, well, they're still very important.

I'm not saying that they should fade away or like dinosaurs just go away.

They're very critical to the journalistic ecosystem.

So no, they're very important.

Well, that's why they have, they have to adapt.

That's why they have to adapt.

So, you know, so I think for a lot of the content publishers, you know, the traditional content publishers, what I've seen or what at least what I've explored, you know, in my conversations with a lot of the industry, what I've seen is that commerce or affiliate is a relatively newer section or department for most of them.

And I think a lot of them were inspired by dot dash.

I mean, I feel like they were sort of the trailblazers in this space for a while.

And, you know, when, you know, when they went outside requiring a lot of the other companies, everyone's like, wait, what have we been doing wrong?

You know, all these years.

So I feel like a lot of, a lot of businesses began their commerce operations in the last three to four years.

And of course that was kind of fueled a little bit by the pandemic, you know, people weren't going out.

So people were looking online for guides and how to shop better.

So that gave it a little bit of a boost as well, along with online e commerce.

And so, so I feel like the last three, four years were very, very Prime for most of the.

Traditional content publishers to come out with their own commerce divisions.

And some of them have reached a certain level of maturity.

I've seen some actually taking a slight step back and say, okay, this is not as important.

We're not going to invest more time and resources.

Cause they realized that the shift from CPM to CPS was a big shift.

And, you know, they're not seeing the math of the economics work out.

So they're like, okay, we're getting out of it.

So I've seen a lot of different players there and some have really emerged, you know, pretty successful too at this.

so one of the things that I've observed within the content space is that there's some content publishers that can drive amazing conversion rates and some that just somehow never get those conversion rates.

And I think a lot of it has to do with the type of audiences that they have and what are they truly trying to do behind it?

but broadly speaking, it's still a, you know, it's still not, I wouldn't say there's a perfect formula to, of success in the commerce slash affiliate world for most.

Traditional content publishers.

A lot of them are still trying to figure it out.

It's still, you know, some have some have barely scratched the surface and some have been really successful.

But I'd say most of the industry still hasn't figured it out.

That's how that's

I mean, I think about it as.

then when you talk about dot dash, I think one of the, having covered that company for so long back when it was about dot com, I might've even done a little bit about the mining company.

I'm that old, but, yeah, that was a native internet business.

It was an internet business.

It wasn't really a publishing business.

It was, it was part of, of, you know, the New York times for a little bit.

They didn't really do much with it at all.

And I think because it was a strange animal to them.

Right?

Like before they broke it into actual verticals and what I call minimally plausible brands, you know, it was basically just a collection of S.

E.

O.

Driven properties.

Now, S.

E.

O.

Got rebranded as intent as as more money went into it.

Definitely like like direct marketing became performance and affiliate became commerce.

But I think what one of the things that they've done really well is marrying that deep executional, you know, the Internet businesses are about execution and optimization and really sweating the details and marrying that with the brand, with the brand, you know, because they had.

You know, brands, but there were brands that existed in an intent world for the most part, right?

I know Neil will disagree with me on that, but, you know, being able, you cannot coast on a brand, right?

Like I take someone like Forbes, right?

Forbes has been incredibly successful, with its affiliate, uh, I call Calls commerce in large part, I believe everything I've heard people from Forbes can tell me wrong.

It's because they've got experts operating marketplace, right?

Like it, it, it's not enough just to have you know, a great, you know, a hundred plus year old brand.

You've got to be operationally excellent.

Oh, absolutely.

You got to sweat out every little detail from the CMS.

I mean, starting from the content like that's where you know you have your journalistic integrity and you know the legacy in place.

So starting there, To the way you write your stories, to what, you know, do you really understand your consumers and really, you know, reviewing products that really they care for, or, you know, recommending products that they, you think they would like to the CMS, to the deals behind each of them, to the way it's plugged in on mobile and desktop to every little moving part behind the link.

Because remember, that's where the revenue comes in and affiliate that link has to function.

If that little, if there's one extra character.

In that link, it could be broken and you that's difference between zero revenue and a few thousand dollars.

Like every little element of the operational pipeline and affiliate needs to be perfect for you to really make significant revenue.

And this is where I feel like.

From what I'm seeing today in you know, from 10, 000 feet, after having spoken to about, you know, a hundred odd publishers within the entire content slash coupon slash PNPL space, I feel like a lot of them take this, the attention to detail for granted, not everyone's, I'd say, honestly, at this point, the way I look at it, it's I think 20 percent have really paid attention to the detail, like the guys from Forbes.

We work with them very closely, great team, phenomenal, phenomenal level of expert, you know, level of detail to attention, attention to detail, my bad.

They get it.

And then on the flip side, we've worked with so many other players that, you know, don't want to name, but like the point is like, Why are you not paying so much attention to the details specifically with the operations?

Cause that's the difference between zero and a few hundred thousand dollars.

And like, yeah, well, whatever, it doesn't matter.

So, you know, I, I think if you, if, if you're a company that wants to get into affiliate, you have to be operationally sharp and you gotta be like razor focused on it because, Yeah.

Makes a difference.

Yeah, and I think a lot of it is like it when things are a side hustle at publishers, you know, they don't get the attention like, you know, if there if it's a it's if it's in an experimental budget, you're not gonna you're not going to build up a giant infrastructure because you're not sure if if this is just You know, yet another, I mean, publishers have been, have been chasing incremental revenue forever.

and, and sometimes, you know, you end up neglecting, the details.

Like you say, I think about it a lot, like how digital advertising, display advertising, you know, used to be a waterfall, right?

It was a pretty like, Basic sort of system.

It's did I sell it?

No, if I didn't, let's send out to few ad networks for Phil.

And, you know, I think a lot of people in it, when they get into a lot of publishers and they get into affiliate, I'm sure it's like, okay, well, we're just going to put some affiliate links on.

Products and, and then we'll get some money in.

And I think of what you guys do.

Tell me if I'm wrong here is kind of like the SSP of this world in some ways.

is that fair?

that's a, that's a very fair way of putting it.

Actually, I would take it a step.

I would actually blend two things into this.

Think of it as like the gam, like the Google ad manager for display, like what he just mentioned, right?

Like you can set up your direct campaigns.

You can set, you know, you can sell it to, you know, exchange bidding or program, you know, some sort of bidding inside the ad server.

That's exactly what we would for the affiliate world.

Right.

So think of it as like, there's no.

So actually just rolling back to exactly 30 seconds back, what you just mentioned, right?

Oh, I just, you know, I write some content, put some links, connect the dots and my job's done.

But no, because guess what?

Publishers are operating sometimes.

And some of the publishers we talked to operate over 50, 000 merchants.

Now, if you're a coupon site or you're buying our pay later, you're operating hundreds of thousands in some cases of merchant links, which means these are different types of merchants.

And again, with every link comes the whole, let me, let me throw in some variables that most times people tend to ignore, right?

When it comes to a link, it seems really simple, but behind each link is firstly, a product page.

Now, what if the product that you recommended is sold out?

Well, you got to now update the link to another merchant.

Sometimes, the merchants change, like some merchants go out of business.

Merchants change pricing.

Well, you've written an article with certain pricing saying, Oh, this product's under 50, but now it's now suddenly over 90 or vice versa.

Fortune change pricing.

So then every time that happens, you've got to update your content.

Then, you know, users are not just visiting you from one country.

So sometimes you do a deal for a merchant link or like, let's say a Walmart deal.

Now Walmart is in the U S but what about users coming to that specific article from Germany, Canada, UK or other countries?

How do you deal with that?

what about mobile and desktop?

if the user clicks on the link and then to the Walmart website versus the Walmart app, Well, you're going to have a better conversion rate if you sent the user into the app, if they already have the app installed, because then the purchases or frictionless, your payment details are saved, all the information's in there.

And then sometimes merchants move between affiliate platforms.

So you've got to then update the link.

You got a parameter, you've got to put parameters in these links so you can track things correctly.

Now.

Sometimes in the process of inserting these parameters, people make human mistakes are made and they go to 404 or deadlinks.

So that simple little humble link that we thought was simple actually involves you got to deal with about 20 different parameters or 20 different variables business variables, day to day, you know, environmental variables by environment I mean like the, the affiliate environment variables on each link and now imagine that times 50, 000 or that times 100, 000.

Coupled with a team that is probably one or two or three people.

So now you're dealing with a large complexity and this is why a lot of affiliate businesses, if you ask me.

don't do a very good job at their operations because they're just, they underestimate the amount of work that's required in dealing with links.

They think that it's a link.

Oh, it's simple, but it's not.

So

That's probably why they got into it.

so now, so now Brian, think of it this way.

You've got,

I love SIPL.

I love, you know what I love?

I love passive income.

I love the idea of passive income.

I think the reality is it doesn't, it's not out there.

But I love the idea of passive income.

Yes.

But I'll tell, now allow me to explain you the difference between now passive income and really interesting passive income.

This is where now, okay, let me, let me take an example.

So a publisher that, I won't name, I won't take names, but basically the difference between passive income and interesting passive income could like for one specific publisher, it was a million dollars more of revenue over a course of four months.

Just by them tightening the operational screws in their business, you know, a popular publisher that we work with went from start added an additional million dollars in top line in new revenue over and above what they were already making.

Now that million dollars means you're not going to look at that specific passive business a little differently.

You may invest differently for that.

You may have a different acquisition strategy suddenly because now you can afford it.

With a million dollars more in your pocket.

So that's the difference between good operations and bad operations.

It could mean a few million dollars more of passive revenue.

And Hey, with that, your risk appetite changes and your view of the business changes.

And so, you know, that's why, I feel like.

Yeah, the operations of links is just so critical, and this is exactly what we've built at Nucleus, which is, we're think of it as like a GAM, a Google Ad Manager for affiliate links, because you got to deal with affiliate links.

You got to be able to, you know, spin them out.

You, I mean, churn them out if they're not operational, if they're not generating revenue.

Find an alternative, like just like how you have in programmatic advertising for one specific spot.

You have 10 people bidding.

Can you do that for affiliate links?

And that's the infrastructure that we're creating, which is think of it as like a ad

right.

plus SSP put together for, affiliate links essentially.

Yeah.

So earlier you had mentioned, and maybe I'm reading into it a little bit.

like basically some publishers almost pulling back on, their affiliate because let's be real here.

A lot of people got really excited about this space due to a few reasons.

One is just Their ad, their ads businesses were under so much pressure because they're competing with so many people to, they had, there was the pandemic and there was that there was a ton of tailwind for all kinds of, of, of affiliate stuff.

now that that is sort of, you know, normalized and, and then on top of that search has, has become.

As unreliable as it's ever been, I think, really, I mean, if you look at what's going on with Google with its helpful content update with its, what is it domain like site abuse, basically site reputation abuse, you know, when I see those things, those crackdowns, I think affiliate, right?

Because, you know, I've been, I've been told by some people in the space that like, I'm not really sure if Google likes this stuff.

I mean, if you think about it, it's is this an invasive species to, to search?

And obviously, as affiliate, grew in stature, right?

The search results pages became very clogged.

there's not a lack of like gift guides out there and reviews.

and everyone's battling it out in there.

And so I don't know, I guess I could look at it two ways.

One, I would say.

Usually the tourists get washed out and the people who are just looking for Just easy passive income or saying hey, look we build up this brand We'll rent out our domain to some coupons provider.

We don't have to do the hard work.

This is great money shows up every month There's

Yeah, we know how that lasted.

Arb is great, but Arb never lasts.

Arb never lasts.

The whole point of arbitrage is that it finds a seam in the market and then that seam gets closed.

That's the point of

arbitrage.

Exactly.

As soon as the differences between the two markets fits fizzle away that, you know, the arbitrage fades away.

No, of course.

you know, so the way I look at it is Brian, yes, I think publishers, specifically content publishers need to just stick to producing good quality original content.

And I think no matter how, I don't think Google's ever going to penalize that.

Because I mean, if you look at how Google's policies have come about, they always keep insisting on, Hey, don't take advantage of your reputations, a site reputation abuse policy, right?

Like how publishers were leasing out the coupons.

domainname.

com to other companies and just letting go of control and just making additional revenue off that.

Yeah.

Well, Google saw through that eventually and said, okay, this is wrong now.

Well, I think it was smart.

For a while, while it lasted, you know, publishers made some cash out of that great, but they stick to their original, you know, their original policies that hey, publishers produce original good quality content.

And I don't think you will be impacted.

I feel like if content and reviews and you know, if Content publishers just stick to that truth.

I don't think it'll ever change.

if you look at the guys at reviewed.

com, you know, part of the USA Today group, now they go into the details of the reviews of a specific product.

They're not just superficially covering it.

They're, they're diving into the details in their labs.

They're taking pictures.

Original content is coming out of these reviews and they're really spending time at it.

So they're not doing it superficially.

And so in cases like these, you won't see companies like these.

Take a hit from Google.

Now, of course, there's the whole AI wave or tsunami, if I may, you know, hitting the content publishing industry at large.

But there too, I think deals are being struck with companies like perplexity or search GPT or, or I mean, chat GPT as well as, you know, the different engines that are coming out the LLMs where, you know, the publishers are getting paid some sort of licensing or royalty.

Is that enough?

I don't know.

I don't have much knowledge there, but I can say that.

Well, you know, I think the pipes will keep changing sometime back.

It used to be, you know, Google search.

Then it came.

It became social.

And now it's a I and I feel like as time passes.

The pipes will keep shuffling, but remember, no matter what the new pipe is, content is the magnet that they all need.

They all, they all cannot survive without original good quality content.

And that's why they all lean on publishers.

And that's why publishing is still in some shape or form.

Yes.

The sheen has fizzled away over time, but it's still, you know, an active business.

know, publishing is still a business.

It's not fizzled away.

It's getting tougher.

Yes, but it's not necessarily going.

It's not dead.

No, of course not.

and I think, you know, one of the, the questions with, with search is like a lot of, a lot of affiliate has been inextricably, it's a search strategy for, you know, yes, there are a lot, but search is the front door.

When we, when someone's talking about intent.

They, they mean search usually because, you know, John Battelle sort of wrote what I think was one of the early great books about search, you know, and he, he called it the database of intentions and, and that's why Google has had, has made search the best business model ever invented.

and that's also why the government's

after them.

but it.

It, you know, people are, you're always trying to define people, what people want and what you can put in front of them to get them to take some action.

Well, it's, it's really easy when they tell you what they want, it's just easier, you know, you're not, you're not trying to, it's not a gigantic data crunching exercise.

do you see affiliate sort of, I guess, becoming less and less?

That's inextricably entwined with search and becoming more diversified as far as, look, a lot of publishers, when they were starting affiliate operations, they looked at their SEO and it was, it was an SEO strategy to me.

Affiliate was part of an SEO strategy.

and I think that That will inevitably, I would guess change for a lot of publishers.

Will it?

I mean, I haven't thought much about it, but honestly, I don't think it would change if you ask me, because even with the, with the onset of AI and how people are now, you know, putting in queries and those queries are somehow linking to intent and the content is somehow linking back to that intent.

So it's indirectly still search in some shape or form.

It's just probably not called AI search, but I feel like, no, I feel like, you know, it's going to be very closely tied to.

Intent always, I mean, I also know the guys at Insider, like they do a great job of, you know, writing different content around B2B and then linking that B2B content to specific affiliate sites that solve different business needs like Business Insider does a good job at this.

And that's that problem is never going to go away.

I mean, I was watching actually one of the videos on search EPT.

more recently.

And what I noticed was that for different types of queries, they were not actually linking out to the business sites.

They were linking out to the content pieces written by these publisher entities, and from there you would then click on and further lead out to.

And again, maybe it's now and maybe it may change eventually.

Who knows?

Because these algorithms will keep updating.

But, you know, they're leaning on original good quality curated content to provide the right answer as opposed to them.

The, you know, the GPD is really taking on the burden of providing the, you know, correct business recommendation.

They're kind of putting the onus on the content editorial.

Yeah.

I noticed that that too, with sir, I don't have access to search GPT yet.

but you know, I think a lot of times we do, I think that's a good point.

Like we sort of leap to the worst case scenario.

Right.

And it's like, Hey, I was going to take over everything.

They're just gonna, give the answer.

But the reality is, people are going to want a trusted.

Review of a lot.

Like I was just doing some searches before this, recording for like best trail running shoes.

Right.

And like you go to perplexity and go to Google with AI overviews and, you know, ultimately, A lot of traffic is going to, is still going to get pushed to review sites.

I think that to me, what I see as a likely outcome is it becomes more of a winner takes all game.

I don't know, being on page two or page three is kind of like not as valuable anymore.

Like I just see, for instance, the search GPT thing, you know, they.

You want to be one of the top citations.

Like I think in a citations world, you want to

only space for two or three.

right.

It's not winner takes all, but it's, it's a podium sort of game.

Exactly.

It's a podium.

That's right.

But no, I feel like, you know, I think, These again, like I said, you know, the, the pipes of traffic will keep shuffling someday.

It's going to be Google.

Someday it's going to be social.

Sometimes it's now with the onset of AI, it's going to be AI.

But I feel and no matter how these pipes change in the future and as our devices change and all these, you know, different interaction and modes change as technology evolves.

There will always be some new pipe, but content, you gotta stay, stick to original content.

If you keep producing high quality original content, I don't think you're going out of style anytime soon.

So when you say stick to, high quality original content, I mean, Does that mean not trying to do something else?

what does that mean, like, operationally?

stick to your DNA.

you know, I think what publishers try to do sometimes is they expand, try to expand categories.

Onto newer categories where, which is not their strength and DNA.

And like when you try to do some of that is where you kind of, you know, bleed a little, but I think if you just stick to your core,

I could name a few names right here.

sure.

I'll hold off.

I've, I've said, I understand what you mean.

Because again, the incentives are such, and I think that this could be a great opportunity for incentives to Be changed, right?

Because like when we talk about the coupon subdomains, I don't blame anyone for you know, seeing an opportunity and going for it.

because those incentives are, you know, set up.

I mean, I think anytime but Google's got a very difficult job.

running the Internet's a hard job, has a lot of benefits, has a lot of fringe benefits, I gotta say.

But, You know, look, they, anytime, you know, Google will complain about come on, you set the incentives, people respond to the incentives and you could see with all these changes going on.

That the incentives, and I think this would be the ideal outcome that the incentives are such that the, that publishers can not just focus, but thrive on doing what they're best at and are unique at, which is providing high quality content in.

Areas in which they have particular authority and expertise.

I think a lot of times within affiliate, the incentives have been for for publishers to stretch the bounds of what is they have plausible authority to be, you know, writing about because they have, they have a site reputation for X and they're stretching X to include Y, Z, Z.

Q several other letters.

exactly.

And that's where the problem begins.

but I feel like, I mean, on the subject of AI, right, I do want to ask you, so like, how do you, so there is AI being used for even, you know, content and content production.

Right?

So I feel like some I've kind of seen that some publishers have started leaning on.

Okay, well, you know, for for original editorial content will lean on, you know, our human writers.

But then for all this affiliate stuff, let's lean towards a I to make them make make a I write this.

I feel that's where you know, those those publishers, I feel in the due course of time, I think will fail.

feel like you cannot outsource this.

Something that you don't want to do to just like AI, just say, Hey, AI, why don't you just write this affiliate content

yeah.

I mean, well, okay.

I'll put more of a finer point on it.

It's if you're outsourcing the actual production of content as a publisher, close it up.

what are you doing?

yes.

I, what I don't understand is AI should be used to find broken links, not to rizz up your business, AI should be doing it because there's no expertise that publishers have in doing that.

It is absolutely necessary.

It is, it is critical.

You have to be operationally excellent.

And I think that a lot of whether it's through AI or different types of machine learning technology, there's lots of different ways to use these technologies for these internal operations.

I don't think, and we saw this with the Advan and I understand people going down that path.

I do think AI can be used to lay, you know, AB test headlines to understand, you know, back catalog things you can link.

There's all kinds of different things, but the reality is.

you know, there's the old sort of American, Western expression, you got to dance with the one you brung.

and if you're a publisher, content is like what you brung to the dance.

So

exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

So I feel like that's something that just shouldn't happen.

I mean, I, I think of it this way, right?

Like if you, if you are a review site, how do you, how do you just get an AI to write a review?

Cause the AI is just going to reproduce from.

What others have written out there.

So really speaking, this is exactly what Google doesn't want you to do, right?

Like they don't want you to reproduce content from somewhere else.

They want you to write original content, put your own view on it.

And you know, yeah, I feel like that's where AI shouldn't really get in.

But now the process of production, right?

Like from, okay, what are, what are the hottest new products selling?

Tell me what the art, tell me what the products are.

And then you take the products.

So you could use AI in the process.

Of generating that article, but not actually writing the article.

So like, there's various other things behind it.

Like the links behind it, the images are like, Hey, tell me what 10 people are saying on this side and that side.

Like you could get summaries at AI could help you help you get a sense or a view of it.

It shouldn't be actually writing the content.

And that's where.

Things start going south, if you ask me.

yeah.

And I don't know if you see this, do you see a scenario where, cause I think we're in, I think about a lot of these like mega trends and I think one of them that we've been living through is this, this shift from like institutions.

to individuals, institutional brands, to, to creators, influencers, et cetera.

And also this shift from You know, it to authenticity, right?

And I, my, my general belief is the pendulum always swings too far in one direction and then it just corrects and then just

swings.

and that's just, and I, I think you can, I'm starting to think about we might see a shift back a little bit from individuals.

I see, because what happens is everyone gets greedy.

That's generally one of my other beliefs in life is that everyone gets greedy and everyone overdoes it.

If this is not, this is not an affliction of, this is a human condition.

And, I think a lot of that is happening and AI is going to really, put pressure on that as, you know, we have these AI influencers as influencers themselves, honestly, really stretch the bounds of their own sort of authority and areas.

And they become, you know, I think you see evidence of some of the, the backlash against, against this, happening right now.

And I think that for.

You can see a world where a lot of the advantages of institutional publishers really become come to the fore a little bit.

Because when you're talking about having like real authority, when you're talking about having really tested the products, etc.

and when you're talking about a world where it's all about the podium.

Then you're, you're less battling with the, the super long tail for a lot of publishers because they can have original photography.

They can have, they can have economies of scale that allow the, you know, dot dash to have these massive test kitchens, et cetera.

so I don't know.

I mean, it, it could, it could end up like being a case where, you know, quote unquote legacy publishers, what did you call them?

it's a

The old guard.

The

Content publisher.

Yeah, the old guard,

yeah.

vintage, if you will, where they can, you know, really use, the advantages that they have, um, to compete better in the marketplace.

Cause the incentives could line up where, they do better.

I fully agree.

I fully agree.

Now just, if they looked at, now if they really wanted to operate with an affiliate, though, they just need to pay more attention to the details of the operations behind it.

And they'd all, they'd all have a whole new view.

I think the whole old guard or new guard or any kind of publisher entering affiliate.

They just need to pay so much more attention to their operations because that's where the big success really lies.

like today, you know, you, you often hear, Oh, well, you know, yeah, we tried commerce.

It did work out.

You know, there's so many panel sessions where people discuss the pros and cons of commerce.

Specifically, you see this done by the legacy publishing businesses and they're all, a lot of them are struggling through it.

And I'm like, Yeah, well, of course you're struggling through it.

Well, of course, there's a general problems of yes, the Google problem and the traffic problem and just, you know, the mindset shift from CPM to CPS.

Yes, you're dealing with all of that.

But if you really did a good job, Produce it well, execute it down to every little minute detail taken care of and don't leave any loose ends.

You could make significantly more money.

You could see a lot more money and your view would change to that.

And I feel like no one's talking about that.

Everyone's just superficially talking about, yeah, whether it works or doesn't work, broadly speaking, but No one's getting into that.

Oh, well, I certainly saw, you know, three X, five X more revenue by just fixing all these different problems.

And, you know, we all had a very wrong view to the way we were looking at it.

It should be looked at this way.

so, I mean, that's

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's, That's exactly it, right?

I mean, you look at like in the publishing world, like a Red Ventures and, Ziff Davis.

you know, there are different types of publishing companies and that's why I think like you're saying Dash Merediths is interesting because they straddle the two worlds.

And I think the, the, the question ends up.

Being, because it reminds me of like early in my career, I covered, you know, there was, there was the digital agency, there were web shops at the time.

and they were trying to get business from the big brand agencies, the Saatchi and Saatchis.

And, you know, they were specialists in, in, in all of the executional details of digital marketing at the end of the day, right?

Razorfish and stuff.

And then the, the.

Traditional agencies were really, you know, they had the big brands, they had the, the creative directors and the fedora and the Riviera and whatnot, and they had the deep client relationships.

And the question was always.

They're going to the same place, but who's going to get there first and whose strengths are going to win out in the end.

Right.

And I kind of feel something similar in that there's a lot of digitally Businesses that are digital marketing businesses at the end of the day.

I mean, I look at red ventures and I'm like, that that's totally different animal than Condé Nast, just totally different.

but they're all competing now in this.

And so I think the question ends up being who has the bigger competitive advantage.

I mean, my belief is if, if you're expert in digital marketing, it's, it's better than if you're, you've got an amazing brand.

I am not saying that there's not a lot of advantages to having an amazing brand, but, they're not as great as just being really good digital marketing

experts,

right.

And actually, you know, you mentioned as a Davis group, I feel like that, you know, that's, that's amongst the 20 percent of the industry that got it right.

And that's one of the publishing, cause I believe they recently acquired, CNET from Red Ventures or, what was that?

which is kind of ironic.

Cause CNET once acquired, Ziff Davis.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah.

So, yeah.

I mean, I think from what I know of their affiliate business is that we've got a very, very solid product backbone behind their business.

That's actually fueling a lot of their affiliate stuff, right?

And because they paid so much attention to that level of detail, to Stavis, I feel like they're doing a good job at their operations.

And I feel like, of course, there's all this scope to optimize.

But my point is, they've got Broad strokes, right?

When it comes to affiliate.

Okay.

So to wrap things up, give me sort of, what are sort of three trends in the affiliate space that you see in the next, year or two?

Well, I see this big, hot new trend of the over the, you know, the overlap between or the intersection of influencers and affiliate.

That's emerging quite a bit.

so I would say that's number one.

number two is, Hey, you know, another hot topic within affiliate publishers is always Amazon.

cause that somehow just drives a big chunk of revenue for most publishers.

I don't think that surprisingly going away anywhere anytime soon.

I feel like, lot of will continue to depend on Amazon and it, and just.

I don't know if in my lifetime that's going to change or in our lifetime that's going to change.

so yeah, that's more of a constant, if you ask me, not really a trend that I'm seeing, but yeah, just like a belief and facts that just continue to stick on.

And Amazon does a great job at what they've done with their affiliate business and only making it bigger and stronger and bolder.

I feel like I've heard there's some changes coming about there every now and then.

So I feel As Amazon ruffled, you know, changes some rules, some feathers will be ruffled and, you know, there might be some shifts that come about.

outside of that, Well, one of the, I mean, I don't know if this is necessarily a trend, but I'd say it's more like a misnomer or a popular mistake.

That most affiliate publishers make when I say affiliate, I mean, really at the intersection of content and affiliate, like that, that part of the world is they get obsessed, like publishers get obsessed with CPS by that, I mean, you know, they think that the not star for any specific deal, it could be, let's say, I'm trying to strike a deal for maybe Lowe's or a Walmart or, you know, any merchant.

And my.

You know, publishers get obsessed with, Oh, I need a 10 percent commission.

I need a 5 percent commission on that sale.

And they get so stuck with that, that sometimes they oversee the fact that ultimately you're not really getting paid that five or 10%.

Because, you know, there's, you know, there's returns and then there's, you know, by the time the click goes from your website to the actual merchant, you know, clicks drop off.

And then there's networks in the middle that do their own.

Rules.

And then there's, you know, cookie windows and cookie life cycles are different across different networks.

So you know, they get stuck in the, they get myopic about the fact that, Oh, a 7 percent commission is better than a 5 percent commission, or is better than a 1 CPC.

And this is where I feel like the publishing community just gets loses their direction or loses their not star.

Because what do you really got to look at as an affiliate publisher is that, you know, Hey, my role as an ops person at an affiliate is to make the most money out of every click that's leaving my website.

Now whether that's a 7 percent commission, 5 percent commission or 1 CPC, what's going to make me the most revenue out of every person leaving my site.

And that math surprisingly is rocket science for a lot of affiliate publishers.

It just, they just can't get the math right.

They think that 7 percent is better than 5 percent now superficially or at a high level.

Yes.

But then if you look behind the math, sometimes the 5 percent could actually yield you higher revenue than 7 percent because the 5 percent network is probably, you know, Have has a lesser invalidation rate and has a larger, longer cookie duration window and can just do better tracking versus network a, and that's where you may make more money from network B, or you may actually make even sometimes more network, more revenue from a 1 CPC.

But the point is this is where like the not star is kind of fuzzy.

And I feel like that's a trend or let's just chase the highest CPS.

that's a big trend amongst, you know, content and affiliate publishers.

And I feel like that's, and it's not necessarily wrong.

Some, you know, I'd say five out of 10 times, you may get it right, but you're just going with the highest commission rate, but you just got to figure out how to, you know, what one's, which one's going to make you more revenue, ask the right questions.

play around experiment and you will see one emerging far higher than the other.

Yeah.

sometimes what I've seen, like, I'll give you a classic example, Columbia sportswear, a merchant, On a popular site that we work with.

Now the publisher was going after just, Oh, I want the highest CPS percentage.

I want a three or a five or a 10 percent versus, you know, someone's giving me a 2 CPC.

And they just got so stuck with the fact that I want to go after CPS.

But then when we actually played the different scenarios out for them, one was yielding, you know, basically the CPC deal ended up being a hundred X higher.

In terms of EPC, earnings per click versus the CPS deal.

You're like, do you see now that chasing the CPS was actually just, you're, you're just Going nowhere with it.

The CPC deal is going to make you 100x more revenue.

Now, suddenly, if you start making 50, 10, 50, 100x more revenue out of every outgoing click from your website, the way you look at your business, the dynamics of your business, it changes.

And you're not suddenly one of those publishers that's making a million dollars more in revenue.

And suddenly commerce is now a growing, now suddenly from being passive income, it's the rising star.

You know, that's the difference between good ops and bad ops.

Yeah.

And just, I mean, that just completely reminds me of how, it used to be that like, Oh, direct solve is way better than indirect solve.

CPM is way better than any kind of performance that, and it's Not, not necessarily, like, you know, it's the math is the math and you know, the math can, can tell you different answers, but you just, you got to do, you got to do the work.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay, Levine, thank you so much.

this was really great.

really appreciate you taking the time in

No, thank you.

Thank you so much for your time, Brian, and enjoyed this.

Absolutely loved it.

Thank you.