impact.com Goes for Big

Written by Brook Schaaf

iPX (impact.com’s “Partnerships Experience Event”) here in Austin last week was great. I especially enjoy shows with 500 to 1,000 people because there will be more meetings than you have time to take without feeling like you’re drowning in a sea of people. I was personally delighted that some of FMTC’s roadmap ideas received a positive reception, but today we’ll talk about impact.com’s roadmap.

impact.com unveiled a new player in their partnership ecosystem: vendors – think manufacturers and suppliers. Vendors and retailers will be able to connect, launch joint campaigns, cross-promote content, and manage payments within the platform. 

For example, when FMTC’s Integrations Liaison, Rebeka Medina, was at the (sadly-no-longer-extant) outdoor retailer Moosejaw, premium outerwear brand Arc’teryx sponsored a Brand Spotlight on Active Junky. These are called co-op dollars. We had similar arrangements over twenty years ago when I was at Zappos.com. I’d guess they go back to the mid-century at least. 

Save that an eCommerce retailer takes particular initiative, as Moosejaw did, most co-op funds probably go to some form of online or offline display advertising, if they are claimed at all. A 2023 article from Editor & Publisher, suitably titled “Revenue Roundup: Co-op advertising. Billions hiding in plain sight,” cited a figure of $75 billion available annually. 

Wouldn’t it be nice for affiliate marketing to get a piece of that action? And isn’t impact.com in a particularly good position to pitch these vendors? First, there is a good chance they already work together on the vendor’s retail program, if they have one. Second, impact.com has a lot of data to prove performance, which could well win dollars from the aforementioned display outlets. Third, this is a blue-ocean strategy; I’m not aware of any other tracking platform that has a similar initiative. (Let me know if I’m wrong.)

This may also help explain another announcement. Affiliate-side analytics solution Trackonomics will be available for free (presumably freemium) as Trackonomics Essentials. As they say, “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.” So how will this be monetized so as to justify the build and customer service requirements? Likely with data that helps impact.com pitch to vendors.

Here at FMTC, we refer to vendors as manufacturer brands. No, it’s not perfect, but neither is “vendor”. Whatever they are called, the role they could be playing in our space has been obscured. This may be why co-founder Per Pettersen commented that he doesn’t know that people quite see the promise this holds (something I can personally relate to from when my own ideas aren’t quite grok’d). 

Well, if they don’t, they sooner or later will. This is brilliant and forward-looking. Bringing manufacturer brands (FMTC’s own term in our data scheme) on board will open up a whole new category for the space and advance the industry.

Best of luck to impact.com, and good luck to everyone else.