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216. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Tradedoubler: executive interview
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In this interview, Matthias Stadelmeyer, CEO of Tradedoubler, discusses industry dynamics across the company’s three business lines. In affiliate marketing, he outlines how LLM searches are driving a greater focus on content and media publishers. In influencer marketing, he highlights the dynamism of the industry and explains how brands and creators prefer to operate. Describing the company’s use of acquisitions to enter new markets, he provides more detail on Appiness, the app marketing business. He discusses Tradedoubler’s recently announced entry into the fast-growing retail media market, highlighting the potential to bring existing retailers and brands together to create a retail media network. Finally, he discusses the pros and cons of offering separate products as opposed to an integrated performance partnership platform.
While not covered in the interview, Tradedoubler has also recently launched Emna AI (currently in beta), which supports brand visibility in LLM-driven environments and enables brands to influence outcomes through its network of over 180,000 publishers.
Tradedoubler (Nasdaq Stockholm: TRAD) is a pioneer in performance-based digital marketing, operating in more than 90 countries with over 3,000 brands.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets and 60-second pieces are a compressed summary of content designed to convey our message in a single, easily shareable hit.
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Transcript
Introduction: Edison TV and Trade Doubler
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Edison TV. I'm Catherine Thompson, technology analyst at Edison, and I'm here today with Matthias Stadelmeier, CEO of Trade Doubler. Trade Doubler is a global marketing and technology company that helps advertisers and publishers to grow through performance-based solutions, market data insights, and advanced tools to track the customer journey.
00:00:31
Speaker
ah Trade Doubler is listed on Nasdaq Stock Home. Welcome, Matthias. Thanks for coming in today. Hi, Catherine. Thank you for having me.
Partner Marketing Trends and Performance
00:00:39
Speaker
um I thought I'd kick off by starting with your largest business, um which is your partner marketing business. So an affiliate um network that connects over 3000 brands with more than 180,000 publishers.
00:00:53
Speaker
Could you give us a feel for the trends that you're seeing in that business? For example, the relative performance of the different verticals that you operate in, but also a sense of what you're seeing changes from LLM search.
00:01:06
Speaker
I can certainly
Affiliate Marketing Trends and Publisher Partnerships
00:01:07
Speaker
do that. and So we are pioneers in partner marketing, affiliate marketing. as Trade Label was founded in 1999 already, so we're doing that for a little bit more than 25 years. We've always been focusing on e-commerce businesses, so we have four large verticals, which is fashion, travel, consumer electronics, and then retail a little bit more generally. and We have a few businesses in finance for example or insurance but these e-commerce ones are the main ones.
00:01:36
Speaker
In these um you rather see seasonal trends like obviously Q4 is important for retail in general and we had a large increase in fashion over the last few years. There was a lot of fast fashion brands popping up and the likes of Zara for example Pull&Bear that's kind of like our clients that has grown a lot.
00:01:56
Speaker
There is quite a few coming from China now as well, and marketplaces, but fast fashion focused as well. and That is helping us a bit. But in the industries itself, so in these different verticals, and we do not see so many changes in itself. It is more when you go down underneath how they operate. The majority of affiliate marketing, when you see this product lifecycle, how they operate, that is quite fascinating.
00:02:24
Speaker
And um the real changes are happening in on the publisher side, so in the on the network side, where we have a constant shift on what kind of partners our clients are working with.
00:02:36
Speaker
We obviously have the traditional channels like cashback, vouchers, price comparison, for example, but especially with LLM, as you're asking. um We see a big push on content and media sites because these content media sites are basically feeding the LLMs and it's super important for brands to be visible in these content pieces to be talked about, basically written about, and because that gets citated then from the LLMs and this is driving customer behavior.
00:03:05
Speaker
At the moment there is a bit of a gap because we can't really measure the click out from the LLMs because there is no tracking possible at the moment. and But we get a lot of data from the publishers um where we can see how user journeys are started from the LLMs. It's a huge shift in the industry. In the end, it's it's fascinating because it's changing so quickly.
00:03:26
Speaker
um But in the end, it helps us actually because it lifts, it shortens the user journey. and It lifts these media and content publishers in their importance, and which then drives a lot of value for the brand. So so it's exciting times actually.
Metapik's Influencer Marketing Insights
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, and your second largest business, which is Metapik, the influencer marketing business, and that connects, I think, in 2000 brands with over 100,000 creators. um Could you give us a sense of what you're seeing there? So in terms of you know who are the most successful creators by size, by vertical? and How are they wanting to be paid? Is it CPA, fee-based, hybrid? And also seeing that Meta's recently started allowing creators to put links in their reels rather than insisting on link in how you think that might have an impact on Metapick?
00:04:18
Speaker
This is um a quickly developing vertical or product that we have now as well. Influencer marketing is much, much younger than partner marketing. So you see more changes. It's relatively young. and It's still developing. Like for example, it's very difficult to find matching numbers for the market. How big is that market? How much is that growing? Because it is so fluent and it's so many different disciplines in this market itself. um where we work more in the performance space part.
00:04:49
Speaker
We set up Metapig Influencer Marketing in the beginning very similar to Partner Marketing. So we tried to leverage both the technology as well as the business model. um So working on a CPA, cost per acquisition basis. We always paid the influencer on CPC, click based, while we charge the clients on CPA and we expanded by leveraging our network of brands that we have in Jdabler, but we're working as well, Metapick is an independent company, we're working as well with other networks like Avon, for example, CJ Impact, and which gave Metapick in the beginning really good push. Now we're shifting a bit because Metapig itself, it was a bit stuck in this partner marketing ecosystem while it developed on brand side and with brands establishing their own influencer marketing departments in-house, having separate budgets for that as well. And this is then rather not CPA based, rather CPC or fixed price based. So we are adapting a little bit. and We're working out differently with brands in order to capture that as well.
00:05:57
Speaker
With the influencers as you're asking, and we usually pay them on CPC or on fixed fees. um That's kind of like what they would expect from a company like us and that's how they have signed up. And so I think that works well.
00:06:11
Speaker
When it comes to you do these technology changes like the the other part of your question, We have always had the possibility to measure the click out from the Reels, so from Instagram um and from other platforms. The link in biotechnology, we mainly needed to measure click outs from TikTok because in the video itself, we can't measure. So it's not such a big change for us. It's rather giving us a push.
00:06:35
Speaker
um So it's going in the right direction there. Okay.
App Inness Acquisition and Mobile App Marketing
00:06:39
Speaker
You have ah a smaller app marketing business, Appiness. Could you talk a little bit about the opportunity you see there and what kind of take up you've seen from your existing customer base?
00:06:51
Speaker
Like with Metapig, like Metapig we launched already in 2017. That was um started with a small acquisition we made back in Sweden. App Inness was very similar. It was a small acquisition that we made in 21 or 22, I think in the Netherlands.
00:07:07
Speaker
and What we offer to our clients is basically in-app sales or app download campaigns, which is interesting for all brands that have an app with a trackable app. So where they sell products through the app.
00:07:21
Speaker
And that is something that is clearly under leveraged on brand side. So you have a lot of brands that have an app and sell through the app, but for example, can't even track in this app. So we give them the possibility to track. And then on the publisher side, it's different publishers and again, much more mobile focus. So you need to have certain technical capabilities, but you need to have some sort of know how as well to work with app tracking, with app traffic. And that's something that's complementary basically um to the partner marketing offer, but maybe to the influencer marketing offer as well. We work on the same business model, just that it's not cost per acquisition, it's cost per install or cost per sales. Like we have, for example, delivery companies um where we don't like track the sales, push for sales. which is working very, very well. um And we see a lot of good potential for us because as I said, many brands are under leveraging the apps, they have them but can't even track. So we give them this this possibility why we can push for sales or app installs.
00:08:22
Speaker
Great. And you've just recently kind of dipped a toe in the retail
Bridge Retail Media Venture
00:08:27
Speaker
media space. And so you started a joint venture called Bridge Retail Media. yeah ah Could you talk about what attracted you you to this market and how that would work with your existing business? Maybe you see some kind of like red line in what I just described, right? So um we have our technology, we have this business model that we pioneered in 1999 and we always try to leverage both. So we did that in influencer marketing and the technology, so the tracking and the payments. as well as the business model CPA where we pay commission to the publishers or the influencers. The same we do with ad marketing and exactly the same um is the case with Bridge Retail Media. So our new retail media offering where we see an opportunity because we have both retailers and brands in our network and retail media is one of the fastest growing segments of digital marketing. and we see a really good opportunity and to help both these retailers as well as the brands to build kind of like a separate network within our network. and We're enabling them to work together.
00:09:33
Speaker
um We have looked at, we've spoken with a few, and we we identified a really good potential. So this is why we have set up this company with two Swedish founders, one of them being the IAB president in Sweden. So we have um good knowledge about the market, but we have good access as well. um So we're very optimistic for that.
Future of Trade Doubler's Marketing Businesses
00:09:53
Speaker
Great. And finally, i just wondered whether you, looking at your affiliate influencer and app marketing businesses, whether you expect to keep them all as separate products or whether at some point you can see that all converging into a kind of performance partnership network?
00:10:10
Speaker
That's a really interesting question because it exactly picks on what I just said on this, um the leveraging the technology as well as the business model. From that side, it actually would be possible to kind of like run it all as one kind of performance marketing offer. and It's very much down to the market and then to the brands and to the publishers on how we're going to position it in the future.
00:10:36
Speaker
um With these different channels becoming rather larger, as I said, right, influencer marketing, big brands have now their own teams, they have their own budgets. And it's quite interesting then to learn that um the the whole terminology, the whole experience and know-how you need for these different channels is actually quite different.
00:10:57
Speaker
um So when you speak, for example, with influencer marketing, and teams, they often are not really aware what a CPA is. They rather want to work on CPC or fixed prices because that's more common in influencer marketing. You have completely different terms and understandings as well in ad marketing. So from a technological perspective as well as from the the business model in principle as well as on the desired outcomes or the conversion, you could all match them together. But then I think it's really like expert knowledge in all of these um that separates them and have a different understanding um client by client.
00:11:38
Speaker
especially for the large ones. For the smaller ones, you could maybe package it together. um But I think for the moment, it's good that we have it um set up like it is. Thank you very much, Matthias, for coming in. That was really interesting. Thank you, Catherine.