Amazon, Affiliates, andAdvertisers: The Next Big Move with Owen Guetschow

[00:00:00] Jake Fuller: Okay. Welcome back to the Profitable Performance Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Jake Fuller, the CEO here at JEB Commerce. Our topic of the week is the increasing interest and ability for brands to now run their traditional affiliate or partnership programs directly to their Amazon seller page which up until recent years was not really something they could do.

[00:00:35] So our guest today, I think is fitting for this topic is Owen Guetschow from Levanta, one of the leading networks that allow these brands to run those programs through Amazon. Owen how’s it going, man? Thanks for joining.

[00:00:47] Owen Guetschow: It’s going well. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.

[00:00:49] JF: Same. This has been a hot topic now for a little while and one that I’ve been wanting to dive into. Appreciate that you can join the show. For our listeners, do you mind giving us kind of a background on not only your experience in the channel, but also as you come into Levanta and beyond.

[00:01:04] OG: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, just brief overview on me. I’ve been in the affiliate space now for, shoot, not too long, three and a half, four years. Graduating, coming out of school, I’d studied journalism, some business, some marketing, didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but found a really great small up and coming agency in Chicago.

[00:01:22] So post graduation joined on there and was just, started from the bottom as a affiliate marketing associate. Tried my hand on a few different accounts and quickly realized I was more interested in the business development side of things than necessarily account services. So help run sales there for a few years.

[00:01:38] And then when we were co pitching a major makeup brand that didn’t run any D2C efforts, they were solely working through marketplaces, set out to find a network that would allow us to run affiliate marketing through Amazon. That’s how I came across Levanta chatted with the team, and it was just one of those moments where you know, it clicked. It made sense.

[00:01:58] This was, about a year and a half ago before the channel really took off, but said "hey, Amazon is such a major player in driving so much revenue and the fact that there hasn’t been a solution until now, there’s potential here." So I joined the team actually a year ago yesterday and now I’m running our agency partnerships over here.

[00:02:15] So working with affiliate agencies, PR agencies, influencer agencies, basically everyone who can benefit from getting affiliates up and running and then just the tracking and management and everything else that comes with it.

[00:02:26] JF: Thanks for the background. That’s fantastic. And it has really taken off, I would say in this past year. And, from my perspective, it has been about 14 years now in digital marketing, a lot of it has been on the affiliate side, both lead gen and more traditional B2C consumer products, which is what we focus on now.

[00:02:42] Amazon, as it’s grown to be this elephant in the room, has always been that area where you scratch your head. We’ve always had brands that say, "Hey, we’ve also got our Amazon page and it does even better than our D2C site or maybe it does. It’s a 50/50 split on D2C traffic and revenue versus conversions we see through Amazon."

[00:03:03] Ironically, before Amazon opened up their attribution platform to allow for a technology to do this, I was in cahoots with another network, which I won’t name on the podcast, and we were trying to dig into is there a way to do this. And again, just scratching our heads.

[00:03:20] And we came to the conclusion there might be, but it’s never going to quite track properly. It’s never going to quite work properly. And it’s not going to credit the publishers the way they need to be credited. So I was thrilled when Amazon made the choice to open up their APIs and allow for something like a Levanta to spring up.

[00:03:38] And when they did we were looking at jumping all over it and testing that with brands. So it’s been a really cool arc to see. From that angle.

[00:03:46] OG: It goes exactly what you’re saying, right? I mean, the opportunity has been there. Amazon’s been this behemoth and incredibly highly converting and half, if not more of a lot of brands overall revenue, but until 2022 around then they were just a complete black box.

[00:04:02] It’s like you mentioned, I’m sure I’m actually know for a fact that we’re far from the first network to look into how can we integrate with Amazon, but given the lack of data they provided on the user level, the conversion level anywhere else, it just simply wasn’t possible to accurately report with any reliability.

[00:04:20] But when they did open up that API, again, it was just one of those things where it made too much sense for someone to not do it. And, we feel very fortunate that our founders jumped on the opportunity and built this tool and it’s been rolling ever since.

[00:04:31] JF: And it’s been fun to see that climb. In your experience, how often are you speaking to brands that have true experience in affiliate marketing and maybe have that traditional D2C site and D2C setup with a ShareASale or an Impact or a Rakuten Advertising or any of those other networks?

[00:04:46] And now we’re interested in that Amazon side and testing that versus brands that come in and say, "Hey, we don’t have traditional affiliate. We’ve never really tested it. We just want to run it for Amazon."

[00:04:57] Is there a good mix of that? Or are you seeing a lot of brands starting to just want to shift out of traditional or just add on to that traditional program?

[00:05:04] OG: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a pretty even mix. There are a lot of brands out there that are Amazon only, right? And they do a whole lot of revenue through Amazon and don’t touch D2C at all. So for those players, when we chat with them, it really is more of an education of what Affiliate Marketing is because it’s never even been an option for them, right?

[00:05:24] But then the other half and a lot of the agencies I work with who are Just like you guys or anyone else who’s built their business on the D2C side of affiliates this is really a new channel they’re looking into, "hey, can we expand our scope of affiliate marketing? Can we open it up into a new arena? How’s that going to affect our current efforts on the D2C side of things?" And really trying to learn from there.

[00:05:46] There’s obviously some overlap and then a lot of net new with building a Amazon affiliate program next to your existing D2C so that’s probably been the biggest educational piece.

[00:05:55] It’s just, how do these two worlds fit together when you’re already so established for five, 10, 15 years over on the D2C side of things?

[00:06:03] JF: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I’m, when you work with those kinds of brands, I’m curious that they’ve had, you know, program running for five, 10 years. On a traditional network on their site. And now they’re launching, they’ve got a good Amazon presence and they really want to launch with Levanta, do they find that they can keep that D2C program live and active, but then find new opportunities, or do they end up clashing when they’re working with their publisher base on which one do we promote? Do we want to promote Amazon links? Do we want to promote D2C links? And then how do you see that play out?

[00:06:33] OG: Yeah it’s the best question, right? Because the last thing anyone ever wants to do is cannibalize their D2C program. Just frankly, this isn’t spilling any beans here, but Amazon takes a good portion of sales revenue, right? Margins are typically lower. You have less control over your consumer data.

[00:06:48] A lot of brands, just frankly, if they could have the exact same purchase on one or the other, they’ll take D2C all day. The last thing they’re trying to do is cannibalize that with a new program. The upside, on the other hand though, is that the same affiliate link converts so much incredibly higher when it’s an Amazon affiliate link versus a D2C one.

[00:07:07] I mean we’re talking like many multiples of conversion rate on the same click. So then it really comes down to the brand when they’re launching. A couple different ways they can think about it. They can either go with Levanta and say, "Hey, we’re solely going to work with net new publications or net new affiliates," right? There’s enough of those just given the influencer base, the players who for years have been operating with Amazon’s existing affiliate programs and have never touched D2C, that they can come in and work with a couple hundred affiliates and they have no overlap with their D2C.

[00:07:37] We’ll see a lot of times though, is that they’ll come in, they’ll work with those net new affiliates, but then they’ll also start like A/B testing with their existing publishers from the D2C side of things, say, "Hey, X, Y, and Z publication for your next promo around Black Friday, use a Levanta link versus the D2C you’ve been using."

[00:07:53] And if the increase in conversion rate can offset the lower margins, that’s a win for us. We’ll run from there. So really that’s the standard way I’ve seen a lot of these brands who are tactical about it, go after the net new and then test with individual affiliates to see, again, that balance of margins versus increased conversion and how that plays out.

[00:08:11] JF: And I think that’s a really well balanced approach and it goes back to I think any brand who has a grasp on their own data that’s a good way to look at it because we’re talking about database, right? We’re looking at analytics, conversion rates, and overall, what’s the upscore? What kind of uptick or value is it going to provide if we do this A/B testing and where we go from there?

[00:08:32] But I do agree any brands that we’ve spoken with or worked on both sides, typically speaking, if they can get that sale on their D2C site they’ll take it because margins are a bit better. And it’s never a shocker that Amazon and we know this, I think everybody knows this and that’s why publishers probably even prefer Amazon links to some degree because conversion rates are much higher and that is really Amazon.

[00:08:53] Just thinking from a consumer, if I find a brand I like, and it’s something new, it’s a new brand I’ve never heard of, a product I want to try or test, my wife does this probably more than me in full transparency, but she checks is it on Amazon first or Amazon Prime members, it’s two day shipping, returns are really convenient and it’s very simplified for the consumer, which is why you convert better because there’s less fear about return windows and shipping dates or shipping costs, etc. So they have created this marketplace that consumers want to be on and you have to address that.

[00:09:26] OG: Yeah. I mean, that’s it to a tee, right? Then specifically from the publisher’s side of view, again, the broader affiliate side of view, I think there’s really no doubt that 90 percent of the time they’re preferring the Amazon links just to, again, with that conversion rate, they’re getting the same commission rates off based off the same revenue, right? Just converting at a higher rate.

[00:09:45] So the question really just comes down to, I’d say more so the brands and how much they’re willing to push against kind of what their affiliates are looking for which again is their right. They’re the ones paying it out, right? They’re the ones driving the revenue and capturing the data and everything else.

[00:09:59] But it’s really hard to fundamentally argue against that much higher conversion rates for something like Amazon when it just makes it so easy for the consumer to make that purchase post click.

[00:10:08] JF: Which it does. So diving into the next topic on that then, especially for brands who are running those side by side, are there misconceptions or, I would say clear differences in running that traditional program? What’s available to traditional networks, technology and ability to run a program and manage that program versus what capabilities you have when driving an Amazon based affiliate program? Is there misconceptions that I can just duplicate everything I do here from how our offers work, the kind of promotional partners we work with, et cetera, does that translate to Amazon?

[00:10:40] OG: 99 percent of it does, right? It’s a pretty full suite offering over here. I’d say the biggest difference that immediately comes to mind is just fundamentally in the data that Amazon shares with anyone, especially anyone through the attribution API is that they don’t share user level conversion data, which I mentioned earlier, but that really comes into play if you’re trying to track the user journey or anything like that, the individual orders, You’re getting data in the aggregate, which can be broken down by specific affiliate, by specific product, by specific day, et cetera, but you’re not seeing that individual order or consumer level data. Which obviously it’s a little less granularity for brands, right?

[00:11:16] It’s a little less granularity for agencies, managing brands. The sneaky benefit of that though, is that we have because of that been forced to go almost entirely content partners. Because a lot of your toolbar extensions or cashback or anyone else rely on user level conversion data.

[00:11:32] So we’re almost entirely upper funnel content across, social media influencers, media buyers, publications, etc. I guess the upswing to the lack of user level conversion data there probably be the biggest difference that immediately comes to mind.

[00:11:48] JF: Yeah, and there’s, I don’t think there’s any secret in our industry that influencers, content creators, content publications, they’ve been of interest for many years now, I would say in the past two, three, four years at most, it’s really exploded in more of a have to have, we’ve got to find kind of mid funnel to upper funnel and when we see programs that are really well managed, set up strategy is really sound, there’s a really good diverse mix of upper funnel, mid funnel and bottom funnel players to help address that consumer journey and make sure you’re capitalized on getting in front of them and actually converting to dollars, right? Selling product, which is still the end goal for many folks.

[00:12:26] OG: Always and yeah an interesting one there, too just you’re talking about influencers and capturing that is another difference that comes to mind is just even the type of affiliates within those subcategories we’re discussing shifts a little bit when you come over to the Amazon side of things. Like the immediate one that comes to mind for me is Facebook has been a way larger driver of sales through Amazon than I ever experienced over in the D2C side of things, my initial instinct is just, "Hey, Amazon audiences, particularly, that demographic of your Facebook moms or anyone else, they love Amazon specifically because it is so easy to use.

[00:13:03] It’s trustworthy. It’s easy returns, everything else. We’ve seen massive traction for our brands through these Facebook lifestyle, fashion, Facebook moms, et cetera, with 200, 500, a million plus followers within their groups. And they’re able to move affiliate products incredibly efficiently. So it’s like little nuances like that, too, that I think is the difference between your D2C and your Amazon and where you can find a lot of net new there.

[00:13:29] JF: And that, that drives, at that point drives home easy for me. I’m my wife and I have three young kids and there’s a lot of new cleaning products, organizational products, kid or baby products, you name it that we’re testing or that I see coming in an Amazon package, and when I ask, "where did you find this? I’ve never seen this before." She’s oh, "This is this mom’s group or this person I follow who goes over all ways to organize as a mom" or you name what it is, right.

[00:13:54] But it’s really unique to that Meta environment, and that’s where she’s active to find those new products.

[00:13:59] I love that that obviously is something in the D2C Facebook specific influencers or groups don’t seem to correlate to those higher revenue goals or activities that we want to see from content influencers.

[00:14:14] OG: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting, and I had never even really considered it until I dove into this Amazon world. I don’t know why I’d never even considered why we couldn’t go after these huge Facebook groups, but the second I got over here, there’s such a prominent force that again, it’s a no brainer.

[00:14:28] Cause again, that’s the demographic that’s got the buying power and is making those purchases and, trust in Amazon so much. So we see it directly in the moms, their kids, et cetera. But it’s even funny. It’s " Hey, our golfing products go crazy with those groups around father’s day," right? So there’s just so many ways to work with these consumers via those Facebook groups.

[00:14:47] It’s a, it’s definitely a new one for me that I’ve been learning over the last year.

[00:14:50] JF: Yeah. It’s exciting to see how you’ve got different audiences and abilities to target through those who can grow on Amazon versus your D2C site. So I want to move on. I think you probably expect this question given the date that we’re recording this, but Amazon ended the year with a big announcement and to simplify it for those who know or don’t know on Amazon, you used to have the ability to have two tags on a single link and it, you can credit that to double dipping.

[00:15:18] It was allowed, it was okay. Many partners benefited from double dipping where they would get a credit from Amazon for driving or attributing a purchase across the platform, but then get a second commission from say a direct brand. And it would be this double dip tactic. Now they’re doing away with that.

[00:15:35] They’re no longer going to allow double dipping. So I’m curious, on your guys’s side, what kind of impact has that had? Do you want to jump further into what used to be allowed versus what can be done now? And just dive into this topic because I want to learn more myself, to be honest.

[00:15:51] OG: Absolutely. And happy to believe it or not. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the updates we’ve been rolling out specifically the last three or four days. But as you can imagine, this is pretty much all I’ve been talking and thinking about for the last month.

[00:16:01] JF: I figured that’s why I would ask on this.

[00:16:03] OG: Was wondering when it was going to come up.

[00:16:04] JF: I thought we’d wait toward the end.

[00:16:06] OG: Yeah, no, absolutely. So trying to think just big picture, I mean, You nailed it right up until December 13th or 20th or whenever that announcement came out, that fun Friday that all this dropped there’s exist, essentially like two ecosystems within Amazon kind of external marketing, right? There’s Amazon Attribution, which is where we’re integrated with the API pretty standard for brands to set up, run campaigns, track performance.

[00:16:32] And the big piece there is Amazon pays out a brand referral bonus to sellers. That’s roughly a 10 percent cash back on all sales. That’s an incentive for Amazon sellers to go out and sell outside of Amazon and drive that traffic back to Amazon. So that’s where we’ve been operating forever. That’s where the Levanta links historically have always been generated from.

[00:16:53] What you’re talking about with the double dipping is that on the other side of Amazon’s ecosystem here, there’s Amazon Associates. The Associates was a tag within a link. So the smart affiliates were grabbing that tag, manually appending it to their attribution links, and then Amazon ended up in a spot where they’re paying out the 10 percent brand referral bonus to the brands and a three to 5 percent commission to the affiliates via the Associates.

[00:17:19] This was always a gray area. It was never openly encouraged, but Amazon knew it was happening and it wasn’t the biggest deal at the start. But when things really escalated and we started talking about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue I think they pretty quickly realized that wasn’t sustainable. So on December 13th right before the holidays, they rolled out a new policy essentially saying any click that fires attribution and associates, that’s double dipping.

[00:17:45] You have a week to change all of your links or, you’re getting banned or there’ll be very harsh consequences. So that was a shock because we had a…

[00:17:54] JF: A lot of you guys probably had a lot of work to do just before the Holiday.

[00:17:57] OG: Oh, absolutely. And rolling into the holidays. And to be fair, we knew something like this was coming forever. We worked with Amazon, we knew they weren’t going to allow it indefinitely. We just had hoped it was going to come before directly in the middle of the holiday rush. So they roll that out, we communicate with all of our affiliates, they have to change their links.

[00:18:14] Of course by this time half of them are out of office on holiday break, it’s their busiest time of the season. And pretty standard decision across the board was we’re just going to shut it all down until the new year. Like we need to run an analysis of which links we want to promote on attribution versus associates.

[00:18:30] We can’t risk being banned. We need to just shut the whole thing down. So good news is that we got through Black Friday, everything else till the end of the year. Bad news, a little bit more chaos around the holidays than maybe we had initially expected, but with that, because we had an idea at some point this was coming, we’d been working on a new solution, which we’re actually rolling out that’s going to integrate the other side of that Amazon ecosystem into Levanta as well, via their creator connections.

[00:18:56] So short story is yes, temporary dip while these big affiliates figure out how they want to promote one side versus the other, but our response, which I think gives so much credit to our founding team and especially the engineering and product team is figuring out a way to rope in that other side of the ecosystem so there can be one cohesive solution, in-platform for affiliates, so they’re not choosing between Attribution or Associates that way.

[00:19:21] JF: Got it. I figured there’d be a big impact, but you said a lot more than I said, and it sounded a lot more intelligent than what I said. But yeah, my, I imagine that on this call, I thought let’s chat for 20 minutes and then I’m going to dive into this because I figured everything on your plate has been all about these new Amazon rules and they dumped it on Friday the 13th, which was fitting.

[00:19:40] So on that topic, moving forward, do you guys feel as if, overall traffic conversions and the rate and uptick in which you were seeing across brands on your platform, do you see anything slowing down and near future now that you guys have addressed that and people have realized what these new rules are?

[00:19:57] And now you’re rolling out some capabilities so that people don’t have to choose one or the other.

[00:20:02] OG: The idea is in two months when everything’s up and live and the new feature’s live at the end of the month and people get on and get used to it, not only will there not be a longer term dip, it should pretty monumentally increase the capacity just in regards to volume of affiliates now able to work through Levanta and just the overall size of promotion opportunities.

[00:20:24] Short term, absolutely. There’s going to be a dip anytime you’re hitting the overall seasonality of post holidays alongside overall attribution issues coming up, right? And creators shutting down promotion. So it really is, we view it as a short term dip that we’re actively trying to resolve with our affiliates as they learn the new rules.

[00:20:44] Then we think that by patching in the other side of things, which is the only other option for those affiliates to go to now that it’s all in one spot, it’s going to be even better for the affiliates cause they’ll have the choice of campaigns and for the sellers cause they’ve unified both of their marketing efforts in one platform.

[00:21:00] Yeah. Long story short term dip, but hopefully longterm actually higher ceiling coming out of this than maybe we had even had before going into Q4.

[00:21:08] JF: That’s encouraging to hear. And what’s always exciting to me. And one, one thing I always give credit to really any network software within our space. And so all the traditional networks and partners that I work with on D2C sites for our brands and now on the Amazon side, if I were having this conversation with a traditional network, we wouldn’t be talking about the Amazon ruling so much, but some of the different Google algorithms and some of the different Google updates that have come out that have punished different sites and…

[00:21:35] OG: A hundred percent.

[00:21:35] JF: Violated policy on how third party, offers are coming through and content, et cetera.

[00:21:41] And that’s all been a pretty big impact overall for affiliate traffic and how they drive to a program, in this case it happens to be an Amazon rule, what I’m getting at is that networks are almost always on the forefront of having to innovate alongside publishers and affiliates to figure out how do you address it, how do you make sure that there’s not a lasting impact and how do we create something that’s even better as we move forward. Kudos to the team for what sounds like a really cool opportunity, and I’m excited to see how those rollouts play out with some of the brands that we’ve represented on the Levanta as well.

[00:22:12] OG: Yeah, I’m in the weeds a little bit figuring out how this could work, but I deserve nothing. The team deserves everything right? Just they moved quick. They understood the problem. I don’t know how the engineers come up with these solutions, but being nimble and turning this around over the holiday break, it’s just, frankly, I’ve been very impressed and it just makes me really excited moving forward to see, "Hey, this all goes as planned, we’re going to potentially double, if not more, the size of the marketplace and opportunity here." And then there’s just always more opportunity down the road, right? Just because this whole space is so incredibly new and there’s a lot of gray area…

[00:22:45] JF: A lot of upside for sure. That leads me though, to my last question, which might be the hardest question to answer.

[00:22:52] OG: Yeah.

[00:22:52] JF: So as an agency, we recognize and we’ve worked with so many brands over so many years, we get a good take on whether or not someone should invest a reasonable amount of money into the affiliate channel.

[00:23:05] If they not, if they’re not, they’re looking to get into it, they want to bust into affiliate. It’s a new channel for them. And we talked to a lot of brands where it makes sense. We kind of review what other marketing channels they’re investing in, where they’re at as a company or a brand and determine how to move forward.

[00:23:19] But there are times where we tell them this might not be the best play, unless you’re willing to invest over a long ramp up period, it’s going to take some time. So I’m curious from the Levanta standpoint or just the Amazon ecosystem, from an affiliate standpoint, what types of brands seem to struggle or what kind of brands might not quite be ready to jump in?

[00:23:39] I have a feeling you get plenty of inbound from small brands, new brands that are maybe D2C for 20 years, and now they’re just launching their first seller store on Amazon, should they jump in right away, should they wait to launch an affiliate program for their Amazon seller page? Where does this not fit for brands?

[00:23:57] OG: Yeah. A hundred percent. The two things that we just always look for is: I guess maybe it’s more than two, but the general idea is number one, like really having an established presence on Amazon is more important than maybe even we used to find in the D2C world, right? Because it’s so transparent with number of reviews, number of comments, transaction history, everything else.

[00:24:19] That plays such a huge role in the conversion rate of consumers when they land on that product page or that storefront, that the affiliates take that into mind when they’re choosing products to promote, right? So if you come to me and maybe you have the best idea in the world and you can pay the most competitive commissions, but you have one five star review on your product and that’s it, no matter how well you pitch to a Wirecutter or anyone else, they’re not going to pick up your product because the clicks they send aren’t going to convert.

[00:24:44] Cause I do the same thing when I’m on Amazon, right? I’m looking for that high review count. To know the items trustworthy. So that’s one. And again, a lot of brands who are coming from D2C to Amazon for the first time, even if they’re a massive name and are doing tens of millions, if not more over on D2C I oftentimes tell them, "Hey, wait even a few months till you get that presence up just so you don’t get on here and struggle outside of the typical affiliate ramp up time with strictly just not having that existing Amazon presence."

[00:25:12] So that’s one side of things. And then honestly, just the other is because so many Amazon specific brands have never touched affiliate marketing before, it is that ramp up and investment time that, they sometimes struggle with, and honestly, frankly, when I try and get agency partners in the door to explain it to them, no matter how much you may tell it to them on a call, if they get in and spend a few hundred bucks and don’t see results in the first month, we see a lot of frustration and… whatever, maybe you can more eloquently, but thrashing around and getting upset that they don’t have a fully mature 6 figure affiliate program after 3 weeks.

[00:25:46] JF: That translates to the entire affiliate landscape though. We have so much content talking about this misconception that it’s a light switch and you can turn it on and it’s going to be this booming channel. No matter how large of a brand you are, depending on KPIs, you’re looking to hit, there is a ramp up period.

[00:26:05] There’s a lot of back and forth, personalized outreach to your affiliate partners, negotiating tactics, you name it, there’s a lot that goes on within just a strategy that has to shift quarter by quarter based on a lot of different factors. Because of that, you have to set pretty realistic expectations on here’s what ramp up in an optimistic world it looks like. Here’s what it looks like, worst case scenario. Hopefully we land in the middle or toward that optimistic side, but that’s how we typically present to brands that don’t understand affiliate or have never tested it. It sounds like, yeah it’s the same learning curve.

[00:26:40] And for me, it comes down to education. There’s still so much lacking in that higher realm of CMOs and other marketers that focus on other channels, really how sophisticated affiliate marketing can be and how to ramp it up properly. And so most of the time it’s just an educational gap.

[00:26:57] OG: hundred percent. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And especially because we’re not a service component. We’re just a SaaS. I can’t be sitting out and giving them benchmarks and supporting them and telling them how they’re going to climb through that ramp up period. Just telling them there will be, and then trying to provide them with those resources like you’re talking about, if they want to ramp themselves.

[00:27:13] But I also think there’s this massive opportunity for affiliate marketers out there to work with these Amazon brands in the future as they expand their scope because to date, 99 percent of their marketing and advertising work has been solely Amazon ads, PPC, A plus content, et cetera. That’s all within the Amazon ecosystem.

[00:27:32] So a lot of them are so incredibly good at specifically that. But there are some gaps, right? Just because they’ve never had the ability to touch affiliate marketing or some of these other external channels. So basically the long way of saying is, yeah, there’s a big educational piece, but that is also a big opportunity for the ones who grasped it and really dived in the last two years, they may be able to make massive gains against their competitors, right?

[00:27:55] Just because it is a brand new channel that can tap into some added benefits to their bestseller rank and search ranking, everything else for the Amazon as well.

[00:28:03] JF: I think we all know Amazon’s not going anywhere. They’re always going to be one of the largest retailers in the world at least for the foreseeable future. So with that, I’m personally invested and as a business quite excited because it really opens the door.

[00:28:17] We’re specifically an affiliate marketing service agency. We go and do end to end solutions and strategy and management for affiliate programs, and so Amazon’s always been this area where there’s really large Amazon specific sellers and brands that we really just couldn’t even touch, right?

[00:28:33] If they called us, we’d say, yeah, there’s nothing we can do. Best of luck. I’ll talk to you hopefully when there’s a solution in place and now there is. And I feel like there is a large ceiling that is not even been scratched at yet. And I’m excited to see where that goes.

[00:28:48] I’m excited to see what kind of rollouts Levanta continues to innovate with as Amazon changes rules and this landscape continues to change. I’m super excited to see where it goes and be a part of it.

[00:28:58] OG: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I think again, it’s just there’s so much opportunity this entire space we’re trying to grab our corner of it, right but Amazon’s a behemoth and this is just getting started. So it’s all upside right now, right? There’s just so much more to come.

[00:29:13] JF: I love the conversation. Really appreciate you coming on Owen. If anyone listening want to reach out to Levanta, they’re curious about how the network performs, they want to test Levanta for their Amazon seller page, how do they get ahold of someone over there or you specifically?

[00:29:28] OG: Yeah. I’ll say, Hey, I’m the best one to get ahold of in that regard. My email is just Owen, owen@levanta.Io Shoot me a note, happy to chat. Shoot me a note on LinkedIn. We can hop on a phone call. My number’s out there everywhere. So yeah, reach out and I’m more than happy to chat about all this and more.

[00:29:44] JF: Awesome. Thanks again for joining. And anybody going to Affiliate Summit West here coming up in a couple of weeks?

[00:29:50] OG: I’ll be there as well as few other members of our team. So we’ll have a presence out there. Are you going to be there?

[00:29:54] JF: Awesome. I will. Yeah. Me and one of my team members will be out there, so we’ll put something on the books and look forward seeing you.

[00:30:00] OG: Absolutely, yeah. Thanks for the time, Jake. I’ve really enjoyed this.

[00:30:03] JF: Yeah. Same to you Owen we’ll chat soon

[00:30:05] OG: All right. Bye now.