The Emergence of AI & Affiliate Marketing with Cary Pierce

[00:00:00] Jake Fuller: Awesome. Cary Pierce, welcome to the official kickoff of season four of our Profitable Performance Marketing podcast.

[00:00:22] Cary Pierce: I know you don’t like saying it, but it is very aptly named, I must say.

[00:00:25] Jake: Yes. We just call it PPM from now on internally. It’s much easier. Yeah, so for some listeners who don’t know or have not listened to this podcast before I am your host Jake Fuller I am the CEO here at JEBCommerce an OPM and affiliate marketing agency. We’ve been around for about 20 years now. For those of you returning to the podcast, welcome back to season four. You’ll notice some changes. I am not Jamie Birch. He hosted the first three seasons, and moving forward, I am your new host. Our first official guest on the podcast. If you want to introduce yourself, if for those who don’t know.

[00:01:01] Cary: Sure. I’d be glad to honored to be the first guest returning guest returning guest first guest. Either way still enjoy things for you. Anyway Cary Pierce, I’m the Senior Director for Agency Services for Rakuten Advertising globally now. Been doing that for, I’m not going to say how many years that is.

[00:01:20] I do have an anniversary coming up here next month with Rakuten overall, but essentially what I do is work with all of our agency partners, OPMs other advertising agencies that are helping our advertisers manage programs on our network, and we do this across the globe. Like I said, it’s going to be North America primarily, but then we also have team members in the UK, EMEA, and then we also have in Australia as well that are helping in the APAC region.

[00:01:43] Jake: Fantastic. And we know each other. We go back a few years now and have met each other quite a few times, and as any listeners of previous podcasts know, Jamie used to match your Hawaiian shirts. I don’t I don’t own one. So I either need to go to Hawaii or just buy a Hawaiian style shirt for these calls.

[00:02:02] Cary: I’m gonna burst the bubble for those that don’t know. I do, I do like to wear Hawaiian shirts. I won’t go into the full story behind it. It was something within our office and where we were downtown and a lot of lawyers and financial planners and insurance adjusters scoffing at some of our other employees that work in the office, younger ones and giving them grief.

[00:02:21] So I decided to take that deflected grief onto me and be one of the more louder ones so that it would share our younger, newer employees in a tech company and a high rise business. So that was the genius of the Hawaiian shirts, I’m starting to wear them. It ended up something that my mother in law would buy me, my mom would buy me, of course, Amy would find me some as well.

[00:02:38] And it was like a competition to find the brown, the loudest, brightest, “Cary wouldn’t wear this,” and all of them I would absolutely wear it. Cause it was more about ticking off, but making the other others that were some of our other building mates were taking some grief on other ones.

[00:02:54] And I figured I’ll just jump out in front and take that deflection from, and it ended up becoming part of my brand, which I don’t disenjoy by any stretch. Yeah. It’s still a collared shirt at the end of the day.

[00:03:04] Jake: It’s still a collared shirt and you get to be comfortable and you’re quite recognizable at conferences. It’s very easy to spot you.

[00:03:10] Cary: It does. It does work out that way. Yes, it does.

[00:03:13] Jake: Oh, that, and that works out really well. No, I love that. And if I were fashionable, I might try something, but it just doesn’t quite work for me.

[00:03:20] So a little different this season. Usually these are longer form podcast episodes. We’re really going to focus on a specific topic.

[00:03:26] So the topic today is AI. This has been a buzzword, something that has been well addressed over probably the past 12 months, but really the past six months, I’ve seen quite a bit of articles, blog posts, webinars, you name it. A lot of different takes on AI, how it’s being utilized in the affiliate channel.

[00:03:43] And so we’re going to dive into that as our main topic for the day. So just to start out just as a general question, how have you seen the adoption in the affiliate space and the use of AI over the past 12 months? And has it been good or bad?

[00:03:56] Cary: Yeah it’s been something that it’s two different perspectives, right? From a Rakuten Advertising perspective we have been using AI now for quite a while. Really starting within machine learning, even before the language learning models were even coming out, right? Machine learning, and we were doing affiliate forecasting.

[00:04:12] So for those that don’t know, on a platform you can go and put into a budget based on the vertical, based on past performance, based off of your AOV, based off of your traffic. It’ll use your program and it’ll use the vertical overall and then what’s happening in the industry overall and give you a forecast based on your budget, right?

[00:04:28] So this is what my advertiser is going to spend or target spend for the next month, next three months. What should I see in terms of traffic, conversions, orders, sales, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Pretty simple. Nice little thing, but it’s not something to where an analyst is running this for you. It is plug and play, machine learning updates as we go, and it’s taking the benchmarking that we use for comparing how my past performance is, using that same data, put some learning behind it, and then doing a forecast.

[00:04:58] Similar to that, using the same type of concept from our machine learning, we also have a placement recommender, to where here’s my budget, and I want to do a paid placement. This is how much I’m going to spend on the paid placement. Whom should I do it with? Who’s done this in the past? And then what should I see my returns? What’s my ROAS, AOV, those types of things.

[00:05:17] So using those are really ones that we’ve had for a while. That was still, there’s some adoption with it, but it was not like what we’re seeing within the past 12 months, right? Powerful tools, they’re great, but it’s not like something that you use on an ongoing basis. It’s just another resource you can use, especially as an agency to provide more explanation, understanding to your advertiser, how the program is successful, why I’m recommending this over that, those types of things.

[00:05:45] The most recent one that we announced this year was the Partnership Discovery tool. This is on the advertiser side, trying to find publishers to work with, and that has used an AI segment within it to understand what publishers… so you’re searching instead of searching for, I’m looking for coupon publishers. I’m looking for content publishers. I’m looking for those that are in this space.

[00:06:06] This is a product specific search that then goes through all the data within our network to see this specific product, who has sold that specific product, or very similar of that product and not by brand, but by product. So hiking boots, who has sold hiking boots or, not so much hiking boots, if you want to expand it out within the camping vertical or the hiking vertical who has sold hiking gear, who’s sold camping thing, walking sticks, all the different things that would be associated within hiking a list of all the publishers that have had conversions in the network in the past 12 months.

[00:06:43] So that is something that we’ve always wanted to be able to do but we haven’t been able to, and this really gets toward advertisers rolling out of different products, right? This is my product I’ve been always doing. I’m going to get into this product line. I’ve always been shoes, we’re going to add in apparel and fitness apparel or vice versa. Or we’ve been yoga mats. Now we’re going to do yoga pants, right?

[00:07:04] Whatever that is, getting an understanding here’s the publishers you should be working with that you’re not already working with, and here’s the one you should. And then you can see where this can go right to all those things. So we’ve had that from advertiser side.

[00:07:15] We’re rolling that out on the publisher side, and these are ones that have been massive amounts of adoption really quick. And that’s just within our technology. Outside of it, I literally typed into ChatGPT before this. I’m like, Hey, I’m going to be in a podcast. I’m going to be talking about, I want to be interviewed on a podcast talking about AI.

[00:07:33] Let me know what I should be bringing up as far as Rakuten Advertising or what’s been having in general and it gave me a prompt of these things, right? So I’ll just use it as a source just for where I know where I’m going. Am I on the right path or not? Give me something that I didn’t even think about.

[00:07:47] Amy has been building something and she’s already …built building… she already built it. We’re literally taking all of our help center articles, throwing it into ChatGPT, and then you can use it and ask a question. So we’ll use it within specific categories when it comes to dynamic commissioning, right?

[00:08:03] Jake: Yeah.

[00:08:04] Cary: My scenario. So type in your scenario. What should I do? And then it will give you a ChatGPT response of it. So we’ve already got that something that we’re building out to use internally for ourselves, for our CS team, to help our advertisers and agencies. When we’re getting a little wonky ones, I use it to rewrite my emails.

[00:08:20] And this is something that we’ve had publishers that our network development team has told me about this, I can see everybody’s starting to do this, agencies write that email, that tough one that one, it’s going to take more than two paragraphs. Write it, throw it into ChatGPT, tell them to make it more engaging, tell it to make it less technical, tell it to all three, more engaging and less technical, whatever it is that you want to do to tweak it.

[00:08:43] Just these simple little things, they’re just these tools that are right there to do these types of things. I can see more and more of it. Rob Barrisford with his Affiliate.ai. That coming in to take just a week over week, month over month, year report and put that into something that you can prompt and say, can you send me this report?

[00:09:01] It sends it to you and then gives you an explanation of what you’re seeing. Here’s, this is a pretty significant increase. It was with this publisher, big jump in traffic, big jump in, in sales, your return right here. So it’s that anomaly detection. We didn’t even get it. Jake, we can go on so many different things, man.

[00:09:18] Jake: So many avenues to take.

[00:09:20] Cary: We’re, our team has been building anomaly detection right now, and again, I know some are looking at this for like fraud. This is the thing that we use for fraud detection, right? Coming up in Q4 four, for those that have been in the industry for a while, we know this is the time we got to be vigilant and making sure we’re watching everything.

[00:09:37] We’re going to start using this. We’ve already started building this out to use this, to identify ” uh oh, this is way outside the norm. Is this legit or is this something that should be of concern.” That’s great. But anomaly detection the other way.

[00:09:51] If I’m a publisher and all of a sudden I see a spike in conversions with an advertiser, I need to be made aware that I now have a huge amount of conversions or vice versa. Not even something bad thing, but a good thing. What is it? Is this on a specific articles or something? Did Oprah talk about my brand and now it’s exploded, right?

[00:10:09] That anomaly detection, having that just within your own system as a publisher to understand, Oh, what is it? Find that page where that is, and then I’ve had my network development team has told me about a couple of our content publishers are taking that piece has that written with it and seeing if this is a product that I can leverage, where can I move this product and other content that would match it or vice versa, not using anomaly detection. This is my highest performing page. Can I take the framework of this, the layout, build other pages to match it, that are different types of verticals that I’m working in or different types of categories I’m working in.

[00:10:45] So, there’s so much at our fingertips just from a day to day, just for brainstorming. Building up a draft or helping me rewrite something that I need to write. So that’s the second set of eyes, an editor, right? To tweak it for me has been huge from just for everybody has access to this today and start using it.

[00:11:05] And we’ve seen more and more agency partners using that to take something, we give them a little bit of thing and then say, Hey, run this through ChatGPT, if it makes sense. Take this and write it on your own way. Throw it into ChatGPT, or throw it into Perplexity, or throw it into Copilot, or throw it into all these tools for free that you can use.

[00:11:24] I probably ate up half of our time right there with your first question.

[00:11:28] Jake: No, and it’s a lot to digest there, I think, for any listeners. I can replay that once or twice. But what I pick up is similar to how we approach AI, and I’ll say from a personal standpoint, when I’m sure leading AI, it’s not necessarily new, I think it became new or buzzworthy and ChatGPT came out in the, these open AI, softwares came out where you had it free access to start playing around and realize how strong these machine learning and now language learning AI capabilities are and how they can apply to different tools and softwares.

[00:12:00] And there’s a ton out there from tracking and analytics to video editing to creating, content to email marketing automations and outbound efforts to, you can name off almost anything from a technical standpoint and you have an AI tool now that can do that. Now, for me, I was, I would say a late adopter.

[00:12:19] I was a bit more apprehensive of, I don’t know if I want to go down this route partially because there were so many tools that came out and so many ways to automate, I didn’t quite know what I wanted to take away personal touch or not, but I think like you, what I have found useful and as an agency, we try to produce, a decent amount of content, whether that’s case studies or blog articles, recaps.

[00:12:42] And I find myself what I used to, long form write a case study and I would continue to reformat and redo this and it would take quite some time. I just throw a real sloppy Word doc together with everything that I want to highlight. I’ll throw it into ChatGPT and say, “Hey, put this into a case study format” and see what it spits out.

[00:12:58] Then I can edit from there. So we use it in that similar way. Now where I find it annoying are, you get to the point now where people who don’t stop to edit what’s being written or put a touch on it, you’ll get these outreach emails and you go, this is just constant chatbot or AI generated outreach.

[00:13:17] And it’s just instant spam, instant delete. Even if it’s a product I might be interested in, I don’t want to see it. So, I’d love to talk a little bit about the abuse of AI and how that, at least in your opinion, that’s where I see that. But to back up a little bit, what I hear from you, and I can vouch for this, because obviously our agency has, we have a handful of partners that are in Rakuten, and we’ve seen the adoption of some of these different tools, is really what I look for from an agency perspective, and what I’ve seen you guys do at Rakuten Advertising, is what kind of tools or features can we create that create efficiency for our brands and our agencies, and how to create more opportunities for them to succeed with without having to spend again, numerous hours putting together spreadsheets or trying to do this research on their own.

[00:14:02] That’s how we adopt AI from an agency standpoint. It’s not taking away the personal touch. We don’t utilize it for outreach to publishers or communication with brands. We really try to utilize it as how can we take all of this admin work or this day to day, what I call the grind, that our affiliates all go through on a day to day, how can we make that more efficient and give two hours back to actually strategize and develop relationships?

[00:14:26] Things that’ll move the needle for these programs that much quicker and that’s what we love about some of the Rakuten Advertising specific features. It’s really about efficiency

[00:14:37] Cary: Yeah, no, absolutely. And that’s almost all that we’ve been building is, we’re unique in the framework and you’re very familiar with this, that we have a huge amount of programs that are managed by our internal CS team, right? That’s, there’s a lot that are there. And so from a product standpoint, it’s beneficial to where you can just reach out to a colleague and go, how are you doing this?

[00:14:57] So reach out to another colleague, reach out to another colleague, or reach out to my team, but then we reach out to you and say, “Hey, how would you do this?” So we’re getting those that are using this is the only source they know, but then also another resource is all of our partners that are working across multiple different types of platforms and technologies, right? And working with multiple partners.

[00:15:13] So I’m getting both of those perspectives for our product team. So when they have an idea about, Hey, we’re going to go ahead and should we be doing this investing into having our AI talk about what is in this report? Maybe not. Affiliate AI kind of does that right now for those that see that as a benefit, that’s something that’s there, it’s not to say we’re not going to do it, but it’s not something that we would need to do right now, but flip that over to where, “Hey, you want to be able to search by a specific product to see all the different publishers that have driven conversions.”

[00:15:46] That’s powerful today. Everybody can see a benefit for that. All of our advertisers can do that and flip that over to publishers. That becomes hugely beneficial for them. They lose a publisher that just is, or excuse me, an advertiser that’s no longer in it. So that is how we scale and prioritize all these different tools that we’re doing is getting an understanding of, who is doing it? And is it going to be beneficial for do it? Not is it shiny and cool and neat. And then our team like Amy taking it on and then getting into building out our own version of a talk to text, but from a support standpoint, us using it ourselves before we even look at this is something that we would roll out to everybody.

[00:16:24] Is it giving you the right answer? Because if we turn it on, and you type in there and you’re not getting the right answer or it’s missing a point, right? So we’re doing that testing on our own before we even make that something that we would put out to everybody. We want to proof of concept and make sure we’re not missing anything with it and do that education to it, right?

[00:16:41] Built an agent that’s doing this, so we’re going to make sure cause …I had, I’ve got some, I got some curve balls that I can throw in there and I did throw some into one of it and we had to tweak it a little bit, a lot, to get it to understand. Cause the question that was posing really was way more than what an help center article could handle.

[00:16:58] So I’m just getting it to go “yep. I don’t, I can’t answer this. You now need to go directly to a person who can answer that.” So yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s, that has been a focus for us from a product standpoint to build it that way. But it’s interesting that Rakuten Global has partnered with ChatGPT and OpenAI, so we have a version of it. It’s just within Rakuten Advertising ourself that we use. So we can use that internally and I can then share it so Bailey has it, Elisa has it, I have it, agency, and we’re all working on it together. So we’re teaching it as we’re all pinging it and asking different questions.

[00:17:36] We’ve been very fortunate from that.

[00:17:40] Jake: And that leads me to understand a little bit more about, one of my next questions. I think as we wrap up on this topic, I want to go down, a negative path for a moment and play devil’s advocate because I think there are a ton of useful ways if used properly.

[00:17:52] To utilize AI and push back on almost this perception from some that this might replace jobs I think more than anything it creates more efficiency and it creates more opportunity for people to learn something that may have taken them two years to master enough to really have a prominent position or a title at a company whatever it might be from a work standpoint They can learn that now very quickly and be more effective at the job with far less experience.

[00:18:19] And so I think there’s a lot of positive on what it can bring. On the negative side, though, do you feel like there’s misuse of AI or areas where it’s definitely harming brands or, within our space specifically, companies, brands, publishers… is it harmful to their practices and the perception of how it’s being used?

[00:18:37] Cary: Yes. And I would say it’s not so much the AI, it is that misconception about affiliate industry, right? We’re this big, giant, tiny industry we are online e commerce tech, big time, right? You get to see data, you get to see stats and we love all this stuff, but it is about relationships.

[00:18:55] And this is something that you and I have talked about and, Jamie and I talked about in the past, I’ve mentioned it on previous episodes, but it’s still about that at the end of the day. And the more you do not… so use AI to help you use it to draw that email up, but it’s about you communicating with somebody on the other line that is going to be reading this, it’s not a mass blast to everybody, you can get away with that, but you’re not going to be successful with that from a long term standpoint.

[00:19:21] The publishers that you want to work with have a limited amount of space, and there are people that are behind it. They’re not going to automate the process. Talk with some of these bigger publishers. It’s not like they just turn it on for an advertiser. There is a process to make sure that advertisers on their site and gets the exposure they need that is of value.

[00:19:38] And then, conversely, with an advertiser, too, you want to make sure you protect your brand identity. You’re just not going to let everybody you want to. And that’s why you hire an expert to understand what your brand positioning is, where you are, right? And it’s still that relationship. So just using… just because you get a list of 100 potential publishers does not mean you’re going to get 100 publishers that join your program.

[00:19:58] It just doesn’t. There now needs to be a course of engagement and enticement and courting, if you will, even though it’s done through electronic communication.

[00:20:08] Jake: We tested a lot of different tools from a recruitment standpoint. And I will say there’s almost a misconception that, Hey, this tool is going to find the best fits and pop them into the program. And it’s

[00:20:16] Cary: they’re just going to come in.

[00:20:18] Jake: it really just consolidates the time it takes to build our list of target affiliate. But the actual outreach and personalization of that to get them in and entice them and court them, that doesn’t change.

[00:20:28] Yeah.

[00:20:29] Cary: No, it doesn’t change. So that’s the one thing with a I that is a great tools help you get some data, get some insights, learn the things. But at the end of the day, it still is about relationships. It’s about partnerships. It’s about working together to a mutual benefit and mutual outcome.

[00:20:41] And that’s for us. And that’s for you. And that’s for the advertiser. And that’s for the publisher. All of us together. We when we all win that, then it’s successful. And that takes partnering together. That would be the one thing, right? Even with all these tools, I still don’t think, I swear, I’m very confident that still is the foundation behind it.

[00:20:58] This is just going to create efficiencies to hopefully do that better. Exactly.

[00:21:04] Jake: totally agree. I’d ask about your opinion on the future of AI, but I think you’ve given that throughout this and back. It’s partnership with open AI that. You guys clearly are investing time and resources into not only further adoption, but further testing on how do we create or. Amplify current features or look at new products down the line that are going to continue to benefit our base.

[00:21:25] Cary: Absolutely. And it’s not just we’re fooling you into this, but this is Rakuten Global as an entity and all the different Rakuten properties that they are doing this as well. We now have a regular update from a standpoint globally of Rakuten Hotels is doing this, and Rakuten Banking is doing that, and Rakuten Mobile’s over here.

[00:21:44] All of them, how they’re using AI, what they’re seeing, the benefits of it, where it’s at and it is… it’s getting that quicker understanding all of these build around trying to get a better understanding quicker or trying to get insights into it and then making that relationship stronger with a customer, with with a client, with a partner that all of these have been built.

[00:22:02] Those are what all the success stories have that commonality within them is to try and be more efficient in what you do or find an insight that you were unaware of to help better that relationship to better that outcome. So I don’t think it’s going to, it’s not going to eliminate jobs. Replacing maybe at some point, but it’s not going to be something that eliminates all the things that we need to do.

[00:22:24] It just might tweak it. You may have to do something in a different way, from all the different things. And it’s still, and we found this when I was talking about it’s still garbage in garbage out.

[00:22:34] Jake: Yeah.

[00:22:35] Cary: If the data you’re using is not good, it doesn’t matter how smart the AI is, it’s not going to give you anything that’s worth it. You can action on or do anything with.

[00:22:42] Jake: I think is still valid. And I’m curious to see what the shift looks like, in years to come on how AI is utilized, how it learns and how it perceives bad data and even can recognize that, or maybe find new sources in some capacity. I had a question more as a joke, but as I prep for this podcast, I realized we’re that far off.

[00:23:01] I was going to say how long until you think we have this interview again, but neither of us are sitting here or speaking, but there’s still a picture and a video of the two of us having this conversation. I realized it’s really not that far. There’s technologies and tools out there now that can do a pretty darn good job.

[00:23:17] I’ve seen some really bad renditions of a voiceover or video overlays of someone from an AI perspective, but I’ve seen some that do a fairly decent job where if you saw a 30 second clip of me looking at the camera and speaking, if you didn’t really personally know me and understand some of my tics or how I use my language or certain acronyms I use, there’s a good shot you’d be convinced that was 100 percent me.

[00:23:43] Cary: yes, that, that is going to be, yeah, that is the one thing. These are the ones, the fakes that I’m not excited about.

[00:23:50] Jake: Yeah, I

[00:23:52] Cary: Yeah the ghost or what was it? Nat King Cole singing with Natalie Cole. Like how many years ago was that? That’s now a reality to see that on or virtually, like that could be recreated and that type of thing.

[00:24:02] Yeah. Yeah, that is eerily around the corner. If it’s not for entertainment purposes, then outside of that, yeah. I don’t know what I would glean from that. That’s the only thing I don’t, what do I glean from an AI generated version of me,

[00:24:13] I

[00:24:14] Jake: guess we could have this interview and post it out over, actually on the beach, sipping a whole IPA.

[00:24:20] Cary: Enjoying it, enjoying a nice cold beer. Um, I still wouldn’t want to do it. I’d still rather do the interview. I enjoy it. I like having these conversations. Yeah.

[00:24:30] Jake: I still put my toe in the water with each new tool first and tested internally. I don’t have anything go out to an active client partner, publisher relation. I’ll literally email my wife or send something to her and say, “Hey, this was a new AI tool. Check this out. What do you think?”

[00:24:45] I’m very apprehensive on pushing it out from an agency perspective until it’s thoroughly tested internally, across different eyeballs and audiences people that are in our industry people that aren’t. Just understand is this final product something that comes off the right way, that doesn’t feel generated by AI, which I think is, I think it’s, that’s a different topic. I think within AI is how editors, content creators, et cetera, utilize that. But they have to be very careful because they’ve got to make sure their personal voice comes through and they can, actually create content that’s unique to them.

[00:25:19] Cary: Absolutely. And that was, that’s what I was getting at the end of the day, if it’s got your name on it, it’s coming from you, and this is about relationships. When talking to an advertiser, talking to a publisher, talking to another network, talking to whomever it is, it’s still about you. It’s still about your name.

[00:25:34] So use it. Use it to help you. But don’t have it be the only source and don’t, you know it needs your final Okay before you send it, right?

[00:25:44] Jake: I don’t know about other agencies. I think this was probably adopted by most companies, but the moment ChatGPT became available for anybody to use. There was a pretty quick standing directive: you may not use this to send out any newsletters or communications without upper management approval to any and all staff because it’s not that it would be bad intention, but that one misstep of having someone’s eyeballs on that content and what it’s saying, especially in those early days when everybody was jumping in, it was crashing and, you couldn’t get into ChatGPT for a day or so.

[00:26:17] You just had to be very careful.

[00:26:19] Cary: Absolutely. And I still would, if I had a complicated email, my whole process was get away from my computer, pick up my phone, voice dictate it in my phone as a draft. Put my phone down, go back to my computer, read what it said, and then rewrite it. And if it’s one of these more complicated ones, I do that still.

[00:26:35] It’s just my mind works fast. So I just talk it out real fast, get it in there, scrub it first, throw it into ChatGPT and then tweak it, put it back into an email, and then it’s something I send the next day. Just use it as an editing tool, as a brainstorming tool, but it’s not the end all be all it still needs you to edit it and reread it and go over it.

[00:26:53] From that standpoint, from a content creation, but from a brainstorming, that’s great. My daughter used it last night for her first class. She came to us and was like, “Hey, we’ve got this new class and we need to come up with names for our group.” And Amy instantly went ChatGPT.

[00:27:07] She used Copilot, but six and one half, right?

[00:27:10] She went in there and came up with a bunch of different names and played around with it. She had a name within three minutes. It wasn’t what it had, but she used that as a genus to go, “oh, this is what I could use.” And there’s the reason why she had, now she had a rationale behind the naming for it.

[00:27:23] Jake: Idea generator

[00:27:25] Cary: It’s fantastic for an idea generator, even the more you can put in there. It’s really good for that.

[00:27:30] Jake: Bridges that gap where people used to call, they’d have groups of think tanks, for example, or when you have, large panel session of individuals, you’re all feeding off of each other. And I’ve been on panels for webinars, and I find that much easier than just a single webinar where I’m the only person speaking, because you’ve got other ideas that make you go, “Oh, that’s, I can talk to that. I didn’t even, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”

[00:27:51] It just helps you generate those thoughts quicker and bounce off of that. So it bridges that gap where you can individually have a think tank around you and help you generate the ideas that you want to put on paper. So I do think there’s a ton of good uses.

[00:28:03] Cary: Yeah.

[00:28:03] Jake: Yeah.

[00:28:04] Cary: The flip side to this too is, and this is more to me than it probably is for you. But I know you’ve had these situations to where trying to get an idea conveyed to a, to an advertiser or to a publisher. I’ve sent this email, I’ve sent it again and rewrote it, but it’s still not connecting.

[00:28:21] It’s a fantastic opportunity to put that entire stream in there. Into Perplexity or ChatGPT or Copilot. I’ve been writing this email several times back and forth. I’m this person and this is my position. I’m trying to convey this and it’s not working. Can you give me a suggested response? Go from that.

[00:28:39] These things that wherever you’re getting hung up or you’re getting a process that’s taking too long something that’s eating away time from your day to day, from the things you need to do, is an opportunity for AI to help you right now. That would be the entry for anybody who’s “Where should I even start?”

[00:28:56] I don’t even know where to start. I’m not really comfortable with it. That thing that gives you difficulty to do, that takes process to take time to do, see if you can figure out how to use it. And you’ll be surprised how fast that you can do that one thing. And now that you’ve got this in your own way, in your own voice, then try another one and then try another one.

[00:29:14] And I think this is what the adoption is going to be. From an affiliate standpoint, everybody needs to figure out how it helps from them. And again, this is not replacing any jobs. It’s just augmenting how you do things, making it easier for you to do and take away those things that eat up the most amount of your time, find a way to use it.

[00:29:29] There’s so many tools that are out there freely available.

[00:29:32] Jake: There’s so many that are free and if they’re not there’s so many that are cost effective. And I agree. I think to cap off the topic from my perspective, I think it’s completely in line with yours: it’s how can this tool or how can this, category, if you will, but any of these tools that are AI based, how can it create efficiency?

[00:29:48] How can it create, I would say even deepen my relationships and give me time to do that. And how does it create value? Does it create value for me? Does it create value for my partners? And how can we utilize that in a fashion that you know, works going forward. And if that’s your baseline of thinking then it’s very difficult to abuse it. If you’re careful.

[00:30:07] Cary: Absolutely. I completely agree. And again, this is an industry, big industry, tiny industry. And we have seen innovations and changes and it’s constantly evolving and changing. And this is another one that’s coming along. It’s not specific to this industry, but I think we’ll be one of those that is an early adopter of it and we’ll find the solutions that we already have.

[00:30:27] These things like we as a technology have already adopted it. We have other new technologies that have been built around it. And I think everybody will be, we’ll be one of those, like we always have from a technology standpoint. The affiliate landscape will be, we’re just going to see more and more of that AI incorporated across the board.

[00:30:44] Back to your earlier questions that I never answered, but you answered for me, yes.

[00:30:49] Jake: Yeah, there we go. I think like any other, I think topic, you can go past the last 20 years within affiliate marketing. It’s never boring. I’m always along for the ride and trying to keep up and stay as front as I can of the evolving marketplace and how our industry specifically gets very innovative and kind of fixes and almost adopts things quicker and finds innovative ways to move it forward.

[00:31:13] And, then you get credit from some other channel who thinks they’re amazing or because they’ve got the. Or something in that manner. So now that’s what I love about, I think this industry as a whole is regardless of what kind of comes our way, we adopt it. We figure out what works. We figure out what doesn’t, we figure out what drives and provides value.

[00:31:31] And we go all in on that and until we need to change once again. So I’m excited to see what the future holds in regard to AI affiliate marketing and how it more broadly is adopted across the board to create hopefully more efficiencies. And truthfully, what does that mean for everybody listening on this call? More opportunity. More revenue, better data, better relationships and more efficient processes.

[00:31:54] So, I appreciate you jumping on today and diving into the topic of AI. We did not pick the easiest topic for our first podcast season four episode, but I think it’s a good one. So appreciate you being here, Cary.

[00:32:07] Cary: Absolutely. My pleasure. Happy to do it and always have a good time when I do. Thanks Jake.

[00:32:11] Jake: Yep. Good. I’ll see you… no conference coming up for me the rest of the year, but I’ll see you at ASW most likely. So sounds good. All right. Have a good one, Cary. Thanks.

[00:32:20] Cary: Thanks much.