PerformanceIN 50 – 2020

The annual PerformanceIN 50 provides global recognition to exceptional individuals and rising stars who are pushing the conventional boundaries to improve the performance marketing channel.

#performancein50

Aayush Bagadiya ONE TO WATCH

Client Services Analyst | CJ Affiliate

Aayush has been instrumental in going above and beyond to come up with ideas that would help grow the business of his clients. This year saw Aayush come up with a campaign that required little to none investment to grow business revenue by more than 20% in the quarter. Aayush has always been proactive in staying ahead of the curve and thinking about how to grow the clients’ business before anything else. At such a young age Aayush continues to grow and reach greater heights in his journey in the performance marketing Industry.

Adam Clisby ONE TO WATCH

Affiliate Marketing & Partnership Specialist | Vodafone

At just 23 years of age, Adam has worked successfully with Vodafone to bring non-traditional partnerships into the affiliate channel. The last 12 months saw the likes of The Hook — Brave Bison form and create affiliate content strategies that would have originally sat outside the traditional performance model. His work resulted in winning Best Influencer Marketing Campaign and shortlisted for Best Managed Affiliate Programme at the Performance Marketing Awards.

Ahmed Ashraf ONE TO WATCH

Head of Digital | L’Oréal

Since working on the Urban Decay Social Commerce Pilot, Ahmed utilised his affiliate marketing expertise to incentivise L’Oreal shop-floor employees to become brand ambassadors and sell product via their social channels online. He has also supported the industry by engaging legacy publishers like Condé Nast to proactively engage with affiliates as part of the new media partnership model with traditional advertisers like L’Oreal. He has also recruited niche publishers that needed support in the industry, like Attitude and Suitcase magazine, to the affiliate channel.

Angus Drummond

Commercial Director | VoucherCodes

Angus has been instrumental in ensuring VoucherCodes worked cohesively with brands and networks to meet the challenges of COVID-19, including supporting NHS staff on the frontline with discounted offers. Meanwhile, Angus has pushed for further support towards diversity and inclusion within the industry, including launching a new steering group with the aim to ensure we bring in new talent from different backgrounds and educate the affiliate industry on diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace to ensure a positive environment for all.

Anna Marjoram

Performance Director | Optimise Media

Anna has not only supported clients to deliver in-vertical first but also provide evidence in potential acquisition volumes, deliver the technical integrations to enable vouchers to be tracked and fulfilled, and devise smart strategies that enable exclusives across individual publisher sites, generating value-add for them. Proliferating a new channel for insurance advertisers and growing the consumer offering for voucher code sites, all of these initiatives are ground-breaking for affiliate performance in the insurance vertical, significantly growing investment in the channel and perception of what can be achieved.

Annabel Gray ONE TO WATCH

Associate Director Australia | Silverbean

Through providing a very clear, transparent delivery framework that challenges some of the traditional misconceptions around the channel in Australia, Annabel has helped clients define value through their performance marketing activities. Outside of the office, Annabel is passionate about inclusivity, social good and bridging education gaps. Annabel is a partner of Leaders for Good to help drive positive social change through Silverbean and is a mentor at Elev8Me where she aims to help individuals displaced through COVID-19 get back into the workforce.

Antoine Gross

General Manager, South East Asia & India | Impact

As country manager, Antoine has been running Impact’s operations in South East Asia and facilitating the collaboration between partners, affiliates, and advertisers in the region to successfully drive growth. Antoine has both supported and educated advertisers about the opportunities available to them to ensure they drive incrementality in their partnerships program while utilising technology to enhance partnership growth across the spectrum.

Asim Ahmed ONE TO WATCH

Affiliate Marketing Executive | PrettyLittleThing

During the last 12 months, Asim has implemented new and improved efficiencies and continues to lead the channel in growing in global markets. He has lead the affiliate channel to year-on-year growth and helped the channel to become the biggest revenue-driving paid channel for Pretty Little Thing. Asim has shown he is committed to ensuring the channel is well managed and goes above and beyond to ensure expectations are met and often exceeded. This has culminated in the team winning its first PMA award, which is a testament to Asim’s leadership skills and work ethic.

Brian Marcus

VP of Global Marketing | TUNE

Brian started the year very publicly with an industry call to action: work together, be inclusive. This moment really brought our future as a cohesive channel into greater focus. Since then, Brian has continued to push for innovation within partnerships, affiliate tracking and more. In addition, TUNE was acquired this year by Constellation Software, which now enhances the platforms’ capabilities and also multiple ranges of partnerships with key affiliates in the channel.

Bruna Nobre ONE TO WATCH

Publisher Development Coordinator, Brazil | Rakuten Advertising

In addition to having already won market recognition awards for the service and consultancy to publishers in the past, Bruna has won the preference of the largest publishers in Brazil, in such a competitive market, and has achieved differentiated support from everything that the market has experienced before. This year she managed to reach the level of an attendant and has become a huge revenue generator, with a total focus on bringing results for both Rakuten Advertising and some of the biggest advertisers and publishers in Brazil.

Camilla Pacelli

Director of Partner Development, APAC | Skimlinks

As Director of Partner Development APAC, Camilla had been instrumental in Skimlinks’ efforts to enhance the profile of performance marketing across emerging markets in APAC. Leveraging experience gained working across European markets, she has consistently applied herself to improve performance marketing for publishers and advertisers alike.

Carolina Paradas ONE TO WATCH

Global Senior Affiliates & CLO Manager | Harvey Nichols

Carolina is a senior digital marketing professional with a demonstrated history of working in the retail industry globally. At Harvey Nichols she has worked tremendously hard to grow the CLO business from nothing. She has made sure to align all CLO campaigns across UK, South Korea and Australia with key affiliate promotions to deliver sales and brand awareness in key markets.

Caroline Harrison

Head of WPB Marketing | HSBC UK

Caroline joined HSBC UK in 2018 and over the last two years, she has built strong fundamentals to facilitate digital sales growth for the retail bank. Particularly in the last 12 months and during COVID-19, Caroline has ensured all activity is rigorously tagged and tracked so HSBC UK has a consistent measurement framework. In addition, she has hired and trained digital specialists, reviewed all commercial agreements, and has built strong strategic partnerships. She is a passionate marketer who likes a challenge and loves to dream big.

Carys Roche

Customer Success Team Lead | Partnerize

Since the beginning of her time with Partnerize, Carys has earned high marks from clients for innovative thinking and deep knowledge of “what works”. This year, Carys and our industry faced the unique challenges of the COVID pandemic. Rather than “follow the crowd” with being reactive, Carys worked closely with clients to help them recognise how the unique characteristics of partnerships could be leveraged to solve immediate challenges like uneven inventory and retail store closures, as well as position the brands for longer-term growth.

César Díaz Pamiés

Head of Publishers US & Head of Region South | Savings United

In the past year, César has played a key role in the expansion of Savings United in Southern Europe, South America and the United States while ensuring its award-winning approach remains intact. César has also created strong relationships with media partners in the US. He has found synergies between the high-quality content of the partners, advertisers and readers, helping to further develop the coupon revenue stream.

Chikay Lo ONE TO WATCH

Global Markets Growth & Partnerships Lead | Cult Beauty

Chikay Lo has worked up the ranks in Cult Beauty while managing a number of key projects for the global beauty retailer, in particular, the brand’s affiliate programme with Rakuten Advertising, which has not only delivered successful results but has also pushed beyond the boundaries of performance marketing as a whole through diverse strategies, influencer partnerships and more. Chikay champions innovation and consistency while continually impressing on at all ends of the journey, making her one of the rising stars in the industry today.

Chris Said ONE TO WATCH

Head of Commercial & Partnerships | Broadband Genie

Chris joined Genie in 2016 to launch Broadband Genie’s partner programme. He’s consistently performed over and above expectations and was promoted to a senior management role this year. Chris has challenged and overhauled the company’s commercial operations, delivered fantastic results, and built his own team. On top of that, he is really developing a name for himself in the telecoms affiliate space as one of the most knowledgeable and personable characters in the industry.

Corey Flournoy

Global Head of Inclusion & Diversity | Groupon

Under his position as Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Groupon, Corey has led and overseen work on behalf of over 6,000 employees globally in addition to merchants and customers to ensure the firm increases, develops and uses a diverse workforce, as well as sustains a culture of inclusion, integrity and respect, and generates business impact. Corey also spoke on the virtual stage at CJU20 in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Panel, sharing tons of actionable insights for businesses to put in place.

Dennis O’Reilly ONE TO WATCH

Head of Partnerships | Button

Dennis has improved the performance marketing channel by connecting the disparate affiliate platforms and networks with mainstream mobile and marketing analytics suites through major product launches at Button. Example of these partnerships includes Button’s mobile commerce integrations with Rakuten Advertising and Awin, as well as with mobile measurement partners AppsFlyer, Adjust, and more. Overall, this has unlocked an efficient, performance-focused channel for mobile marketers who haven’t worked in affiliate to date.

Emily Cresswell ONE TO WATCH

Global Affiliate Lead | HelloFresh

As Global Affiliate Marketing Lead at HelloFresh, Emily has successfully run and overseen all affiliate and strategic partnerships activity across 12 markets and 14 programs. She continues to push the boundaries of traditional affiliate relationships on a daily basis, is open to trying new opportunities, and encompassing many types of partnerships under the affiliate umbrella.

Emily Deng

Director of Product Management | Button

Having previously worked on building and scaling Amazon’s self-service display advertising business, Emily Deng has built the knowledge and expertise around giving advertisers actionable insights to understand the trade-off between scale and efficiency, as well as levers to continuously optimise towards their business objectives. Over the past 12 months, Emily oversaw Button’s newest product suite, Evolution, to introduce the same level of intelligence and controls to affiliate marketers, who have never had access to a simple-to-use experimentation platform within this industry in order to test different cashback rates simultaneously across multiple publishers.

Emma Smith ONE TO WATCH

Founder and CEO | Envolve Tech

The Envolve Tech recommendation engine has brought a new conversion methodology into performance marketing, however, it’s Emma’s vision, determination and perseverance that allowed her to spot a gap in the market and fulfil across every network. Being relatively new to the industry, her impact is all the more remarkable, signing partnerships across all the major players. She’s not been fazed by the market – and equally, has been able to embrace it with great aplomb. Her amiable character and charm have won her many new friends and peers in the industry; breaking through to work with veterans and new entrants alike.

Ernest Doku

Head of Commercial for Broadband | Uswitch

Ernest continues to move from strength to strength in both his commercial and marketing abilities. His passion for digital marketing has ensured partners are converting better than ever through technology whilst consumers continue to make record savings. He has been instrumental in pushing Uswitch forward with its re-brand. He also has hit new records with his industry spokesperson and expert appearances, including Sky and the BBC.

Fred Maude

Head of Product Development | Incubeta

On his journey to becoming head of product development at Incubeta, Fred has consistently pushed the conventional boundaries of performance marketing, and this year has been no exception. Fred is also a fantastic speaker, thought leader and is always keen to share his knowledge and work collaboratively with the wider industry to deliver marketing excellence at a grander scale than just his individual remit.

Gavin Cozens ONE TO WATCH

Client Services Team Leader | Commission Factory

During the last twelve months, Gavin has applied his knowledge of other markets he has worked into his accounts, setting the standard for best practice with the agencies and advertisers he and his team manage. Gavin has identified emerging opportunities in the market such as brand-to-brand, understanding that during difficult times, brand-to-brand collaboration can help diversify advertisers’ revenue streams and help them weather the pandemic.

Georgina Gray ONE TO WATCH

Client Success Director | Partnerize

Georgina brings deep industry knowledge and a strong passion for the power of partnership as a force to drive profitable growth for brands. She entered the partnerships space in 2015 and joined Partnerize to focus her considerable knowledge and expertise on helping leading EMEA clients grow and realise the full potential of partnership. She has also initiated a variety of projects that helped many other brands improve their partnership effectiveness.

Glosinda Goes

Global Partnerships & Affiliates Manager | Crabtree & Evelyn

Hardworking, enthusiastic and results-driven, Glosinda has been a staple in driving global affiliate marketing growth for Crabtree and Evelyn. She always has a positive outlook for the channel, working with multiple publishers and partners while applying industry knowledge and strategies to achieve incremental results across a wide range of campaigns.

Hayley Tse ONE TO WATCH

Associate, Affiliate Marketing | Acceleration Partners

Communicating key strategies and thought leadership on a global scale, Hayley has pushed forward trends in APAC with both US and EMEA teams, ensuring that global accounts are receiving continued education around the regional nuances of the growing region, which is vital when working with a global team to set the industry standards for affiliate programmes in APAC. Hayley continues to diversify the affiliate channel while pitching trademark campaigns paid on performance to drive increased brand exposure and gain additional placements.

Heather Peebles

Head of Affiliate Partnerships | Reward Gateway

Heather manages the global affiliate partnerships team at Reward Gateway, the leading employee engagement platform for businesses to attract, engage and retain potential and current employees. Heather recently co-founded the Publisher Board in addition to raising more awareness of in-app tracking within the affiliate channel, all whilst maintaining standards and promoting best practice.

Jack Davis ONE TO WATCH

Commercial Services & Partnerships Director | Webgains

As a passionate affiliate channel marketeer, Jack introduced the advantages of performance marketing models to various trending e-commerce brands such as Foodhub, Douchebags and Cytoplan. Since launching their affiliate programs, these companies are now enjoying a substantial boost in revenue volumes and are ensuring that affiliates have a broader scope of brands and content to work with and higher earning potential. More recently, Jack has played a pivotal role in the curation and promotion of the Webgains TRANSFORM event. He continues to be a fantastic ambassador for the business and for the industry.

Jacqueline Wladis

Senior Partnerships Manager | Condé Nast

While Condè Nast is still relatively new to the US affiliate space, Jacqueline has been instrumental in setting up and fostering the partnerships that have been successful for the company. Particularly during COVID-19, Jacqueline helped quickly pivot the publisher to new opportunities while maintaining commerce initiatives as a part of the brand thanks to her leadership in identifying and onboarding new partners at a time of uncertainty. Jacqueline is an extremely hard worker and an integral part of the team that has made commerce a central and growing part of Condé Nast.

James Cordery

Head of Performance Marketing Strategy | Deliveroo

James is an experienced multi-channel digital marketer with a passion for data-driven performance, automation and creative excellence across performance and brand digital media. James has worked on digital strategy with global brands across verticals including marketplace, fashion retail, luxury, consumer goods, travel and food and beverage, with his most recent work for Deliveroo, leading the team as head of performance marketing strategy.

Julie Van Ullen

Managing Director/Head of Revenue | Rakuten Rewards

During her previous role as managing director for US and Canada at Rakuten Advertising, Julie was responsible for overseeing the commercial organisation selling and supporting the holistic suite of Rakuten Advertising’s affiliate and performance marketing solutions to brands, agencies, and publishers alike. Now having joined the team at Rakuten Rewards, Julie’s extensive knowledge, ambition and expertise of the performance industry will help support an exciting period for the company as they continue to disrupt the e-commerce landscape.

Kate Knight

Director, Publisher Development | CJ Affiliate

Kate has been at the forefront in supporting publishers within the affiliate channel, particularly these last few months due to the market impact from COVID-19. As well as covering industry trends and sharing strategies on how publishers can remain agile and effective during these times, Kate has also led industry discussions and raised awareness of some of the key opportunities and challenges facing affiliates, including in-app tracking, which remains high on the agenda.

Laura Meunier

Associate Director Commercial | Global Savings Group

With over eight years of experience gained in fast-growing companies, Laura has worked extensively with premium publishers worldwide and top UK retailers in a diverse range of categories including food, home, fashion and tech. Laura has also been a key driver behind in-app tracking and the support of best practice for publishers within the performance marketing industry.

Lauren Emde

Affiliate Marketing Associate | Walgreens

Using her expertise in performance marketing and strategy, Lauren has helped Walgreens during exceptional growth while responding to abruptive changes in the business and external market. She’s also been responsive in supporting both the business and partners throughout 2020 in addition to developing her strengths and skills sets, working up the ranks within the organisation in addition to leading in public speaking at industry-wide events, including this year’s first-ever virtual edition of CJU.

Leo Wang ONE TO WATCH

Director, Publisher Development Asia | Rakuten Advertising

Leo has leveraged his experience working throughout APAC and his understanding of the market to create successful go-to-market strategies for Rakuten Advertising publishers looking to grow their affiliate revenue. Leo’s knowledge and unique insights into consumer behaviour have also supported advertisers’ international expansion strategy in the region. This has helped to stimulate double digital YoY business growth for Rakuten Advertising and expansion into the new APAC Shanghai division in 2020.

Maria Elena Mata

VP of Strategic Partnerships | Savings United

Maye has negotiated groundbreaking contracts with major media partners across the globe, most significantly in the US market. Maye’s extensive experience in building lasting partnerships with major media brands and persuading them of the opportunities to be found in the voucher code space is second to none. Maye is very well known and respected throughout the industry globally, attending key industry events where she meets new and existing clients, raises the profile of the discount code prospect, and speaks about the advantages of connecting brands to shoppers on voucher code platforms for premium media publishers.

Martina Vignolini

Global Affiliate Marketing Manager | Luxottica

As affiliate marketing manager at Luxottica, Martina has planned, executed and optimised affiliate marketing performance globally, contributing to the growth of the digital performance marketing channel with a strong focus on growing volumes and awareness for the brands involved.

Michele Lim ONE TO WATCH

Associate Manager | Acceleration Partners

Due to the business model of Michele’s clients, COVID-19 presented major difficulties in managing several programmes, since many countries were in lockdown and not able to use their services. Michele stepped outside of the box of traditional partnerships and dug deep into bringing new affiliates in on different sub-programmes for clients in EMEA and APAC during a difficult time for pushing public services. She stayed on top of the updates around restrictions and regulations to ensure the right services from her clients were being pushed on an ever-changing basis.

Nicholas Yates

Performance Account Director | Silverbean

On a mission to teach the world about affiliate marketing, Nicholas (Nic) understands the key challenges facing the industry. Through pioneering tech content, Nic is challenging the “old ways” of affiliate marketing, all while supporting account managers to innovate and prosper in their roles. He always has one eye on the future of the channel, and what it will mean for both brands and consumers. Nic is taking it upon himself to be the agency’s educator – enabling brands to realise their potential by investing time and effort into growing their affiliate marketing performance.

Paul Kasamias

Managing Partner, Performance | Starcom

Paul leads an innovative and multi-disciplined performance practice within Starcom in addition to being a thought leader. More recently, Paul pioneered a new approach to brand safety and viewability and regularly feeds into technology partner roadmaps to help transform the industry’s thinking away from merely being brand-safe to moving through a maturity index with the aspiration of helping brands to be more proactive through AI and human intervention. This approach now brings publishers, brands and agencies together to ensure advertising continues to meet consumer expectations.

Sara Vincent

Senior Director, Strategic Partner Development | Index Exchange

Sara has been instrumental in executing publisher strategy and partnership growth on a global scale, backed by her team at Index Exchange that spans France, Germany, Australia and the UK. An industry veteran and with nearly two decades of experience in the world of publishing, Sara continues to drive forward efficiency, innovation and opportunities for publishers everywhere while supporting brand safety and transparency.

Stephanie Crim ONE TO WATCH

Head of Partnerships | PayPal/Honey

Stephanie built the global international partnerships team for Honey with offices in London, Sydney and California, which was a key reason for Honey’s rapid growth around the world and its acquisition by PayPal. In addition to building strategy for increased investment in performance marketing, she helped facilitate a publisher consortium focused on knowledge sharing and helping emerging publishers find connections and support within the community.

Stephen Short ONE TO WATCH

Senior Product Manager | Awin

Over the past year, Stephen has led Awin’s response to a business-critical issue affecting the whole industry; browser privacy updates. Following increasing criticism from regulators in the US and UK against influencer and publisher non-compliance, Stephen turned his attention to devising a tool for publishers that would allow for a simplified, customised disclosure text, easily applicable across all featured tracking domains. His latest venture resulted in the launch of admission in August 2020, an industry first, multi-network advertising disclosure tool.

Tara McCommons

VP of Sales & Marketing | LinkConnector

Tara has spent years volunteering on the board and councils of the Performance Marketing Association in the US. She’s been a significant figure in defining best practices, policies, regulations and statistical studies that have helped educate and push the affiliate marketing industry forward over the years, including her contributions to this association over the past 12 months.

Tom Wallis

Chief Marketing Officer | Gousto

Tom leads all marketing functions in the business including the brand team and acquisition & retention team. Tom joined Gousto in 2016 and has overseen more than a double-digit increase in company revenue and brand awareness during his time, in addition to key campaign launches last August and during this turbulent calendar year.

Vikki Frank ONE TO WATCH

Affiliate & Partnership Marketing Manager | Tesco

Vikki has been instrumental in establishing both influencer marketing and affiliate marketing for Tesco Stores, placing them firmly within the retailer’s channel mix and strategically leveraging the benefits that partnerships can offer. Vikki has also demonstrated ROI for the business, particularly during the turbulent period, leading the way in tracking sales through affiliate links, subscriptions through Adobe tagging, and softer uplift metrics through Nielsen brand uplift studies, which have provided evidence of the benefits of performance- and influencer-based campaigns.

Wolfgang Scherer

Partnership Strategist | Tradedoubler

Wolfgang combines a deep knowledge of the business with creativity and puts his widespread network of contacts to good use. The combination of all these attributes and the resulting exceptional work showed not only before but especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when Wolfgang quickly adapted and created completely new formats to promote customers as well as Tradedoubler. Wolfgang thrives when he has the opportunity to provide partners and colleagues with ideas, input, knowledge and is very creative in finding new solutions and opportunities.

Zane McIntyre

Managing Director APAC | Awin

Zane has been the visionary and leader of Commission Factory for over nine years and has flown the affiliate flag almost independently in the Asia-Pacific region during that time. Before the inception and launch of Commission Factory, he worked as an influential affiliate in APAC, dedicating his knowledge to growing and supporting other affiliates. Zane’s dedication to affiliate marketing and network technology gained his company the attention of Awin in recent years, ultimately leading to Awin acquiring Commission Factory.