Publisher Spotlight: Brandswap

Rakuten Advertising had the opportunity to sit down with Brandswap’s Co-Founder & CEO to chat about the company’s offering and plans for the future. Join us as we dive into all things Brandswap.

Tell us about Brandswap

BrandSwap helps retailers unlock fresh streams of revenue through relevant brand partnerships.

With our technology, retail hosts can seamlessly embed relevant rewards from third-party advertisers into key areas of their customer journey. They can offer a free gift in exchange for a targeted action – like a purchase or a customer spending more – or generate additional revenue on top of their core business by highlighting rewards once a purchase is made. Each time a customer redeems a reward, the retailer is paid a commission.

The setup could not be easier thanks to the Rakuten Advertising Performance Tag, which enables retailers to go live rapidly with no development work.

We only started out in 2023 but have moved quickly to onboard some of the UK’s biggest retailers, create market-leading inventory, and build an extensive library full of great offers from leading advertisers.

Our progress was recently highlighted at the 2024 Performance Marketing Awards, where BrandSwap claimed Highly Commended in the Best Innovation category.

What sets you apart from other publishers?

BrandSwap is different from any other brand partnership solution on three fronts:

#1 Relevance

Through our extensive library of brand partners, we can link rewards to a range of data points, like cart contents and recent purchases. A simple example would be recommending a streaming service to a customer who’s just about to buy a TV.

Customers get a reward they’re most likely to consider, advertisers engage a high-intent audience, while retailers increase their revenue potential. Everyone wins.

#2 Revenue

Most retailers use brand partnerships to create a fresh stream of income. We’re driving market-leading revenue for some of the world’s biggest retailers by focusing on moments when customers are most likely to consider an offer from a brand partner.

Retailers can even dial up their revenue-driving capabilities by using brand partner rewards pre-checkout as an incentive for customers to increase their spend or complete their order.

#3 Nativeness

We understand that retailers value their experience and brand image. That’s why our inventory is designed to fit natively within their existing experience.

Customers also gain extra assurance by having everything designed as if it’s come from the retailer, rather than a third party. Meanwhile, retailers retain complete control over the brands they partner with on an opt-in basis.

How do you help advertisers add value and drive incrementality?

There’s a triple threat at play here.

The true magic of brand partnerships is that they create a revenue stream that didn’t previously exist. Retailers offering brand partner rewards both pre and post-checkout earn revenue from often under-utilised areas of their experience, like the order confirmation page. Before solutions like BrandSwap, these were untapped opportunities for engaging customers in the purchasing mindset.

To produce an even higher incremental result, we focus on non-endemic offers – essentially products and services the retailer does not sell on its site. That means all the extra revenue is at 100% margin.

That value is expanded for retailers that embed rewards early in their journey. Again, rather than simply driving revenue by earning commission, they can use brand partner rewards as an incentive for driving a second goal, whether that’s converting a customer or getting them to increase their order value.

What excites you about the affiliate marketing industry and its direction? Are there any new innovations we will see from you in the coming months?

The trend in tech partners operating on a paid-on-performance model being enlisted to develop and launch plug-and-plug solutions on major retail sites is huge. As a next step, many of these solutions are now evolving their proposition by integrating artificial intelligence to optimise their results.

We’ve seen this first-hand with a very common strategy in the brand partnerships world: gift with purchase. The first iteration saw retailers bringing the same rewards out to every customer, regardless of what they were buying. The second sees retailers matching rewards with purchases, whereas the third leverages AI to serve rewards based on customers’ buying behaviour. In theory, retailers could soon automatically show rewards that are most likely to be redeemed based on lookalike journeys.

Why did you choose to partner with Rakuten Advertising?

Rakuten Advertising provides access to some of the best retailers for hosting brand partner rewards and the best advertisers for delivering them. As a tech provider that can work with brands in multiple industries and regions, it’s important to have a strong variety of global partners.

We’ve also been impressed by the tools offered to help tech providers grow. BrandSwap is one of a select few solutions to make it onto the Performance Tag (formerly the SPI), which makes it easier for retailers to launch our technology and start creating brand partnerships. Highlighting that you can go live with zero development work is a major plus.