Publisher Spotlight: Involve Asia

Involve Asia is present in multiple markets across the region and is particularly active in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. As part of our Publisher Spotlight series, Mell highlights the importance of segmenting and localising campaigns to further scale and drive performance.

Tell us a bit more about involve Asia.

Mell: Involve Asia was established in Malaysia in 2014 and has since grown into a team of 150+ employees, with offices in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. We are a sub-network that provides an extensive range of affiliate products and services to advertisers on the Rakuten Affiliate Network.

For brands, we provide an end-to-end tracking solution for their affiliate programs that can be measured across many performance marketing metrics, including CPA, CPL, CPS, CPI and more. We also provide additional marketing support to through our Involve Asia marketing channels, which helps advertisers increase campaign exposure and secure more partnerships. We have always been a diverse sub-network that can offer brands access to various publisher models, particularly for e-commerce marketplaces and advertisers in the travel or finance verticals.

What sets you apart from publishers in your category?

Mell: At Involve Asia, we understand the nuances of each region in SEA. Our team manages our publishers proactively, which means we can pinpoint and perfectly match advertisers to publishers in each market. With access to local insights and expertise, we have the ability to foresee growth and performance from new partnerships and implement successful optimisation strategies within existing affiliate programs.

We also offer advanced technology that allows us to separate affiliate programs by region. This means advertisers can participate in local publisher campaigns on a CPA basis, apply Dynamic Commissioning strategies for selected partners and segment performance by publisher model (content, influencers, loyalty and more). Additionally, we co-fund marketing initiatives to help brands meet their targets and maximise their partnership with us. For example, if advertisers choose to increase their CPA, Involve Asia will boost their exposure to various publishers through our marketing channels and assets.

How do you help advertisers add value and drive incrementality?

Mell: We strive to add value for advertisers by making it simple to break into the SEA market. For example, we connected with different content publishers in the SEA region, including Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, to help promote its “Modest Wear & End of Season Sale” in the region. Throughout the duration of the campaign, we helped Nike secure additional exposure, including an exclusive EDM, on-site banners on the publisher dashboard and a “featured offer” inclusion on the Involve Asia site. This helped Nike boost conversion by 343% and increase sales by 104% across our network.

What excites you about the affiliate marketing industry and where it’s headed? What new innovations will we see from you this year?

Mell: I adore how agile this industry is and how it has grown to be one of the most significant and important channels for any brand’s marketing strategy.

At Involve Asia, we are constantly working on improving tracking for advertiser partners. We want to simplify the whole experience by allowing advertisers to track their performance on a campaign basis all on one single tracking link generated by Involve Asia. We are also working on a publisher social platform which enables publishers to share posts of products along with affiliate links. This will direct customers to the product page on brand’s website or online store, further enhancing the shopping experience.

While all of these are still on planning stage, we are very excited about the launch of these new features and will share with all of our partners once we are ready to roll out.

Why did you choose to partner with Rakuten Advertising?

Mell: Collaborating with the Rakuten Advertising team has been an incredibly dynamic experience. They view a sub-network like Involve Asia as media partner to better scale their advertisers’ performance. They truly value our partnership.

In addition, Involve Asia and Rakuten Advertising has established a transparency policy which enables partnered advertisers on the Rakuten Affiliate Network to get a full view of our publishers.

As a contributor to this ever-evolving affiliate industry, I personally value the dynamic partnership between Rakuten Advertising and Involve Asia. I believe they truly live and breathe the meaning of “partnership” through trust, innovation and collaboration.

Contact us to partner with Involve Asia today. To hear more from our publishers in the future, subscribe to our blog.