Key Highlights from DealMaker Canada 2025: Leading Canadian Affiliate Events Recap

As one of the most anticipated affiliate events of the year, DealMaker Canada 2025 brought a record-breaking number of North American affiliate leaders to the gorgeous Shangri-La hotel in Toronto. This leading affiliate event gathered top advertisers, publishers, and agencies from across North America for two days of networking, learning, and celebration. 

Our eager attendees pre-scheduled nearly 400 meetings to strategize for Q4 and beyond—the room was filled with insightful content, dealmaking, and exciting conversations! Attendees listened in on a fireside chat with Canadian Down & Feather and Aeroplan, and got top holiday and beyond tips on our panel with Estée Lauder, WeyMedia, and Rakuten Rewards. The Publisher Showcase gave guests a chance to hear from our top publisher partners, iSonic, TD Bank’s Capillary Technologies, and MyRegistry.com, about innovative ways they could partner together for Q4 and beyond. The day rounded out with a preview of Rakuten Advertising tech and product advancements.   

Here are the highlights from this year’s DealMaker Canada:    

Making connections and deals at affiliate events: DealMaker Canada 2025 

As the name implies, DealMaker is all about making deals and bringing the affiliate community together. The two-day event was filled with opportunities to schedule one-on-one meetings and network with the industry as a whole.   

The two-day event kicked off Thursday night with a welcome reception sponsored by Venngo. It brought together all attendees to chat and connect over food and drinks and allowed everyone to meet prior to the full day of networking and content.  

On Friday morning, the event began early with breakfast, giving the attendees networking time over coffee and tea. Content kicked off with executive remarks from our VP of Retail Sales for North America (and our Canadian champion), Krysta Gutteridge, highlighting Canadian network growth and the exciting number of new advertiser and publisher partners that have joined our Canadian network in the past year…

“This has been our best DealMaker Canada yet! I’m so proud of our team for everything they have built to make our partners successful. This year, we broke records with attendance from Advertisers, Publishers and Agencies too. The energy in the space was palpable! I was so impressed to see many CEOs and Founders at the event, which reiterates how paramount the affiliate channel is for our partners. I’m proud of the content and diverse line-up of speakers we showcased as well. The fireside chat with Aeroplan and Canadian Down & Feather provided an intimate look at how Advertisers & Publishers can create bespoke offers and leverage the Rakuten Advertising affiliate network to strategically optimize performance. It was also exciting to announce our latest innovations. Emmylia Lee delivered a compelling demo of our new product releases and received great feedback from our Publishers who can’t wait to get their hands on our new Enhanced Affiliate Conversion Journey tool.”

While content and connections took center stage, we ended the day with an exciting raffle for all attendees! Our partners had the chance to win a prize from several of our stellar partners, including KITS, La Vie en Rose, Baskits, Lolë, Rakuten Kobo, Canadian Down and Feather, and more. Thank you to our partners for making the day so special for fellow attendees!  

Fireside Chat: Breaking the Mold  

In our exclusive Fireside Chat with Canadian Down & Feather Company and Aeroplan, our panellists dove into their wildly successful and unexpected partnership.  

Ashwin Aggarwal, CEO of Canadian Down & Feather Company; Andrew Noonan, Head of Loyalty Retail and Affiliate Products at Aeroplan; and Holly Brim, VP of Marketing at Rakuten Advertising, dove into the details on how the partnership formed (spoiler alert: It was at a Rakuten Advertising event!), the trials and tribulations they faced to get the partnership across the board, and how they plan to expand their newly-developed partnership model in the future.  

 This discussion highlighted the importance of bringing the community together at DealMaker Canada and beyond, because who knows what new partnerships are around the corner!  

 Unlocking High-Impact Partnerships: The Q4 & Beyond Strategy 

This year’s panel explored the strategies and challenges faced by affiliate marketers when expanding into new markets, especially Canada.  

Moderated by Rakuten Advertising’s Head of Sales, North America, Stephanie Nicolet, and featuring panellists Matt Brisby, Director of Growth at WeyMedia, John Edward Cedilla, E-commerce Director at the Estee Lauder Companies, and Jennifer LaForge, General Manager at Rakuten.ca; this panel tackled our speakers top tips for unlocking the power of affiliate partnerships to succeed during this upcoming holiday season and beyond.

The trio discussed how to get buy-in from leadership to maximize the influence of the affiliate channel, emphasized the importance of extending the holiday momentum into January and beyond, and highlighted how being flexible and capitalizing on cultural moments can bring your brand to the forefront of consumers’ minds.  

Once again, DealMaker Canada was an absolute success, and we couldn’t have done it without you! As one of the most important affiliate marketing events in Canada, DealMaker Canada 2025 set a new standard for industry networking and collaboration. We extend our gratitude and appreciation to all our industry attendees and our events and marketing team, who worked tirelessly to put on a fabulous event.  

To explore more about upcoming affiliate events, visit our Affiliate Events page or check out our previous recaps.