Rakuten Advertising Unveils Innovation Labs to Accelerate AI Innovation in Affiliate Marketing

“Innovation Labs is the culmination of years of work expanding our Affiliate Intelligence suite of AI-powered tools, bringing together data, AI, premium partnerships and expert strategies,” said Nick Stamos, CEO of Rakuten Advertising. “This initiative is a critical step in how Rakuten Advertising contributes to Rakuten Group’s broader ‘Triple 20’ commitment to use AI to drive 20% greater efficiency for our employees, our internal teams and most importantly, our customers. Innovation Labs will shorten the build, measure and learn cycle of AI transformation, allowing us to accelerate future investments in capabilities that improve outcomes for our advertisers and publisher partners.”

At launch, Innovation Labs will bring advertisers and publishers new AI recommendations.

• For advertisers: AI recommendations will holistically analyze multi-dimensional attributes of advertisers to determine new types of publishers. This includes analyzing profiles, products and other characteristics to identify publishers with demonstrated success in similar campaigns, as well as identifying new categories of publishers that will maximize growth.
• For publishers: AI-powered product recommendations reduce research time and improve monetization for publishers by instantly identifying emerging trends from partnered and non-partnered advertisers, then curating them for a targeted audience and refining options with brand and category filters.

Rakuten Advertising’s Data Science team will conduct rolling experiments within Innovation Labs, guided by customer and partner feedback, leading to an always-on research and development space where new features will be added and updated regularly.

“Innovation Labs delivers on our promise to continually innovate our products in ways that benefit every participant in the affiliate marketing universe, from brands to publishers and ultimately consumers,” said Adam Rostan, Chief Product Officer. “This will be a space where advertisers and publishers can experiment, collaborate and scale new use cases with AI to deliver greater efficiencies for everyone and accelerate industry growth.”

About Rakuten Advertising

Rakuten Advertising delivers performance-driven, brand-driven and people-centric advertising solutions that help the world’s best brands connect with unique, highly engaged audiences – from first impression to final sale. Backed by leading technology, global media properties and the largest, best-in-class affiliate network, Rakuten Advertising uses data and experience to develop the strategies and advertising experiences that will drive engagement, sales, loyalty and more.

Rakuten Advertising has been an industry leader since its inception and is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world’s leading Internet services companies. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices in EMEA, APAC, LATAM and North America. More information at RakutenAdvertising.com.

SOURCE Rakuten Advertising