#88 The Future of Influencer Marketing: Authenticity in the Age of AI | Vinod Varma, Co-Founder & CEO of Creator.co

This Always Be Testing podcast features James Little, a UK affiliate marketing legend and key figure at TopCashback. The episode covers TopCashback's 20-year history, its unique 100% cashback model, and its global success without venture capital. Little discusses the challenges and rewards of operating in various markets, the importance of clear customer education around cashback, and the evolving relationship between cashback sites and brands. He highlights the crucial role of accurate tracking and the positive impact of AWIN's move towards server-to-server tracking. The conversation also touches upon the impact of AI on affiliate marketing, the importance of mental health awareness, and Little's personal experiences.

The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) released its third triennial affiliate marketing survey, revealing a booming industry. Data from eight networks, 53 publishers, and over 20,000 brands showed ad spend skyrocketing from $6 billion to $13.63 billion (a 14.42% CAGR), exceeding e-commerce growth and contributing 10% to overall US e-commerce revenue. While cashback and coupon sites remain significant, their market share decreased, likely due to the rise of card-linked offers and buy now, pay later options. These, along with influencer marketing, fueled growth, though the overall increase in market size means some sectors saw proportional decreases in share. The survey also highlighted growth in less directly correlated sectors like finance and telecom, and a slight decrease in ROAS (from 12:1 to 11:1), potentially due to a shift towards top-of-funnel traffic. Publisher sentiment shows concern about Google changes but optimism for the future. 

This podcast features Ryan Fitzgerald, an affiliate industry expert at AWIN, discussing various aspects of affiliate marketing. Key takeaways include the importance of initially working with all publisher types to build brand equity, AWIN's global reach and commitment to a publisher-centric approach, and Fitzgerald's sales leadership focusing on educating and mentoring SMBs. He emphasizes the need for transparency and data-driven decision-making in affiliate marketing, particularly for convincing C-suite executives of its value. Fitzgerald also shares insights into his team's success strategy, focusing on deal closure, self-education, and organization, and offers advice for brands on time commitment and agency utilization. The conversation touches upon AWIN's ShareASale integration, bringing modernized technology to a large existing client base. Finally, Fitzgerald shares personal insights, including book and movie recommendations, and advice for fathers.

This podcast episode features Vinod Varma, founder and CEO of Creator Co., discussing the evolving landscape of social commerce. Varma defines social commerce as the next wave of influencer marketing, enabled by expired Amazon patents, and highlights TikTok Shop's leading role due to its seamless user experience. Creator Co. helps brands navigate this space by providing technical setup and access to a vast influencer network. The conversation touches upon the potential of other platforms like YouTube, YouTube Shorts, and the surprisingly underutilized Pinterest, emphasizing the platform's aspirational and positive nature. A key theme is the importance of authenticity in influencer marketing, particularly in the age of AI, and the need for improved attribution models and transparency in influencer compensation to address concerns arising from browser extensions like Honey.

Jordan Koene, CEO & Founder of Previsible.io, breaks down how AI is reshaping the SEO landscape. As tools like ChatGPT provide direct answers, many websites are seeing noticeable drops in organic traffic—ranging from 10% to as much as 90%, depending on the industry and keyword.This shift is happening quickly and requires a thoughtful response. Jordan explains why it's important for brands to focus on becoming trustworthy sources within AI ecosystems, addressing inaccuracies in AI-generated content, and leaning into unique brand assets. He also emphasizes the need to shift from broad outreach to more targeted strategies on platforms where the audience is most active.AI isn’t replacing jobs, but it’s changing them—making skill development and retraining a priority. The future of SEO will center around helpful, relevant content, deeper personalization, and multimedia formats like video that build trust and engage users.The key is to move from reactive to prescriptive marketing by focusing on serving specific audience needs within the evolving limitations of AI.

This podcast features a conversation between two performance marketing experts with 20+ years of experience, discussing the evolving landscape of digital marketing. Svet, with a background at Stanford, McKinsey, and Nextag, shares his insights on leveraging first-principle thinking and algorithmic understanding to optimize marketing campaigns across B2B, e-commerce, and local service businesses. Key themes include the importance of rigorous testing, overcoming common data measurement mistakes (like under-tagging and misaligned attribution), and adapting to the increasing influence of AI and automation in paid search. The discussion highlights the ongoing relevance of keywords despite Google's shift towards AI-driven contextual search, the untapped potential of Bing Ads for B2B marketers, and the crucial need for marketers to develop a "hacker mentality" and deep technical skills to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. Svet also recommends utilizing AI tools effectively, studying AI models, and understanding the underlying algorithms to gain a competitive edge.

In this episode, Brendan Regan, Senior Director of Lifestyle/Lifecycle Marketing at Smartsheet, shares his strategic, multi-channel approach to engaging both enterprise and SaaS customers. He explains how Smartsheet blends digital programs with human touchpoints—such as customer success reps and account executives—to optimize acquisition, retention, and monetization. Brendan discusses key growth levers they’ve tested, including freemium conversion, upgrades, seat expansion, and cross-sell/upsell tactics, all rooted in a data-driven, experimental mindset. He also explores the benefits and challenges of Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Product-Led Sales (PLS), highlighting how A/B testing and propensity modeling support smarter decision-making. Among his most surprising learnings: onboarding plays a larger role in expansion than expected, and simple, sales-driven heuristics can be remarkably effective in cross-selling. Brendan wraps up with valuable advice for B2B SaaS companies—avoid silos, don’t fall into copycat marketing, and never underinvest in technology. Mastering your martech stack and integrating it properly, he emphasizes, is essential for impactful customer communication.

This podcast features Kayla Hamilton, who is the affiliate marketing manager of Sage. The discussion centers on Sage's B2B SaaS affiliate marketing strategy within the FinTech vertical. Key topics include the challenges and successes of building a year-old affiliate program, targeting high-value executives, the importance of internal collaboration between marketing, sales, and PR teams, leveraging AI for forecasting, content creation, and data analysis, and the crucial role of data-driven decision-making in optimizing partner performance and achieving scalable growth. Hamilton emphasizes the need for a holistic approach, aligning product offerings with partner audiences, hyper-targeting growing SMBs, and focusing on quality leads over volume. She also highlights the importance of understanding the nuances of medium-sized business (M) marketing and the value of non-traditional sub-affiliates and industry-focused partners. The conversation concludes with Hamilton's recommendations for further learning and personal insights.

This podcast features Vanessa Lawrence, Chief Content Officer at Linkby, an ad tech platform connecting brands with premium publishers using a CPC model. Linkby operates globally and has recently expanded into Europe. The platform's success is attributed to its measurable approach, fast turnaround, and no upfront costs for brands. Linkbee complements existing publisher revenue streams (CPA, flat fee) rather than replacing them, emphasizing diversification and experimentation. The platform offers access to a wide range of publishers, from major media outlets to newsletter creators and Substack writers. A key differentiator is Linkbee's focus on publisher authority and trust, recognizing that brands are paying for more than just ad placement. Lawrence discusses Linkby's innovative "publisher pitches" feature, which allows publishers to proactively pitch brands, and highlights the importance of data and third-party validation in their operations. The conversation also touches on Lawrence's background, her role at Linkby, and her passion for helping publishers diversify their revenue streams.

In this episode, fintech affiliate marketing expert Lawrence Sarpong shares insights from years of hands-on experience in the space. He breaks down how fintech affiliate marketing stands apart from the broader industry — with a stronger focus on customer education and solving very specific financial needs.Lawrence dives into best practices for building a strong affiliate program, from choosing the right platform (he gives a big nod to Impact) to cultivating genuine, long-term relationships with partners. He emphasizes that authenticity beats flashy influencer deals, especially in fintech where trust is everything.He also walks us through a powerful online-to-offline campaign that drove real revenue and explains why social media is becoming more critical than ever in affiliate marketing.Other highlights include common mistakes to avoid (like overlooking partner fit or dropping the ball on communication), plus some personal reflections — including his favorite travel spots and how he thrives as an introvert in a relationship-driven industry.