[ 00:00:00 ]Hello everybody, welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, my guest is Stephen Caron. Stephen is the founder and director of Scale Digital, a full-service acquisition agency. Stephen has a wealth of experience working for, I would say, almost decades in partner marketing, working with brands, working towards acquisitions, optimizing performance in all kinds of performance marketing setups. And we will speak today about his experience, his insights about what is important for brands, what are they looking for, how do we optimize performance, and then obviously going back to the core of our podcast, partner marketing, his view on the industry, what are trends, what are actual topics, what has changed over time. I'm very much looking forward to speaking to you. Welcome, Stephen. Thank you. Nice to see you, Matthias. How's life?

[ 00:00:58 ] Very good to see you. Very good. Thank you. How are you? Yeah, good. Thank you. Nice to see you in the flesh, so to speak, rather than on Strava as a fellow runner. Hopefully we'll get a race in together soon. Yes, for sure. Maybe as a start, you want to introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Stephen Caron. I'm a founder and co-director of Scale Digital. We're an acquisition CPA affiliate agency based in London. We're predominantly an impact agency. We work across various channels, and I think some of the things we'll talk about today and the evolution of affiliate will address the new channels that CPA affiliate activity is now enabling. We have all sorts of stuff. And as you know, all sorts of client types, as is natural in this game.

[ 00:01:56 ] We work across several markets, Europe, the US, and recently a number of Chinese clients as well. So, you know, we're embedded in the CPA affiliate game. And as you say, I've been in it for decades. I actually started in search in the 90s. But since we worked together in Tradedoubler in the sort of mid-to-late 2000s, I've been in the affiliate space. That was, I think, 2010, 11. Yeah. I think when I lived in London. Yes. I was there. I started at the end of 07, I think, beginning of 08. Yeah, it could be. Yeah, you left while I was there in London. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, great times there. And as you know, we share so many friends from that time in the industry who were, you know, so successful and in great-running agencies and tech businesses and founders.

[ 00:02:49 ] You know, it was a real hotbed of talent. And, you know. You know, it's great to see Trade Doubler doing so well, too, under your management. Thank you very much, Stephen. So partner marketing is sales, obviously. So that's acquisition, right? And Scaled Digital, you position as a full service acquisition agency, reaching new audiences, optimizing performance. Can you share a little bit more on how you do that and what you do exactly for brands? Yeah, I think this sort of partner marketing thing is quite a good expression. You know, it's an evolution of the phrase away from an affiliate. I think brands really waking up to the power of what we offer, you know, across, you know, this top six or ten businesses, which you're one.

[ 00:03:41 ] And the ability, the reach, you know, the budgets, the way that it works, you know, everything living underneath good tracking, of course, and, you know, total transparency. And, you know, I've always been a huge advocate of the affiliate channel generally, you know. And I think we're in, like, the third phase of CPA. You know, a lot of people now at the brands that we speak to have experience of it. You know, before, you know, ten years ago, we'd go and speak to a brand and they'd say, oh, yeah, I think, you know, Chris over there behind the photocopier, I think he looks after that, you know. Whereas now it's front and central of a budget. You know, we expect, you know, for a retail brand, we would hope to be providing somewhere between, you know, in a mature program, somewhere between 15% to 20% of their volume, you know, if it's done correctly.

[ 00:04:36 ] So, you know, it's a major thing now. And it's not only desktop. We're doing mobile on a CPA, so post-install events, you know, properly tracked, paid-out events. We're doing events on an outcome that brands want, you know, not just installs. We're doing things across creators, voice. Amazon have opened up the ability to provide affiliate activity as well. And, you know, there's a great new thing now, which I think is a sort of extension of creators, which is advocacy, you know, the sort of beyond creators, really, where, you know, people, you know. And there's lots of technology and a lot of movement. Can you explain a little bit more about that, advocacy? Well, yeah, me recommending something to you.

[ 00:05:23 ] And technology that enables proper advocacy, you know, through incentives maybe or through content or the way we review products, you know, I think the next phase of where we're going is going to be a lot more budget towards advocacy. Kind of like recommendation marketing. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of referral engine stuff as affiliates down the years, and it's really just an extension of that, you know, Take Running, for example, with you and I, you know, I'm looking to buy running shoes, you know, I want to hear from my peers who have recently been researching running shoes or bought some. I think that's the, you know, that I think brands quite like this advocacy thing as well. I mean, there's so much with that sort of lives on.

[ 00:06:15 ] There's so much in the tracking, and if you can track it, you know, it's media now. That's the way we're sort of beyond what was desktop. And I think, you know, this whole thing about partner marketing is useful as well because, you know, some brands with older CMOs, they see affiliate as some sort of incentivized channel to dump you out of your last year's range and try and get rid of it at a discount. And they're waking up to the fact that this is not what we're looking for. It's not what affiliate is, you know, it used to be a bit of an out-of-the-box solution with a core portfolio of partners working on a program, you know, you could have programs with just sort of five or 10 and, you know, 80% of it was cash back, but, you know, that's 2010, you know, we've moved on so much now.

[ 00:07:02 ] Is that a little bit because you said we are now in version three, so it's a kind of like a bit of a different game now. How do you mean that when you say version three or can you explain like what was version one? What was version two and what is now version three from your point of view? Yeah, I was making that up a little bit, so I'll have to pretend that I know the answer, but we're really, you know, one was Amazon at the beginning and Tradedoubler very soon after creating tracking solutions for brands to track stuff. And then I think there was the big phase of networks and, you know, everything that happened, you know, when you and I were at Tradedoubler.

[ 00:07:44 ] And those years we just spoke about through to about five years ago and now, I mean, we I did a thing a few months ago for some German colleagues at Impact and I just did a quick sort of straw poll around the office about affiliate categories and we got to 21. You know, there's 21. This is just us like on a scrap of paper, there's 21 different affiliate categories now. You know, whereas it used to be three. So this is at least three relevant ones. Yeah. Yeah. Three that you know, there's a Pareto's law. You'd have 80/ 20. Whereas now there's so much out there. So, you can build any program and meet verticals different from what you don't and not every vertical uses all 20.

[ 00:08:32 ] I mean, you, you know, the finance vertical is different to the travel one, for example. But that's the version or, you know, this version of the, you know, the, you know, the version three of affiliate now where there's really good incremental type affiliates who are serious businesses providing great traffic for brands and, you know, it's terrific. And as I said, the advocacy linked to creators being affiliates, there's still some work to be done with that because you have to drag the creators kicking and screaming into a track. Set up, and you know they still would like a nice fixed budget and go off and do it themselves, but you know that's changing. Um, so, so the whole thing's evolved and improved, you know.

[ 00:09:26 ] We read these things in the reports from the IAB and the Affiliate Part to Marketing Association, and stuff in the US, about every year. The affiliate budgets increase, you know, they're 10-15% every year. And all the other channels, you know, the paid media channels are coming down, so I think we're in a good place to, you know, benefit from educating clients further about how good this channel is, and so we're at the front of that. You know, I won't hear a bad word said against CPA when when I said in the beginning I I when. I started to talk, I was speaking about partner marketing um instead of affiliate marketing. You just said you like that yeah, we made a distinct decision um that was in September last year when we did a bit of a repositioning, a rebranding trade-up it was our 25th birthday um anniversary um and we made a decision to change and say we work in partner marketing because we think as well that it has evolved and the partners that we're working with are coming from so many more different channels than before and the type of companies that we're working with is not just like the affiliate but it's it's it's big companies, right? It's big partners that we're working with, um, listed companies, media houses, Microsoft, etc., what's your view on that because you said you like the term partner marketing, um, compared to affiliate marketing; is that a bit the same, um, what you said when you say that the channel has evolved so much, yeah, I think it's refreshed the name which is good, so that's always good, it's sort of rebranded the channel in a way that the essence of it is that with the CPA model it's a risk, you know for us clients paying out the CPA is a risk for the client, us and the publisher, you know that's why it's a partnership win-win-win, yeah, so you Know other types of display media, there's no risk for anyone except the brand, you know. So, there's no partnership, there you know you're just buying media, um, you know it's easy to do that. You know, I think this this this partnership game is is quite sophisticated and complex, the way you glue everything together, and you've got to get buy-in, and that again that's why it's a partnership, and you know. Content owners of of any description across any of these media types, whether you're an influencer or a website or sort of a mobile app, um, you know, you're taking a risk as well to go on a CPA, but the upside is really good because It's always on, you know.

[ 00:12:07 ] Once once it works, you've got it tracking; you've got a good audience. It's always on, and that's the beauty of it-that it just continues and it's earning money for everyone. So, but that's why I like the term partnership. You know, it's you're gluing together a group of people to work you know towards the same goals. So, you you work with um, run partner marketing campaigns programs; influencer marketing mobile marketing marketplace activities, connected TV activities-all this kind of stuff for brands. Yeah, why are these brands working with you? What is Scale Digital providing? What... what do you offer? As a service, what kind of need do we fulfill for them? Good question, I think. Was it you know we're we we tend to arrive or land on a client sometimes for random reasons or an introduction or you know from a from a another brand or you know we don't do a great deal of outreach; we do some.

[ 00:13:13 ] We get some referrals in but we we tend to get an introduction and and start a conversation with clients about CPA activity, usually desktop to begin with. Um, and we run a diagnostic across their activity: what they're doing, CPAs, benchmarking everything, conversion rates, AOVs... you know, a big emphasis on sort of the whole setup with their others. Channels where does CPA activity live, you know? They said earlier about 15 I mean, we've we take on programs sometimes and they're doing half a percent of the you know the online volumes so we know there's a lot of headroom to improve those programs and once we get in and we create a bit of trust, you know? We start talking about the other channels.

[ 00:14:00 ] You know if you've got a mobile app, if you're mobile-first obviously, we'd come to that as a mobile proposition, buying or arbitraging with our partners for these post-install event outcomes that we're tracking. Um, so there's there's a lot of brands now that have apps that are part of their Product so they're not necessarily a paid product, so if you're a fashion brand for example, you might buy an item and then you download the app to browse to buy further items. So, there's a whole user journey piece that's increasingly interesting. So um, why they choose us is I think it's partly related to this-you know we're specifically an agency, I i see us, you know we're different to the networks, I mean we don't we don't offer tracking solutions obviously but we're we're an agency so we're trying to build in agency-type behaviors into the channel so, so proactive not reactive, you know we're we're um, you know we don't we try Not to get just bedded down with technocratic jargon about stuff and you know, it's very much we-we concentrate very hard with the numbers, so we're building out sophisticated detailed forecasts about every touch point, AOVs, ROAS, CAC, volumes, budgets, everything per market per product line. So, I think it's a mix of things that it also it depends a little bit if brands have their own resource or not, you know some of some of them don't. Um, they may have their own resource or not, but they may have their own resource or not. They may have a problem so they may have a program but they may have a difficulty with a particular Region or, they may have a um an issue with a product that you know they're launching and they need some help so there's not really one answer.

[ 00:15:55 ] Matthias, is there's plenty um, you know it's our it's our job to respond each time and um try and build a growth plan for them so you engage with brands, you have first conversations um, you start kind of like working together so you do some kind of audit and analysis of the activities they're running and if I if I understand right what you just said um, mostly most of the times you come to the conclusion that partner marketing or performance marketing is underutilized; that is that. right i understand that right yes but it's getting better yeah is there is there is there certain is there certain themes um or patterns that you see when you're working with brands and you're working with brands and you're working with different brands and we look at what they're doing um where you see oh yeah that's the same topic again that it that it was with with my other client yesterday um is there is there certain main topics that you say that would lead to that partner marketing yeah i think the verticals have different character or similar characteristics rather you know the fintech we've got quite a lot of Fintech clients, maybe a dozen or 15, you know they are very acquisition-focused so partner marketing's at the is almost the first thing they do so they you know they've set up well for it. They respond well; they allocate budgets; they're very detailed with their numbers and the way we track and approve everything.

[ 00:17:31 ] So you know that vertical is very different to some of the others who have a bit of a sort of tired attitude towards the channel, and they're you know they're spending fortunes on Facebook and you know they're some of them will have a row-ass or CAC spend that's 10 times on Meta what we can offer for them, obviously there's A difference in volumes, but uh, so it it really varies. So we did, we but we do see the similar things, um, for different verticals, you know. That's the uh, you know. There's people do have to have a bit of budget, you know. We get frustrated sometimes because people think the CPA challenge they can just turn it on and let it work in the background, and they'll get, they'll just get this traffic.

[ 00:18:14 ] But um, it needs effort. You know? A good client is a good program usually, you know. People who are you know prepared to sit down with us and listen, an engaged client, basically. You mean right, yes, yeah, you know. We always say to be a good client, honestly. It really helps, we'll have some fun with it and we'll test, you know, testing's important. I was sort of drifting away from your question a bit, but, yes, but yes, we do see similar things, you know. People who have um, legacy programs that just have a couple of publishers on them, I mean, I won't name names. We've taken over a very big global fashion brand recently, you know, a major fashion brand, high-end fashion brand from a network we both know, and you know it it's doing one sale a day, you know, and it's been sat there, you know.

[ 00:19:09 ] We did this audit on it and we're, we're migrating it soon, um, so there are these, you know, legacy programs that are sort of drifting around with no attention um so we do we do see that you know we always look upon that as an attitude as an opportunity and if people have got the right attitude then we can do something about it so but every case is slightly different obviously do these clients see partner marketing or performance marketing as mainly as a marketing channel or rather as a sales channel great question i think it's a good question i think it's a good question i think it's a good question great great question that one i always sort of ask that i ask our clients how do you see this is it marketing channel or a sales channel because I'm always interested, in fact that's almost the most important question that one because I'm always interested on a budget perspective because they sometimes they say 'to so' we've got a hundred thousand pounds budget and I think to myself, hang on, it's not it's not marketing, psychologically you've got this wrong, this is a sales budget. Your only limitation should be stock, you know that's the, you know if you're a salesperson, if you're looking at it as this is a sales budget and we're a sales team, it's very different to marketing teams, but again I think this is this is a job for us as the agencies, as the agency to explain. This um and um again, the is a job for us as the agencies to as the agency to explain this um and um again the verticals if you've got a a team if you if you've got a CMO or a head of growth who's looking after lots of channels that's very different to when you've got a team specialist partner marketing I can imagine yeah, you know, you're if you're looking after lots of channels you it's not it's not about loyalty to one channel but if you're in a partner marketing team you're going to be judged by your sales so there's no there's no budget you're going to get as much as possible, so characteristics of the the client are quite important. here you know it's um it's but it but it's it's it's quite revealing the answer to that is this marketing or sales to you mr client or mrs client so i'm always keen to hear what they have to say and the the expectation from brands is then basically acquisitions right so they want to sales has that changed over time the like um the task for you as well when working with a brand maybe is there more topics coming to you has the expectations changed when you work with brands nowadays compared to a few years ago maybe yes and i think this is going back to this evolution piece yes i heard this ghastly term brand for brand formants or Something um, where brand and content, education, and awareness of mixing it, the funnel is shortening and truncating. And I think with some partner categories that's true, you know. This um, we were talking here about, we were throwing some words around the other week about performance PR, you know, PR has always sat slightly uncomfortably next to affiliate, you know. PR teams do not like us, and you know, we are we are not helping as far as they're concerned.

[ 00:22:39 ] But what's happened, you know, as content, um, the burgeoning amount of sustainable green content for example now, you know, as an awareness or education piece is Is very much up a funnel, but you know there's a lot of it out there. Look at energy switching for example as a sample vertical; you know they they don't split out in in their minds acquisition and brand, you know they they see it very much together. And the publishers as well, you know they're not if you look at any of the big switching sites now-it's not just tables, you know it's content, so, so yes, it's changing. I think, I mean my view you track everything as far as I'm concerned, but you you know the the way that CPM prices and particularly what's happening with creators; I mean the amount of search and display budget that's now moved.

[ 00:23:41 ] Over to creators, and as we talked about creators being judged not only by brand, but performance too, you know. Everything sort of got a bit of a gravitational pull in towards the middle now, you know. The channels are merging a little, little by little, or bit by bit, I should say. I want to come to that again later; I have a few questions because especially what you said before about the funnel shortening. Now, um, but just like staying with the brands for a moment, that we just don't jump back and forth from the end of the channel. What would you say is the main challenges for brands now because we saw especially last year 2024 a lot of shifts in the markets different performances we still saw travel for example coming back after covid although it's some time passed since then others like fashion electronics 2024 has maybe rather been a bit of a shift.

[ 00:24:42 ] What would you say is the main challenges from a macroeconomic perspective but for the brands themselves when working with partner marketing what's what's how are they yeah we actually found the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024 the toughest period the second half of last year was really good it all bounced back um i mean macroeconomic conditions have have had an effect. You know, post-COVID was one thing, and then you know, the general tightening of budgets globally. Um, despite being a supporter of Brexit, the transition period for Brexit had an effect, of course, and I think it still does – inflationary pressures, cost of living. You know, the verticals are all different. I mean, we talked a bit earlier about fintech-type clients; they've done so well as people have been using budgeting apps and you know, neo-banking tools, and everything that they've done well.

[ 00:25:44 ] Whereas travel, we don't have a great deal of travel; we've only got a couple of travel clients, but I know, I know, you guys you know, brilliant at travel. Always have been, um, you know, and obviously there was an effect through COVID and, uh, after which has come back so you know, I think there's a mix it seems quite good to me now. I mean our numbers are up, clients seem to be a bit more confident. Um, whereas six months ago we were, you know, they were saying give us a bit of time before we open some new budgets. Chris, you know, but the Q4 period, Black Friday, you know, through Christmas and the January sales were very good, so I think that's coming back as a as a, um, uh, you know, global position that you know, we can be confident about now. That's good and looking into partner marketing specifically working with the channel um working with their partners um what would you say is is what is the topics that keep brands busy now?

[ 00:26:55 ] Well, pushing on growth, I mean it's competitive out there, yeah, every vertical is competitive. You know, you've got to get your commissions right, you've got to get your conversions right; you could have good assets and you've got to make sure you're on the right platform, you've got to have the right stock you're gonna be API eyes, but have everything in place. You know, if you miss out on one thing, um, what I meant was, challenges on the brand side with the channel itself. So, for example, we have discussions with brands um that are more skeptical about certain publisher verticals; for example, we have a lot of discussions about sub-networks, some of them don't want to invest into certain traffic types but asking for new traffic types.

[ 00:27:35 ] So, we still see I think a lot of shift in the industry and from the demand from brands is that something that you see as well? That the perception of the channel changing from a brand's perspective, yeah, I mean that's part of the... I mean, with our having 20 different verticals within or to publish in verticals within you know a program; you know one of the things you know we can do a pie chart and say look if you if you have all of these you know this is what it's going to look like but if they're particular ones that you don't want to work with you know normally these are incentive type. Activity you know we just won't recruit them; we won't permit them, permit them on the program, so that I mean, that's obvious, of course.

[ 00:28:18 ] There'll be particular other types that they want to work with, you know; they always have ambitions for nice content activity, of course. But that might require some budget, so it depends a bit on their budget. Also, each market's different, you know; there's you know the German market's subtly different to the UK market which is different to the US, you know; there's different different publisher categories work differently, you know. You can get onto um, capital one in the US for example, you know; they've got 100 million users on there, you know. So, the portfolio of publishers per market for a client is quite important, so we'll sit down with them at the beginning and talk about what they want that to look like, and it also comes back a bit to what we were discussing with brand, you know; do you in a if we're looking to go into a market like France for example, you know; do you have brand already in France if you don't, we'll we'll have to have A different publisher mix for a market where you're well known, so you know it's different in in each marketplace, so that's part of our job is to unpick, you know the the position that a brand is in each market and and try and build a publisher portfolio that reflects what we're trying to do. Good now, I want to, I'm curious, I want to jump to partner marketing a little bit more in general. You said earlier that the funnel is shortening now, how do you mean that? The acquisition well it's just about this, you know, the way that display budgets at the top, paid search and how you know, this thing awareness, education through to acquisition. Is you know the the crumple zone is much smaller now?

[ 00:30:11 ] There were very different budgets before. So, you know, I'm pleased to say that I think affiliate is working its way up the funnel rather than anything else. And we're squeezing those budgets. And that's what's happening. You know, and I think if we include creator as part of that, performance creator, if you like, as part of that, that is now the way this funnel is collapsing a bit. And I think it's good for everyone. You know, I think display budgets now, they're different to what they were before. There's so many technology providers now as well. There's so much transparency with data. And there's so many other channels. I mean, some of the stuff we're doing with CTV, you know, we've got fintech clients where, you know, you show a CTV advert on a console or television or, you know, your laptop.

[ 00:31:02 ] You install an app within 10 minutes. You know, we're tracking that. You know. Is that display activity? I mean, it's normally bought on a CPM and we're arbitraging against the acquisition costs. And it's examples like that that I think are changing what the funnel looks like, the traditional funnel. The reason why I'm so jumping on that is I recently had a recording for podcast as well with Glenn, the founder of Kaizen. And now I know that you are a pre-seed investor into Kaizen as well. So AI platform for client services. And we were discussing about how AI has influence on partner marketing, obviously on client services first, but then on partner marketing as well. And he gave the question back to me and asked me on what I think AI, what kind of influence it will have on our business.

[ 00:31:55 ] And I think that AI will lead to shortening the acquisition funnel as well because it will bring budgets closer together. You might have less, just like, focused on the last click and the acquisition itself, but you will have many more activities going into display, going into the creator area. So it will, in the end, I think, probably fundamentally change on how we run acquisition or partner marketing campaigns in the end. Do you see that similar maybe? Yeah. I mean, Kaizen specifically is a tool we use internally. That's not the media side. So we have, it's brilliant, and I know you guys are using it as well, and the way that we are able to understand sentiment and how we operate on a day-to-day basis, how we look at every interaction with every client at every level.

[ 00:32:55 ] We make sure that every action is fulfilled. We've done some other really smart, nice things like helping us draft emails and things, although I've not used those. I always write my own. But AI on the platform. The publisher side, the way media is bought, you know, this is the same across any sort of trading platform, which is effectively what this is, you know, in the city or in New York. You know, AI for buying anything now is improving what we do. AI to create content and then assets and to understand what's performing. You know, I mean, I think the publishers, you know, we're in the job of selling. We're selling publishers to brands. You know, that's what we do ultimately.

[ 00:33:40 ] And, you know, publishers who are embracing AI and increasing or improving ROAS and the amount of sales that a brand gets are going to be successful. I haven't really seen many yet who've nailed it, who've just sort of joined Trade Doubler or Impact and shown us something that we can just switch on that's, you know, made a big difference. I don't think that's quite. I don't think that's quite happened yet, you know, but soon I imagine there'll be a publisher that creates content, you know, any consumer arrives on that site, creates content on the fly that's relevant to their buying ambitions, maybe looks at what they've been researching recently and creating, you know, an experience, a tracked experience for them that is highly personalized. I think it's only a matter of time before that happens.

[ 00:34:35 ] You might have people writing into you saying they're already out there and I've missed them, Matthias, but I'm yet to see one that's worked in that way, but I think it's coming. You know, there's a whole piece about how people arrive on sites as well now. I mean, I think we're seeing the end of or the beginning of the end of classic paid search, you know, tools like Perpexity and Google and the other ARChat GPT and everything else. I think the way that people are interacting. Now, I think the search budgets are going to be the ones that are affected the most. So, AI there and the way that people are being exposed to adverts is, I mean, that's already changed. I use Perplexity and it's interesting to see what they're doing now with the way the advertising works.

[ 00:35:26 ] So it's very exciting time. I guess that might be the fourth version of partner marketing. I think so, for sure. Because on the one hand, I think like what you said, there will be dedicated AI solutions or dedicated maybe AI publishers. However, that will be, I'm thinking a lot about it, but I have not cracked that myself. But on the other hand, as you just said, I think it will push certain channels that are prone to be improved with AI, like, for example, the creator industry, everything that is content related, while others might over time be rather replaced. Because they are not really needed anymore, as you said, for paid search, for example, which will have done in the end, in the end, it will maybe not be come from one day to the other, but nevertheless, will have a fundamental impact on the whole environment we're working.

[ 00:36:20 ] Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's exciting. It's interesting. I mean, it's very exciting, actually, because so many people are afraid. And they always ask me in terms of what kind of as if it is a threat for us. I actually think that it's. It's a golden opportunity, especially in partner marketing as well, because we can push on so many different areas. We're in the slightly counterintuitive or that's not quite the right phrase, but we're in the we're in the business between the between a brand and a publisher. We're in the business of occupying that space and charging for it. So the bigger that space is, the more we can charge it in a way, if you look at it in that way. But we're also in the business of collapsing that.

[ 00:37:04 ] As much. As much as possible, to make it as efficient as possible. So there's a in terms of service and where we live in the middle of brands and the media, you know, there's a whole responsibility, I think, of people like us and you to make that as efficient and transparent as fast as possible for brands to get where they want to go as quickly as possible. Exactly like an enabler. That's exactly what we are. We are, we are an agency. I mean, the definition of agency is around. We are given. The agency to do things on behalf of our clients. And part of that responsibility is to speed things up, make them more efficient, cost-effective, responsive to their needs. And it really helps with all of that. You know, it really does.

[ 00:37:49 ] So there's there's different bits as clients themselves of what they're doing with AI. There's us in the middle with what we're doing with the engine of advertising generally. And then there's publishers who are the content owners ultimately. And the the people who are responsible for that conversion using AI at their end so that, you know, it's it's across the whole spectrum of what we do. Thank you so much for sharing all these insights with me, Steven. With with that in mind, what would you say is the most important topics for you now for the coming 12 months? Well, that's a good question. I mean, internally, you know, we're looking to move into the U. S. properly. We've got clients everywhere, as I said at the beginning.

[ 00:38:38 ] But I think, you know, we're expanding what we do. So are you moving? Well, I might do a period of time over there or we're just working that out at the moment. Our we we've had three or four years of really big mobile growth. You know, mobile is almost as big as our desktop affiliate now and the other channels that we mentioned, you know, this advocate piece, CTB, what we do. We're doing with with Amazon, what we're doing with creators and this, you know, the voice stuff is really exciting now where you can hear an advert and talk to your Alexa and it will send you a tracking link, you know. So this year we want to build out these other channels, you know, we want to build them out for our own interest and value, but also on behalf of our clients.

[ 00:39:23 ] So, that's I think that's the the two key things for us this year is market growth and channel growth. Good. Exciting. I mean, you've got to not everything's out of the box. I mean, you can't have, you know, like an American football team, you can have a huddle and have all your plays sorted out. But sometimes it's a bit about the broken field running, you know, your things that you don't expect are going to come your way. You've got to, you know, you've got a good personnel in place, you know, the right team, the properly motivated and, you know, enjoying what they do. So, you know, we. We love it. As you know, it's a great channel to work in. It's it's terrific. Sounds great. Yes, it is.

[ 00:40:08 ] Thank you so much, Stephen. In the end, for my guests, I have three final questions I would like to ask you if that's all right for you. The one I I'm really interested; I use this as a kind of like a source for myself. So it's a little bit selfish asking me about the best book I read, a recommendation for a book, well, ever, and whatever comes to my mind. What? What? Yeah. I got stuck. Yeah. Well, I think you might give a, you know, a snazzy answer like The Wealth of Nations or The Dictionary or something. Jack Nicklaus's Guide to Swinging a Golf Club. And I just read; I've just finished reading Heat Two, actually. If you've if you like the film Heat, there's a new. Yes, I know that.

[ 00:40:58 ] Yeah. And I've just finished Heat Two. But I think the best book I ever read that. You know, I always look back on-I was probably about 25, I think it was The Count of Monte Cristo and loved that book. It was such a rollercoaster. I know that one. Yeah. I mean, it's and I know the movie, of course; it's about 1,000 pages. It takes you a fortnight or a month to read. But I just remember loving that book. It was great. Good, good. That's good. I am. Yeah, I should look into that as well. Again, like I like these historical ones here. They're really, really good. Yeah. Well, Les Misérables is a good book, too. Actually, despite the musical, the book is good, too. Okay. Good. Thank you.

[ 00:41:41 ] And is there a tool or an app you can't live with? What do you say? Can't live without, you mean? Can't live without. Of course. Oh, gosh. I mean, it's probably, you know, you have to be honest and say it's WhatsApp. I think, you know, that that's the one, you know, again, I'd love to give you a sophistication. Highbrow answer. But, you know, I love WhatsApp. It's great chatting to family and friends. And, you know, I think WhatsApp. It's the most used one, at least. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Or Strava, of course. Strava. Yeah. We see us there more often than in reality. Yeah. But maybe I ask differently. Your favorite AI tool? Kaizen. App. Okay. App. AI app. Which one do you use? Perplexity. Perplexity. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[ 00:42:33 ] I've used that before. Okay. Good. And now, if you were not doing what you're doing, working in performance marketing, partner marketing, having founded Scale Digital, being a director there, what else would you do if you wouldn't have any clue what digital marketing is? Politics. Politics. As a Brexit supporter. Yeah. Well, I was a politician once. Yes, I saw that. You were a councillor, right? That's right. So I might go back to that. I think if I live long enough after Scale, that might be something I go back to. You can do that a bit on the side. Yeah. I have a passion for politics. Yeah. Enjoy it. Good. Thank you. Very interesting. Thank you so much, Stephen, for being my guest and for a great talk. Thank you. My pleasure. Good. See you soon.