Impact acquires Affluent, extends partnership management offering

Impact has officially acquired Affluent, the analytics and automation platform designed to help agencies manage partnership programs for brands at scale.

This acquisition, the second for Impact in 2021, furthers Impact's investment in the Partnership Economy, with the overall aim of offering brands, publishers, and now agencies technology solutions to successfully manage and grow their partnerships.

As Google and Apple move to phase out third party cookies and the IDFA (identifier for advertisers), brands have increasingly turned to partnerships as an alternative to reach consumers in a more authentic and effective way, the company states.

Recognising this, Impact has built a full partnership automation solution for brands and publishers, and has acquired Affluent to further expand it's Partnership Cloud solution for agencies who manage partnership programs on behalf of brands.

Affluent enables agencies to aggregate affiliate data from multiple networks and platforms, automate and generate custom reporting, and optimise clients' partnerships with publishers in a single platform.

In 2020, Affluent grew its client base by 70%, and helped agencies and advertisers manage more than 1,800 affiliate programs.

Last year, Affluent tracked more than $10 billion in brand revenue and more than $1 billion in publisher commissions.

Impact CEO David A. Yovanno says, "Partnerships are surging as an effective way for brands to surpass competitors in terms of growth.

"But with hundreds of platforms and affiliate networks out there, agencies today require a centralised platform to effectively aggregate and analyse data to optimise the many partnership programs they manage.

"With the acquisition of Affluent, Impact is committed to providing comprehensive analytics and affiliate management abilities to agencies, brands, and publishers, and to further innovation specifically for agencies.

Affluent CEO and founder Yonatan Dotan says, "Impact has proven time and again that they are committed to advancing the Partnership Economy by providing brands, publishers, and now, agencies with best in class technology to drive growth.

"We look forward to working together to further advance our technology and enable agencies to easily manage their client portfolios, automate reports and ultimately optimise the performance of those programs across all partnership types.

Affluent was founded and backed by Aniview LTD in 2017, a provider of video content and video ad monetisation SAAS solutions for publishers.

Affluent founder and chairman, and Aniview founder and CEO, Alon Carmel, says, "We at Aniview are proud and excited to hand off Affluent and its amazing team to Impact as we continue to focus on our core business of video content and ad-monetisation.

"It has been an exciting and extremely successful journey for us all.

This acquisition follows other recent acquisitions by Impact. In March 2021, Impact acquired Trackonomics, a supply-side platform (SSP) that aids content publishers such as BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Red Ventures, and Discovery in managing content commerce programs with data about how individual links and web pages are performing.

In 2020, Impact added nearly 600 new clients, and also acquired influencer marketing platform Activate.