Case Study
At a glance
- Cube Group embarked on a six-month search, researching, contacting and comparing 30 different technology providers around the world to find the most suitable technology partner.
- Previously, Cube Group had to work in siloed platforms to keep data cleanly separated for reporting purposes. Today, they have all networks in one platform and are able to aggregate data, create granular reports and gain visibility across the entire organization like never before.
- The management of 20,000 partners and the creation of their reports has been facilitated by the flexible labeling and categorization of partners and their advertising spaces.
- Cube Group can now offer its customers multi-touch attribution technology for holistic and more equitable attribution to keep sales costs down while strengthening relationships with partners.
About Cube Group
Cube Group is a digital agency that combines digital marketing strategy, media buying, analytics and technology to help marketers effectively develop their business.
Today, they run campaigns in 50 markets, with over 200 advertisers and over 20,000 publishers, bloggers, influencers and email database owners.
Customer type: Performance network
Cube Group was founded in 2006 as a performance agency and has been part of the Polish digital industry from the very beginning. Their mission today is to respond to changes in consumer behavior and provide strategic, comprehensive and long-term services to their clients. Their approach, know-how, analytical and technological solutions are unique, and this allows us to influence strategic business KPIs.
Your challenges
Data silos and unsuitable technology
Previously, Cube Group worked through another technology provider with two separate platforms for its NetSales and Sales Media networks. The split into two platforms was necessary to keep the collected data cleanly separated. An additional payment provider was also required for invoicing. In addition, they were facing more and more limitations as they innovated with existing technologies.
In the highly competitive affiliate market, the Cube Group wanted to gain an edge by offering its clients technology that reflected its innovation, while working more efficiently with streamlined operations.
The implementation
The choice of Ingenious Technologies as their long-term technology partner
Choosing the right technology partner
In the search for the right technology partner, the Cube Group launched a 6-month project to research, contact and compare 30 different technology providers worldwide. They realized that their list of complex criteria could not be met by any technology provider right away. Due to the strong platform technology and the ability to work on additional features that were needed, Ingenious Technologies became the first choice.
Migration to the Ingenious platform
The Cube Group had already migrated systems in the past and was aware that these were less complex as the previous migration only included CPC or CPL campaigns. Therefore, they were prepared to invest time and resources in the migration for the different campaigns with much more complex commission models. Not only did they have to adapt internally, but they also had to prepare their teams to support their customers.
A technology that reflects its innovation
One platform, multiple entities
Since partnering with Ingenious Technologies, the Cube Group now manages its NetSales and Sales Media networks as separate entities on a single platform. This means that the account managers of each network only have access to the data that is relevant to their day-to-day business, while at the same time the Group is able to take a more strategic view of digital activities and optimize its overall business.
Your finance team will also be able to easily invoice and process publishers on both networks without having to switch from one platform to another platform or provider.
In addition, the Cube Group benefits from the open API offered by Ingenious Technologies, which makes it possible to combine behavior and individual customer attributes according to their media activity. Their development team only needs to ensure and maintain data integration with other existing systems.
The full overview thanks to customer journeys
Tracking was a real challenge for the Cube Group, as around 42% of consumers in Poland use cookie blockers for browsers. Thanks to the first-party tracking offered by Ingenious, Cube Group now has access to much more precise data. For the first time, they are able to map and analyze customer journeys, track shopping cart information and thus capture about 40% more details than before.
Apart from getting more and more accurate data, access to insights on the Ingenious platform is a whole new aspect for Cube Group. Now that they are able to integrate all key data points, including customer journeys and cross-device activity, in real time, they can now see a complete picture and history of users' online behavior. This enables them to perform better analysis and make more informed recommendations to their customers.
Rationalization of partner management
With Cube Group managing more than 20,000 partners, having to scroll through their incredibly long list of partners beforehand was a huge pain point. Working with Ingenious Technologies has therefore been a huge relief as they are now able to tag partners and differentiate between partners and ad spaces to allow for better categorization and search. The ability to add ad spaces and differentiate them from partners has also introduced a deeper level of reporting.
The outlook
Intelligent attribution
The partnership with Ingenious Technologies is already in the next phase of the Cube Group's strategy. Together with Ingenious, the Cube Group has developed Intelligent Attribution, a multi-touch attribution technology that they intend to drive forward after the pandemic.
This strategic move by Cube Group takes the affiliate industry away from the last-click model. It enables marketers to consider all touchpoints of the customer journey and allocate budgets more efficiently based on the channel or publisher's role in driving conversion. For example, they can calculate commissions for affiliate partners based on the number of paid touchpoints. They can also allocate lower budgets for cost-per-click (CPC) channels, as they already receive a fixed amount regardless of their influence on conversion.
This allows advertisers to set a budget for commission per customer journey. As the commission is distributed across the partners and those paid via CPC or on separate platforms are taken into account, advertisers can keep an eye on their total cost of sale - and for the first time ensure that their total cost of sale remains below an agreed level. In addition, each publisher can be offered revenue for participating in the customer journey, even if the customer's interaction with their activity did not directly result in a sale. This is an extremely important point as it has been observed that many advertisers are still using last click today and many publishers are dropping out of their affiliate programs as they do not feel they are being paid according to the work they deliver. Ultimately, this increases the chances of finding and attracting affiliates that are truly effective in bringing you new customers.
The initial response to Smart Attribution has been positive. In the case of an e-commerce client, the implementation of Smart Attribution led to a reduction in sales costs from 3.57% to 1.92% and a 23% increase in revenue generated by affiliate marketing compared to the previous year.