Velocity Sellers Podcast
We are Velocity Sellers, a full-scale Amazon Agency! Our Podcast features our talented and knowledgeable employees and guests, and of course our host, Velocity Pete. Join us as Velocity Pete interviews these Amazon experts on various topics that will help you boost your Amazon knowledge!
Velocity Sellers Podcast
#116 - If Amazon Rewards External Traffic Then Who Controls The Future Of Discovery
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Amazon is telling sellers something with its actions, not its press releases: external traffic that converts matters more than ever. We bring on Greg Potts, Senior Director of Partnerships at Levanta, to dig into how affiliate marketing and creator-led content can send high-intent shoppers to your listings and trigger the kind of conversion signals that support organic ranking, visibility, and Best Seller Rank.
We talk about the affiliate “halo effect” and why the real win is often bigger than a single tracked sale. A shopper clicks a creator link, lands on one ASIN, then browses your storefront, discovers your other products, and buys more. That blend of performance-based marketing and brand awareness is why Amazon affiliate marketing is becoming a serious lever for modern Amazon brands. Greg also breaks down what actually converts today: authentic partners, not endless one-off posts. Think micro-influencers, publisher listicles, newsletters, and other affiliate types that audiences genuinely trust.
If you are planning for Prime Day, we get specific about timing and execution. Affiliate programs are not a last-minute switch, so we cover realistic lead times, how affiliates frame urgency around Prime Day deals, and why paying for conversions can complement PPC when ad costs climb. We also walk through the KPIs that matter most, including the click-to-cart funnel that exposes where your listing or messaging is leaking sales.
If you found this useful, subscribe for more Amazon growth playbooks, share the episode with a seller friend, and leave a review so more brands can find it. What part of your marketing mix needs the biggest rethink right now?
Meet Greg And Levanta
SPEAKER_01It is nice to meet you. Finally, a chance to have you on. Uh, excited to get a few up a little uh episode in here about affiliate marketing, about the excitement coming up of Prime Day and anything else in between. So why don't you give us a little intro about yourself, about Levanta? Talk to us a little bit about uh who we're gonna be talking to today.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. Well, I appreciate the time and the opportunity to kind of speak to you and your audience here. So without further ado, Greg Potts here. I'm the uh senior director of partnerships at a little company called Levanta. And Levanta is essentially an affiliate marketing platform for Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify sellers. Been around for about four years. I've been with the company for about two and a half years, but prior to Levanta, I actually worked at Amazon. And my role at Amazon was helping brands figure out how to increase profitability. So I remember a lot of my conversations with my Amazon sellers. You know, we'd be looking at every possible solution, be it internal or external, in terms of driving more awareness, driving more conversions, you know, maximizing ROI, things like that. And I would have sellers come to me and say, hey, what else can I be doing besides, you know, PPC, besides kind of the standard routes that we know that really help Amazon sellers? And I didn't really have a good answer. And then this one company reached out to me that, you know, I'd never heard of and said, Hey, we're this company called Levante. We do affiliate marketing for Amazon sellers. You work at Amazon, I think it'd be interesting for you to kind of take a look at what we're doing. And I remember having a conversation with the founders and seeing the platform and the solution they build. And I went, oh my goodness, this is a massive gap in the market that even I'm very well aware of. I think this is something that could be super beneficial for sellers of all shapes and forms. So made the jump from Amazon over to this very small company called Levanta, but it's been a great jump for me because as I mentioned, the affiliate industry, the influence industry has just been sort of skyrocketing the last couple of years. And from all the trends we see, it's going to continue to kind of go that same route. So I feel like I got in early on kind of this really cool way for sellers to tap into affiliates and influencers and do it programmatically. And now this one I get to talk about all day, every day. And I absolutely love it, man.
SPEAKER_01Right. It's the dream, right? Uh what do you what's the phrase? Uh, do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00So amen to that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. No, excited to get into it. Um, it's something that you're right, has exploded over the last couple of years. Uh, I always said I was um my what what was my phrase? I was I was too I was born too uh late to sell garlic presses, but I was born too early to be uh an influencer or something, something along those lines where I'm like stuck in the in the crossroads of you know, I miss the Wild West of selling whatever you wanted on Amazon, and now it's all about I feel like I'm too late to the game for in being an influencer. That's not really the case. Um and I'm sure we might get into some of the uh the topics of demographics and and who's
Amazon A10 And External Traffic
SPEAKER_01making this kind of content. But before we do that, I do want to focus in on specifically on Amazon, because a lot of our viewers are are Amazon brands, they're interested in learning about how to sell better. So talk to me a little bit about the organic halo effects of basically how how does the uh creation of these of these affiliate type uh programs, content videos, all that kind of good stuff, how does the creation of that and a big influx of that impact a product's organic ranking and visibility within the Amazon algorithm? How does it boost it up and give it some some extra value?
SPEAKER_00Well, let's talk about the Amazon algorithm first, because um, if folks don't know, the the Amazon algorithm has sort of a naming convention. So the first algorithm version was A1, then it was A2. So we are currently on A10, I believe. So the shift from A9 to A10, I read those release notes because I'm a big dork and I love to read this kind of stuff. But a lot of the things they talked about in the shift from A9 to A10, Amazon algorithm, was they are going to put a higher focus and a higher sort of benefit on external traffic conversions. So that kind of signaled to us that Amazon recognizes that this is a trend that's going to keep growing and they want to reward sellers even more algorithmically for driving external traffic conversions, right? So that's a huge piece of it right there. When it comes to kind of the halo effect of affiliates, it's a very real thing, right? In fact, you know, not talking about my company too much, but we actually developed a report card called our Halo Report. And so we can actually show what a direct sales conversion looks like from attribution standpoint, meaning, hey, we drove a customer to this product detail page using this affiliate link. That's a one-to-one match. That's a that's a direct sale, right? However, you know, a lot of times what's going to happen is a customer is going to see content, right? They're going to click on that link, go to that product detail page. But you know what? I'm going to go in the storefront. I'm going to do some shopping here. By doing that, I might find other products and discover and purchase those. So we have a way to actually quantify and show that impact, but it's really important because it helps us kind of put data behind that statement you just said, right? We've always talked about in the affiliate marketing space that there's a halo effect, right? We help get the word out, increase awareness, increase sort of discoverability of your products. The result of that means that customers are going to discover not only a direct product, but potentially your entire product catalog or other associated brands that you may uh manage as well. And so it's really cool to kind of see firsthand what that halo impact is. And I think the the biggest takeaway that I've seen and kind of how brands are using this really effectively is they're now understanding that just because I'm promoting one single product through affiliates, it doesn't mean that that's where I'm going to put all my energy and focus in terms of optimizing that detail page, making sure I'm standing out just from like that one product perspective. It's now it's now going to more the brand level, right? Because the brand is seeing an impact from individual product promotions and with affiliates too, man. One of the coolest things that I see is that brands get to partner with third parties and develop content that's trustworthy. Okay. So brands that I work with, they can be very involved in the content production process of their affiliate partners, making sure that the verbiage, the images,
The Halo Effect Beyond Direct Sales
SPEAKER_00basically the entire theme of their content is going to be accurately representing the brand, accurately representing their values, things like that. And so doing that and then using the affiliate as you know, the brand's mouthpiece to go talk to their millions of followers or website subscribers. Oh my gosh, you've created an army of affiliates for you who you can essentially help control that messaging to make sure they're getting the right word out, which is going to increase the conversion rate to make everyone a lot of money in the process.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say it's like almost like having your own army of content influencers. It's so funny you use that phrase. Exactly right. And it's weird too. And maybe you can I this question just I just thought of because um, you know, it's it's creating trustworthy content. No offense to any, you know, big name celebrity. But if they come to me and they say, Hey, I really like I really like Mountain Dew. You should stop drinking, yeah. Again, I'm using soda, I don't even drink soda, but I'm using soda. Um, I don't like I I like Mountain Dew. You should stop drinking all our sodas and drink Mountain Dew. I'm like, I don't really care what you have to say. Um, you don't even know how much Mountain Dew costs, so shut up. Uh and it feels like the real good uh the high converting content comes from these smaller influencers of about 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people, under under a million, maybe. I don't know if you see that on your end as well. You're shaking your head some or you're nodding your head some. I'm guessing I'm right there, but I feel like on a personal level, I connect with those, they're more real to me than any celebrity out there that says drink this or don't drink that or use this product, don't use that. So I don't know if you see that on your end.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, because you're right, like authenticity needs to come from a place of trust, right? So if I am someone who is looking at an influencer's page, for example, and I see them promoting every product under the sun, you kind of look at them and go, all right, you're just basically a salesperson, right? You're just out there trying to hawk any product you possibly can to try to collect that money. And so what we've actually seen is kind of the sweet spot that you just mentioned, right? There is a sort of makeup of an influencer type that we see the highest conversion rates, and it's typically around kind of that 25,000 to 250,000 follower mark. And the reason we see that is kind of what you just said, right? The bigger macro influencers, they're sort of in it just to make the money. Now, they can make you a lot of money, but in terms of really generating that super authentic, trustworthy content, may not be the best route. And they even take a step back to like affiliate is a very broad term, right? So social media influencers, it's an important affiliate type. Everyone knows what they are, everyone knows the power that they contain. We see TikTok shop, we know what's going on over there, right? But that's one sub-segment of affiliates. We're not even talking about media buyers or publication partners or newsletter sites or you know, deal sites or blogs, or there are so many different types of affiliates that you can partner with beyond just social media influencers who will, you know, also create that authentic content because with them, you know, they're not just have like a grid of a whole bunch of things that they're promoting. Work with like a listical organization, think New York Times, for example. When they create like a top 10 list, you know, people trust them because they are the New York Times, right? People go to them for information to learn about products, to learn about stories, whatever it may be. So what I really like about affiliate to it's beyond influencers, is that there are so many different types you can partner with that are gonna create different value kind of positionings for you. But then to your point, that's how you create this army, right? This army of influencers and media buyers and publication partners who are putting your content on websites and social media links. That's the most comprehensive way you can really build an affiliate program. Love it.
SPEAKER_01And it it also works too. And um, I imagine maybe the prices are somewhat competitive based on how many followers you have. But that was sort of one of my other questions was how does affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing uh help some of the newer or smaller brands compete with some of the bigger brands or um uh
Micro Influencers And Real Trust
SPEAKER_01the niche brands, you know. How does affiliate marketing, and maybe you already answered this, but how does affiliate marketing sort of help shift brand power between the different people of again, again, really help these small guys compete a little bit better?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, really good question. So the reality is just about every brand out there is either doing affiliate or looking to do affiliate, right? So that means you know, we've got our Fortune 500 clients who are doing $100 million a year on Amazon. Then we also have basically our new to Amazon brands too, right? So what's kind of cool about like the affiliate space is that there really is opportunity for all brands to find affiliate partners who are gonna work for them. Okay. And so, you know, the the way the reality of the situation is as an affiliate, you know, if I'm someone who has a massive follower account, right? And I've done a ton of promotions. If you are a new to Amazon brand, you're looking to that affiliate to promote your Amazon products, you could find some challenges there because that affiliate's gonna say, I need to make sure that if I'm promoting your product, there's gonna be customer trust there. And a lot of times the signals they're gonna use is like, hey, look at the reviews and the ratings of your product, right? If the customers who already purchased you on Amazon like your products, that gives the affiliate more confidence and trust that they can promote your products. And so what we have learned is that if it's a brand new product on Amazon, there is sort of like a threshold that a brand should consider before even thinking about going into affiliates. That threshold is typically once we get, you know, I would say at least 50 ratings and reviews, if we're at kind of a four-star plus rating, that's the signal that many, many affiliates are going to use to say, I feel comfortable and confident from out your products. And so what I do with my smaller clients, I go, hey, listen, there are programs on Amazon, you know, like Vine, and there's there's different ways we can kind of generate some starter reviews, right? And kind of get the ball rolling. Once we kind of reach like a certain threshold, then I'm like, great, now we can turn on the affiliate engine. With that, though, you're right. There's like a matchmaking kind of opportunity here because smaller affiliates are cool working with smaller brands typically, you know, moderate size affiliates working with like moderate to small to large brands. So helping the brands kind of find these right partners, understand what the qualifiers are is also part of our job and sort of what we offer because we don't want our brands to basically come onto a platform like Levante and we say, hey, just figure it out, right? We want to make sure that we have a strategy for you based off where you're at in your selling experience, where the affiliates will be a good match for. And so there is opportunities there.
SPEAKER_01And this kind of ties into it as well. And I was the question always I always ask myself, or I always think about is quality over quantity, you know, maybe it depends on the category. Should brands and what kind of brand, what kind of brands should be focused on three or four super high quality videos of of proof, proof of substance, proof of uh the product itself, and what type of brand should be looking at. How can we get as many people as possible promoting this stuff? Is that are there
Reviews Threshold For New Brands
SPEAKER_01categories for that? Is it both? Is it what's the answer there?
SPEAKER_00That is a really good question. And like, I don't think I have like a hard line to say like brand X should be doing Y and brand A should be doing B, right? What it really comes down to is that you know, it's it's weird to say, but it's like we want quality and quantity, right? So but if we had to index on one, going the quality route with a few really good partners who have great content, it's very authentic, is going to be much more beneficial than kind of doing like the shotgun approach, right? Let me activate 50 influencers, just throw them a product, have them create a video, and let me just try to collect money. We don't see great results with that. And so what I'll say is that when I talk to my my brand clients about like, hey, what's my strategy here? Like who shall I be going after? How many people should I be getting into my mix, right? What I always say is like, you want to find kind of like your top five, right? It's almost like MySpace top eight friends, right? You want to find basically those top five to eight that are gonna be fantastic partners for you. And the way that we define a fantastic partner is they are going to collaborate and corroborate with you in their content creation process. They're gonna allow you to basically kind of voice what you want to have said or not have said in that content. They're gonna be great, you know, partners with you during this process, right? On top of that, too, they want to work with you on a repeat basis because they're gonna promote your brand, promote your products, and go, hey, my audience love that. What else do you got? You got more products like this, you got more brands like this too. So the the takeaway here is we want to find those top five to eight really high quality partners that we can really collaborate with very effectively. Once we kind of activate those, that'll kind of get the ball rolling right. And then we can start adding incrementally around that hub. And so it's I I tell brands it's not like a rush, right? We don't just want to jump in here and try to connect with everyone we possibly can to just try to get content out. There is a balance, and that's the balance we want to strike here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, it makes sense. I didn't know if there was like uh I was trying to break it out between um, if I'm selling a big bulky product, do I really need a million different videos? But if I'm selling something like uh Scrub Daddy, um, who I love, but I just watched that uh microplastics documentary on Netflix, and I I want to believe they're better than that. Then like because they were they had like really cheap uh the the documentary had really cheap plasticky sponges that are like this is getting into your dishes and you're eating it. And I want to believe Scrub Daddy is better than that. Scrub Daddy, if you're out there, let me know. Contact me, let me know you're better than that. I know you are. Um I actually could scrub mommies that have the but the two sides on them, big fan of them for getting off the the hard stains. I feel like I could be an influencer for Scrub Daddy. I'm telling you, man, you're you're you're you're both pitching it right now.
SPEAKER_00Use both sides for extra cleaning. Um, but no, and let me add to that real quick, Pizza. Yeah, like and and you're right, like there is a sense of like if your product like already has like high ver virality potential. So for example, like you've been on Shark Tank, right? You've had like Kim Kardashian organically pick you up, right? Like that's where we're gonna be able to see kind of like, all right, you're you like you'll come onto like a platform like Levonta, and affiliates are gonna reach out to you and go, hey, I've seen your products before, I've seen it being promoted, I would love to kind of get on the action, right? That that becomes more of like a volume play because it's already been established that like you're you're you're kind of in the affiliate ecosystem. When you're starting fresh and you don't have that kind of backing by like big names or big exposure, then it becomes more of like a small incremental play. You want to go to those you know top five days as soon as we can. Right, right.
Quality Partners Beat The Shotgun
SPEAKER_01That makes sense. That makes sense. Like I said, I was thinking there was some sort of category differentiation. Is that a word? Let's go. Category separator between like you sell reusables, you sell one-time purchases. But it makes sense that it just the the goal is both. The goal is high volume, high quality videos. And if you can't get one of them, go for the high quality stuff. Exactly right. That makes sense. Okay. Speaking of uh of high volume, high quality, um, high intensity, high velocity wink uh times, we're coming up on prime day. It's the day of the recording today, is April 21st. Prime days of the end of June this year. What is the tie-in here? What is the the tie-in between affiliate marketing and prime day? What can what support can affiliate marketing offer to brands that are looking to really do very well this Prime Day?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, really good question too. Like Prime Day, obviously one of the biggest selling events for any Amazon seller. And the reality is it's the same for Amazon affiliates, right? This is probably the biggest selling period that they're gonna have besides the fall prime day as well. So the way that this works is that, you know, if a brand is thinking like, hey, I want to get started with affiliates like a week out from Prime Day, right? Or a few weeks out from Prime Day, like we're probably too late there. The strategy we have to think about with affiliate marketing is that it's not a turn it on right away and start making tons of money. It's it takes time, it takes patience, it takes relationship management. I kind of liken it to like, you know, the inventory position for Prime Day, right? You want to get your inventory in like at least six to eight weeks kind of before Prime Day. That's sort of the same same strategy with affiliates. If you're looking to kind of take advantage of like a big seasonality spike or a big prime day event, you want to think about getting kind of involved with some uh with a service like Levantta at least six to eight weeks prior to that to allow enough lead time to kind of build things up effectively. Now, beyond that, too, when it comes to Prime Day, we've seen fantastic results. You know, just like I'm sure everyone else can kind of say way in the Amazon ecosystem. But for us in particular, what becomes really cool is that Prime Day represents an opportunity for affiliates to basically talk about prime exclusive discounts, to talk about sort of urgency behind the purchasing decision, right? And so a lot of our affiliates, they change their messaging, leave it to Prime Day, and say, hey, listen, it's not just about promoting this product. I want to promote this deal. And so that way the customer knows they have to act quickly, increases the conversion rates, increases those cycles much more frequently, too. So there are things affiliates can kind of do to help bolster your kind of prime day positioning through their messaging. On top of that, too, and I think this is very important to note with affiliates, you're paying for conversions, right? This is a performance-based model. And so think of it as the inverse of like PPC on Amazon. You know, you're paying for clicks over there, you're paying for conversions with affiliates. And so, from an advertising perspective, too, that model is super attractive because the affiliates are incentivized to create, you know, really great content because that's how they get paid. They get paid by selling the product, and it's better for the seller, too, because you don't have all those additional costs outside of your sales conversions.
SPEAKER_01I would say it feels like and it sounds like it would help mitigate PPC costs on Amazon a little bit, where you're not just putting all of your eggs in one basket. I was trying to think of an Amazon pun that I could make there. You're not putting all of your products in one cart, you're spreading it out over different, you know, over different pieces here. It's like uh it's like we use an example sometimes at trade shows with the poker chips. If you don't like, where do you want to invest? Where do you want to place your bets on time, money, and all this kind of good stuff? It feels like your return on investment for affiliate marketing might be a little bit higher around this time and in general than putting everything into PPC.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and even beyond that, too, think
Prime Day Planning With Affiliates
SPEAKER_00paid media, right? Think Google Ads, think Meta, think all those kind of all those channels that were paying for advertising. Like when I talk to brands and kind of understand, like, hey, what's your advertising budget, right? What's your marketing channel mix? Like where are you kind of spending your dollars and what's the ROAS on that spend, right? It's like it's shocking to me when I hear people spending so much money across these channels and really getting, I would say, a modest return. When I explained to them the affiliate model of performance-based cost being your primary, you know, spend, their eyes kind of light up there's a go, oh my gosh, I can basically divest some of my expenditures in these other channels and put it more towards this where it's more performance-based, higher ROI. It also improves, you know, and let's talk about the seller performance too and the impact that affiliates have. So as an Amazon seller, you know, if you're driving external traffic and converts on your detail pages, that will naturally increase your organic search ranking for your products. It will naturally increase your best seller ranking, your BSR. And last but not least is Amazon's brand referral bonus program, which is Amazon's way to incentivize sellers. And they say, hey, you as a seller, if you can drive traffic off Amazon and purchase your product, we as Amazon are going to pay you a commission because we want you as sellers to be doing that. So that's what it can kind of bring to the taste. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I love that brand referral bonus. That was one of the better things they've done in the last couple of years here. No offense, Jeff. Uh, but yeah. In any case, yeah, and you mentioned something very interesting there too that I also, of course, wanted to touch on. We talked a little bit briefly in the Prime Day chat just now about ROI, about you know, uh the effects of paid media. And you also talked about a little bit in the beginning the actual measuring of the halo effect. Yeah. One thing that I didn't bring up that I always like too is is is talking about the the billboard effect with this kind of thing. With you can't really measure exactly how well or how successful a billboard ad is, because unless you're asking people, every customer, hey, did you see our billboard? Um I think with affiliate marketing, and it sounds like with Levant with um, I keep saying it wrong too. I keep saying Levanta. Um with Levanta. That's it. Maybe I was saying Levanta, and I now I'm saying Levanta. You got it. With Levanta, it sounds like it's easier for you guys to actually get results from the from the the billboard effect per se, yep, of these videos. How do you recommend then on that? How do you recommend brands balance? The need or the competitiveness between other creators and other competitors using these creators and their profitability. You know, is is there a balance of, you know, you I guess the same thing maybe it's with PPC of you don't want to go too crazy, but you want to make sure that you're investing. Is there a line there that is is easily defined?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's a tough line to define when it comes to kind of the profitability of something that's either like a direct impact or a halo impact there. What I will say though is that when I talk to clients and they're kind of asking me similar questions like this, what I like to do is kind of talk about like how important is brand awareness for you? Because to your point, like that's a very hard line item to basically measure an ROI against, measure a return on, you know, you know, spend against. But the reality is like that's what a lot of marketing is. You know, it's like, you know, brands spend
Performance Marketing Versus PPC Spend
SPEAKER_00millions of dollars creating these like huge Super Bowl ads, right? Do we have a way to directly attribute how many sales that one Super Bowl ad drove? The reality is probably not, but that exposure, that brand awareness, making sure you keep your name out there and keep it with fresh messaging, like that to me is one of the most valuable things that a seller can do because you know it also costs you nothing. Because going back to our model, right? You're paying for sales conversions. If they create a really cool billboard, everyone sees that product, and maybe they think about that product, right? They don't purchase away, but then like three days later, they're shopping on Amazon and go, Oh, yeah, I remember that billboard I saw. And they go purchase that product. It's like, great, you as a seller, you just got free billboard advertising from a top name out there who put your name in front of people, and now that drove sort of that mental remembrance of that product when they went to go purchase something, they remember that product, boom, win.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And the Super Bowl thing is also a very interesting piece because you you're right. I I don't honestly don't remember any commercials from the Super Bowl this year, but I know I remember I always know the names that are always there. Like the Doritos one is always funny. Um MMs usually have a good one. It's food related, which is very interesting. Crypto, I'm like, uh, they're okay. Um it's usually the food-related ones that I always remember, which is very telling about me. Um, but in any case, yeah, no, it it's it's something unique, I feel like these affiliates have built out their own style of of marketing that is very unique to them and the content creation. Um you mentioned in there a little bit about different KPIs. Is there a KPI that we haven't mentioned, or is there a hidden KPI that Amazon sellers will often overlook when it comes to affiliate marketing?
SPEAKER_00No, I see the the biggest KPIs to be aware of are, you know, number one, of course, sales conversion, sales velocity, right? Hey, velocity, there's a keyword of the day right there. Let's see how many times we, where's the buzzer? Every time you say velocity. We're at two. I said sales velocity earlier.
SPEAKER_01There's gonna be, I've gotta put a red light behind me in the studio. That's what we need right there. Dings every time you hear velocity.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah. So from a KPI perspective, like obviously at the at the end of the day, anytime uh an Amazon seller is investing their time and energy into a product or a service that's gonna help them sell more, they wanna see sales, right? That's the number one kind of KPI that we're all looking for. Right now, when it also comes to um like affiliates, like of course the sales is great, right? But what we can also kind of track is the the click journey. And so what's interesting is like, you know, in my my dashboard, I can see like clicks on that on that link. I can see product detail page visits, I can see add to carts, then I can see the conversion. And so what's really interesting for for brands to kind of understand is that, hey, I'm driving a ton of clicks and a ton of detail page, you know, visits, but my add to carts are super low. Well, that tells me like hey it could be a content problem, right? It could be something with your listing page. Like maybe there's something that, you know, the the customer's getting excited about your product through the affiliate messaging, but when they land on your product page, something's missing where they're not making
Funnel KPIs From Click To Cart
SPEAKER_00that conversion. So being able to kind of see the funnel of click to conversion and then seeing where those drop-off points are helps a brand better understand, like, hey, from like a messaging perspective, is that the issue? Hey, from a content perspective, is that the issue? Hey, you know, wherever it may be, how do we solve that? And then that's all gonna drive to the main KPI of increasing sales velocity thing.
SPEAKER_01Just one off in the background. Um, yeah, no, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. I wasn't uh I didn't really know what to expect with that question. I don't know if I was something there's like some mysterious A11 will bring in a new a new KPI for us to look at. Um, but it's it's it sounds like it's straightforward in the sense of like you're right, people are looking for sales. And if the videos can bring in the sales and give a lift to everything else, what more can you need? What what more what more mystery can you uh can you yearn for? Yeah, I guess is the way to say it there.
SPEAKER_00And then Pete, one other thing to add there too, as I'm kind of thinking about like, you know, affiliates. So obviously the big buzzword of 2026, AI, you know, everyone collectively groans and rolls their eyes because it's all we keep hearing about, blah, blah, blah. But what I will say in the affiliate space, holy cow, some of these AI tools that creators have access to are absolutely incredible and extremely effective too. And so we're seeing actually AI really up-leveling the entire affiliate industry because now they can create, you know, you know, I'll put in quotes here, better content, higher quality, faster kind of output there. In fact, you know, this is a little trade secret too. There's a lot
AI Influencers And Content Scale
SPEAKER_00of AI influencers out there now, right? And they are actually very effective at what they do, which is kind of creating a new model, right? Where it's like, oh no, as a human influencer, like, are you gonna be replaced by AI too? Right, it's very scary. Yeah, the AI transformation is is hitting everyone and everything, including the affiliate industry.
SPEAKER_01I keep waiting for Jake to message me one day and just say, we've got an AI podcast host now. We don't need you anymore. Man, I hopefully never Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, with with your personality, man, I don't think that's an issue.
SPEAKER_01So I think they're gonna upload, they're gonna upload me to an AI. They're gonna say, we need you to just they're gonna take all the episodes. You know, we've we've done over a hundred episodes now. Um, they're gonna take all the episodes and just push them into an AI, and I'm doomed. That's it for me. You're gonna have to delete all the archives, man. Just for job for job protection. Figure out what to do here. Uh no, but it is it is interesting. I have seen those before, and um I am uh ashamed a little bit to admit that I have fallen for quite a few videos that I watch and I go, that's that's real? No? Really? What? And it gets me. It gets me. It's very scary. Um but that's what it is. That's what we're going to. And uh I just saw something not to get uh off the the topic, but now that we're on AI, I just saw something that data centers are account for about 7% of the power grid in the US, which makes me think that can't be sustainable. We can't keep that going. So hopefully I won't have to be watching AI videos. I won't get tricked, or and then no one else will get tricked by AI videos for much longer. But um, for the meantime, for right now, they're here. And like you said, the influencer situation is very interesting. I wonder how the actual influencers feel about um these AI competitors or if they're even concerned about them, really.
SPEAKER_00I think they are, and actually, so why I talked to some of our affiliates, right? Some of our influencers, and like what a lot of influencers are now starting to do, like there are kind of like AI influencer companies popping up. And like the people going to those companies are not like other companies, they're actual influencers who say, Hey, listen, I can basically create like an AI influencer army underneath me, and then kind of start putting things out that way too. So a lot of interesting developments and sort of as AI kind of you know blurs a line between like what is reality and what is fake, because just like you, man, the amount of videos that I'm seeing online, like I I don't know what to think anymore. I have absolutely no idea what's real, what's not. And in in the comments, it's like it's like World War III, right? It's like, oh, you're an idiot for thinking that's fake. Oh, this is totally real. It's like, right, how do we even know anymore? You know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's very, very, it's very strange the direction that we're going, um, and what the future looks like for in general, with what AI is gonna be incorporated into it, so or with how we'll incorporate AI into the future. Um I'm uh concerned, I'm a I'm an AI doomer. I think it's always at the show. I'm an AI doomer. Um I think they're gonna it's gonna take over the world, it's gonna be a problem. So I kind of do sit on that trend a little bit. Um but for the meantime, we can use it to make money. So I guess that makes it okay. Uh not to sound like a uh uh anti-capitalist. I of course am very capitalist, but in any case, uh the last question that I always like to ask, I'd always like to bring up, and it kind of ties into everything. What's you know, we talked about the future a little bit, what is next for affiliates? Please don't say AI affiliates, but what is next in the affiliate world for improving track, improving the tracking of the KPIs, improving the efficiency of the content, but not sacrificing quality. Uh what is going on either in in your world, in Levant's world, in the affiliate world in general? What's happening that we should
Omnichannel Future And Final Links
SPEAKER_01be looking out for?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, really good question. So let me talk about the Levant world and how we're kind of looking at like the next six, 12, 18 months, right? So Levant, as I mentioned, we are helping drive affiliate traffic to Amazon listings, Walmart listings, as well as Shopify listings. What we want to become is the essentially the one-stop shop to help a seller selling on any digital marketplace, leveraging an affiliate network to drive traffic to any marketplace they choose. And so the reality is a lot of sellers out there are using different types of tools to manage different marketplaces through different avenues, right? So you might have a solution for Walmart and what you're doing over there, a solution for Amazon where you're doing over there, a solution for Shopify where you're doing over there, a solution for Target, what you're doing over there. We want to essentially create this like one-stop shop for at least from an affiliate perspective, for sellers to really manage effectively everything from you know finding your affiliates to tracking uh to attribution to you know measuring performance to you know really drilling down those KPIs, helping clients understand, you know, which affiliates to partner with, how to partner with them, how to have them, you know, create high converting and trustworthy content. So scaling things up to create more marketplace opportunities for our existing clients is the number one thing that we're focused on. And I think it's also kind of true of the affiliate industry in general, right? Because as an affiliate, you know, we talked about this previously, like the majority of the ways that most affiliates get paid is through sort of a commission basis. Now, some will negotiate kind of upfront payments and flat fee structures and things like that. I would say that's more the minority. The majority are still kind of doing performance-based, where it's like, I need to sell these products in order to get paid. And so what we're seeing affiliates start to do now is really look beyond just sort of like Amazon and and D2C and go, where else can I be promoting products to kind of drive more awareness and drive more sales conversion? So we're trying to kind of meet the market where they're at and say, hey, we're looking to go more omni-channel, you know, as an affiliate, you know, industry. Let's make sure that Levante as a tool can meet the demand of kind of the omnichannel desire for both affiliates and sellers.
SPEAKER_01Right. Love it. Love it. Great answer. Greg, it's been a pleasure chatting. I'm definitely gonna have to have you back on um uh just to talk more about this this topic. This is an ongoing discussion here, it sounds like. Um, but I really appreciate you being a guest for this first episode. We're excited uh to put it out and see the reaction and also get uh some people more informed about this this topic that again is is this this wave that is is sweeping the content creation side of things.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, it's been a pleasure. Hey man, I appreciate the time too. And if you want to talk 30 minutes about kind of AI, doom and gloom, we probably need an hour reserve for that. I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I try and not do that too much because I know I could do uh a whole separate episode, a whole hour, a whole two hours on it, a whole Joe Rogan episode on it. Um, but yeah, it makes it tough. It makes it tough for sure to see where we're moving, where we once were. Um I hear balls are coming back, which is kind of exciting. But then I hear balls are dying. But people are kind of sick of shopping online. They want to get out of their house and they want to go buy something in person. Um, so we'll see.
SPEAKER_00But anyway, I'm even here, I'm even here about like people are buying DVDs and like cassette tapes and like getting VCRs back. But people are it's so funny to me and like last tangent here. It's like we built so much great technology, but I think it's been taken way too far. Where now people are going, I don't want a smart home, I don't want a smart dryer, I don't want a smart refrigerator. Give me the dumb stuff, give me the basic stuff. This is too overwhelming, you know.
SPEAKER_01I used to be the same way. I said, I want all of my things to be voice commanded, I want to say refrigerator, how many eggs do I have left? Or and just instead of just walking over, opening it, looking in and saying, Okay, I've got a whole carton and closing it. I don't understand what I was thinking there. I think I was swept up in that like everyone else, but we all were. We'll see. We'll see where to go. On the the the topic of affiliate marketing as a kind of the last thought. Um again, scrub mommy, scrub daddy, if you're out there, crocs. If you're out there, I've got about 30 pairs of Crocs that I could wear in a in a video. Um, I don't want to give them my I'll tell you my idea off camera for what I think I could do for Crocs. Um, but in any case, hey P.
SPEAKER_00Hey Pete, uh Crocs is a client of ours, so let me see what I can do here.
SPEAKER_01Greg, we might discuss, we might have to chat more. I'll definitely have to we're gonna we're gonna post this episode immediately for that. Um no, but Greg, seriously, thank you so much for being a guest. So we'll have to have you back on. So I appreciate it a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01I will have Greg's LinkedIn as well as Levante's homepage. Links down below. Make sure to check out both of those if you are a brand looking for affiliate marketing. And also, thank you all for watching. I am your host, Velocity Pete, and we will see you next week.