2015 AvantLink ‘Best Of’ Awards presented at AvantExpo 2015
As AvantExpo 2015 began to wind down in beautiful Park City, Utah, the conference concluded with the now traditional “AvantLink Best Of” award ceremony that recognizes the most innovative and productive individuals and companies in the affiliate industry. Started in 2014, the Best Of Awards take into account performance, dedication, and ethical commitment in the affiliate channel. Here are the winners for 2015:
1. Affiliate Of The Year- Active Junky
The ‘Affiliate Of The Year’ award was given to Active Junky, a repeat winner from 2014 and an affiliate who once again demonstrated hard to believe year-over-year growth, technical proficiency with datafeeds, and an unmatched ability to gain and build visitor loyalty and community.
2. Content Affiliate Of The Year- The Good Ride
The newcomer to the lineup of recognitions was the ‘Content Affiliate Of The Year’ award, looking to recognize exceptional affiliates with a core emphasis on high-value written and visual content. With the incredible success and growth of the last year aside, The Good Ride has perfected a blend of technical know-how and top notch, regularly produced, and highly engaging review content. In other words, The Good Ride embodies everything an merchant would want in their perfect, ideal affiliate.
3. Merchant of the Year- REI
Another repeat winner, REI took home ‘Merchant Of The Year’ award after a truly astonishing year of growth in AvantLink and a management style that has yielded hyper-loyalty and productivity with their affiliates. Pair that with a seamless move to program exclusivity with AvantLink, and it’s clear that REI have and always will put their affiliates first.
4. Affiliate Manager of the Year- Wade Tonkin (Fanatics)
For any industry veterans reading this, the ‘Merchant of the Year’ award going to Wade Tonkin doesn’t come as a surprise. Wade’s long track record of experience in the industry combined with highly effective and unique approaches to affiliate recruitment and activation has helped the Fanatics program in AvantLink achieve near mythological growth that’s almost hard to take seriously.
5. Agency of the Year- Clique Affiliate Marketing
With sales for the year at nearly 200% more than that of the next highest ranking agency in the AvantLink, Clique Affiliate Marketing has dominated the program management space with an in-depth understanding of AvantLink technology, rapid and effective implementation strategies, and a focus on quality over quantity. Add those together and you get the ‘Agency of the Year’.
6. Industry Champion Award- JEB Commerce
The ‘Industry Champion’ award goes to a merchant, affiliate, or agency that has a proven track record of doing all that’s possible to make affiliate marketing a better channel in all of their their day-to-day operations. With a focus on understanding actionable attribution, brilliant in-house tools that help new merchants integrate quickly with networks, and high-value external affiliate recruitment strategies, JEB Commerce continually sets the bar on just how much of a positive effect agencies can have in the industry.
7. Innovation Award- Justin Ball (Snap tools)
As AvantLink moves more towards being a platform for development and curation of incredible ideas from third party developers, the ‘Innovation Award’ seeks to recognize those at the forefront of bringing these amazing ideas to life. Over the past year, Justin Ball has flooded the AvantLink App Market with ingenious, out-of-the-box, and high-value marketing tools for affiliates (they’re free too!), including the SnapVisi and SnapDealist. Justin’s tools have changed the way affiliate use photos in content, generate custom links, and much more, yielding a hugely positive and far reaching impact in the affiliate space.
Congrats to all of this year’s ‘Best Of’ award winners and thank you for all of the amazing work you do every day to make the affiliate channel a better and more productive place. We’re very excited to see what the next year holds for our winners.
Mack Clark and Tommy Joyce accept the 2015 AvantLink Affiliate Of The Year award on behalf of Active Junky