CJ’s 2022 Year in Review

The time has come to bid farewell to another fantastic year!

Thank you to our incredible associates and clients across the globe—our success this year wouldn’t be possible without you! As we near the end of 2022, we’d like to take a moment and reflect on everything we’ve achieved together.

Welcome, VIVnetworks!

In November, CJ’s parent company Publicis Groupe announced the acquisition of VIVnetworks, the leading affiliate marketing agency in Central and Eastern Europe, to integrate with CJ.

This acquisition officially unites two companies that have been collaborating and creating award-winning affiliate marketing programs together for decades. The combined capability of CJ and VIVnetworks will create unique opportunities for global brands and publishers to activate and grow within Central and Eastern European markets while simultaneously supporting those within the region to expand internationally.

VIVnetworks will be integrated into CJ’s continental European offering and operate under the leadership of Tobias Allgeyer, Senior Vice President EMEA, based in Munich. VIVnetworks’ founders, Vladan Hejnic, CEO, and Robert Studený, COO will join CJ’s executive management for Central and Eastern Europe.

Sertify Partnership

In September, we announced a strategic partnership with diverse badging network, Sertify that connects small and diverse-owned publishers with CJ advertisers.

North America-based publishers can get Sertify and identify their businesses as diverse-owned in the CJ network in one or more of the following categories: Small Business, Woman-Owned, LGBTQ-Owned, Disability-Owned, Veteran-Owned, Minority-Owned, Asian-Owned, Black-Owned, Hispanic-Owned, and Native American-Owned.

CJ publishers receive exclusive pricing for the first year when they Sertify through CJ. Learn more here.

Platform Innovation

2022 was a landmark year for CJ’s data solutions! Our product and data science teams focused on funneling our sizable treasure trove of high-quality data into elegant, actionable dashboards that are available on demand at our clients' fingertips.

Insights

It was a particularly BIG year for CJ’s Insights platform! Here are some of the exciting solutions we launched in Insights this year:

• Competitive Benchmarking - What if the data you have access to could change the conversation entirely? Launched in December, CJ’s Competitive Benchmarking suite is a true game-changer—it’s the first of its kind competitive analysis that answers essential business questions that you can’t answer anywhere else.
• Cross Channel Journey - As of November, CJ advertisers who take advantage of CJ’s Universal Tag have access to Cross Channel Customer Journey This is the only analysis of its kind in market that presents the full picture of shopping journeys across marketing channels, measuring all touchpoints prior to purchase, whether or not a sale occurred.
• Peak Shopping & Holiday Analysis – In July, we released our first Advanced Analysis dashboard in Insights, Peak Shopping & Holiday Analysis, which provides a helpful view into advertiser program performance data before, during, and after peak holiday events. Built-in date logic means you can spend less time figuring out how to align specific peak shopping dates, and more time discovering how to amplify your marketing strategy.
  
  

Recruit Partners

Our Recruit Partners platform also got the gift of more data in 2022!

• Website Metrics by SimilarWeb - Last year, a series of releases powered by CreatorIQ integrated key social metrics from authenticated publisher accounts into CJ’s Recruit Partners UI. In June of this year, we rounded out our recruitment data offering even further when we announced our collaboration with SimilarWeb, the market leader in digital website data and intelligence. This new wealth of third-party insights gives brands even greater transparency into a publisher’s performance across the web. Publishers in Recruit Partners are now discoverable by their website, social, and affiliate program details, giving advertisers a holistic evaluation of a candidate’s offerings in seconds.
  
  

Our Approach & Featured Innovations

Last but not least, we’d been craving a way to showcase the constant drip of innovation that goes into the ever-evolving CJ platform and 2022 was the year we finally made our dreams a reality! We launched a shiny new Innovation page on CJ.com that dives into key CJ technology, solutions, and enhancements and makes it easier than ever to follow along with the scope of the CJ platform and all of our exciting new releases.

Client and Network Wins

We wouldn’t be here without you. Here are some highlights from our advertisers, publishers, and agencies:

• We launched nearly 700 new advertiser programs in 2022, adding even more world-class brands to the CJ network. Check out some of the brands that were added in Q1, Q2, and Q3 of this year.
• 220 individual agency team members became CJ Ambassadors through our annual program, passing a challenging exam covering various topics including the CJ platform, the affiliate industry, and more. Not only did we have record-breaking participation this year, but our exam expanded to include global agencies! Curious about how we work with agencies? Read our interview with Kat Rymer, the Director of CJ’s Agency Solutions Team.
• We were shortlisted for 12 Global Performance Marketing Awards, 10 Performance Marketing Awards, 8 US Partnership Awards, and 2 Influencer Marketing Awards (plus a partridge in a pear tree!) in 2022. 
• CJ took home the award for Global Excellence at the Performance Marketing Awards alongside Dell; two silver awards at the 2022 US Partnership Awards for Best Platform for Partnership Recruitment and Best Brand Engagement Campaign alongside partners Shutterfly and RetailMeNot; and the Together – We Solved That! award alongside Expedia Group and Button for the campaign, “Travel Recovery with the Tap of a Button”.
• Speaking of awards, 2022 saw the relaunch of the CJ Excellence Awards at CJU22! Now in their 23rd year, these awards recognize CJ advertisers, publishers, and agencies for their achievements in affiliate marketing
• CJ clients Dell and eharmony had incredible stories of success that turned into great case studies for global expansion and affiliate search strategies.

Award-Winning CJ’ers

Clients and campaigns weren’t the only ones receiving recognition this year!

• CJ CEO Mayuresh Kshetramade was included in PerformanceIN’s Top 30 list of US Changemakers in Partnership Marketing! This list recognizes the brightest and boldest players in the partnership marketing ecosystem.
• CJ Business Development Manager, Raman Gill, was crowned Industry Rising Star at the 2022 Performance Marketing Awards. Go, Raman!

CJU was back beachside this year and better than ever! After two years of virtual events, we were thrilled to welcome clients back to sunny Santa Barbara for CJU22. Our annual client conference brought together over 1,000 marketers for a multi-day event filled with networking, compelling content, learning opportunities, and more.

This year's CJU highlights include:

• Welcome Back Happy Hour - The warmest welcome back to CJU ever! We kicked off the first evening of CJU22 by mixing and mingling with all of our affiliate BFFs with a view of the beach and it truly felt so magical.
• Guest Keynote Luvvie Ajayi Jones - Three-time New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and podcast host Luvvie Ajayi Jones was our Guest Keynote, and she did not disappoint! Attendees were captivated by her humor, honesty, and powerful call to action to “Speak Truth to Power”.
• Tech Showcase - Our first-ever Tech Showcase at CJU! CJ’s SVP of Product and Operations, Desiree Toto, led a discussion with CJ’s President, Paul Tibbitt, and Kelly Merkel, CJ’s SVP of Publisher Development about our latest product releases and how they solve business needs.
• What if Affiliate Wasn't Just a Channel? – Introducing the #ChannelofChannels! In this groundbreaking session, CJ SVPs of Client Development, Sommer Urias and Amalia Thomas, explored a new way of looking at affiliate’s big-time value that addresses the opportunity to redefine our channel as the place where marketers bridge measurement gaps, achieve collaboration and create connections across channels.

Looking to relive the CJU22 magic? Check out the CJU22 Highlight Reel and CJU22 Photo Album.

Thought Leadership

Lots of engaging content was shared this year!

Here are some of our favorite highlights:

• In October, SVP of Client Development Sommer Urias joined the eMarketer podcast, Behind the Numbers, to discuss how affiliate is the power player in the consumer journey and an amplifier of all marketing channels’ efforts.
• In November, we launched our new Travel Intelligence Report which leverages CJ’s travel sector data to explore the ups and downs of the travel industry within the affiliate channel, including trends in bookings, travel duration, top destinations, and more.
• Another peak season, another Q4 Shopping Weekly Benchmarks report! Updated weekly, these benchmarks include network-wide, sector-specific, category, and product-level data to provide visibility into consumer demand each week of Q4 2022 and comparative data for 2019, 2020, and 2021.
• In August we launched our annual Q4 Shopping Intelligence Report to examine what marketers could do to get the most out of seasonal shopping based on previous network data trends.

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We can’t wait to see what 2023 has in store! From all of us at CJ, we wish you all health, happiness, success, and growth in the new year.