CJ’s 2023 Year in Review

It’s been another fantastic year! As we near the end of 2023, we’d like to take a moment and reflect on everything we’ve achieved together.

25 Years of CJ

Happy 25th Birthday, CJ! In 1998, CJ began with a mere 184 publishers. Fast forward to today, and we stand united with hundreds of thousands—including an ever-expanding network of influencers. From one advertiser to over 4,000, our growth has been nothing short of extraordinary.

We are…Trusted to Perform

In August, we reimagined our tagline to align with our vision to be the most trusted partnership-based performance marketing provider in the world. Our new tagline, “Trusted to Perform”, replaces “Dare to Think Big”. Here’s why CJ is Trusted to Perform:

• Performance: We empower advertisers, publishers, and creators, to beat their commerce goals through partnership-based performance marketing solutions.
• Proof: We deliver profitable growth through our “CJ Growth Model,” utilizing the CJ ecosystem, built on trust, commitment, curiosity, and dedicated expertise.
• Ethics: We believe everyone involved in a transaction should benefit, and we strive to create win-win-win situations for our partners, customers, and employees.

CJ's Suite of Solutions

Over the 25 years we’ve been in business, CJ has been focused on our core affiliate platform and partnership offering—but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t spent much of that time identifying gaps and dreaming up what’s next for the affiliate landscape. These “off the beaten path” adventures resulted in many years of investment in influencer and lead generation opportunities for our clients—and this year, we decided to put a ring on it and officially introduce them as a suite of solutions in our partnership-based performance marketing ecosystem:

• CJ Affiliate: End-to-end affiliate marketing with the world’s largest, most trusted affiliate provider.
• CJ Influence: An end-to-end influencer solution that encompasses discovery, management, tracking, and analysis for seamless integration.
• CJ Leads: A comprehensive lead generation solution that encompasses technology, strategy, execution, performance measurement, and brand safety.

While CJ Affiliate is the same CJ you know and love, the CJ Influence and CJ Leads solutions allow us to move beyond affiliate and expand our data-driven campaign offerings to brands that may not be a fit for the affiliate channel. Huzzah!

Perlu

In January, we announced the acquisition of Perlu, a New York-based influencer networking and technology platform, focused on the creator community. Perlu will eventually be a part of CJ and will be integrated into CJ Influence. CJ’s technology will also serve as the backbone of Perlu’s creator community to drive further commerce growth.

Tyroo | CJ

In September, we announced a multi-year global expansion partnership in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with Tyroo Technologies. This strategic alliance marked a significant leap for performance marketing in the region, offering CJ and Tyroo customers access to international tech capabilities with localized solutions. With the combined forces of Tyroo Technologies and CJ, clients gain access to inventory from outcome-centric publishers worldwide.

Platform Innovation

So much innovation, so little time! Here’s a list of CJ’s most notable product launches and enhancements in 2023:

• In February, we launched the Peak Shopping & Holiday Analysis dashboard for publishers. this dashboard provides a clear and comprehensive look into year-over-year performance to help publishers better understand shopping trends and preferences during key shopping events.
• In April, we released Campaigns to the world! Campaigns is the first solution in the industry that allows brands to effortlessly forecast, track, and manage all of their media campaigns in one place. We also made enhancements to our data transfer process including a new Web Upload feature.
• Throughout Q2 and Q3 we made several enhancements to CJ’s Clickless Tracking including the ability to analyze clickless code performance in Insights and bulk upload exclusive codes.
• In August, we launched the New CJ Platform Experience! Designed to make client workflow as effortless as possible, the new platform experience is simplified, sleek, and more intuitive than ever before, so users can focus on what matters most: growth. 
• In November, we debuted a new way to get daily insight into Q4 trends. The Q4 Network Peak Shopping & Holiday dashboard, available for both publishers and advertisers under Advanced Analysis in CJ Insights, delves deep into network performance trends across the globe and allows you to dig into consumer behavior in key markets including the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, plus a top-level view of many global regions.

Client and Network Wins

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

• We launched nearly 600 new advertiser programs in 2023, 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.
• 268 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. 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 8 Global Performance Marketing Awards, 6 Performance Marketing Awards, 4 US Partnership Awards, and 2 Influencer Marketing Awards in 2023.
• CJ took home the gold award for Best Platform for Partnership Success at the 2023 US Partnership Awards. 🏆
• We received high commendations at the 2023 Global Performance Marketing Awards (GPMAs) for Global Affiliate Network or Saas of the Year, Best Partnership with The North Face and Blue Light Card, and Best Programme Launch alongside The Gym Group
• We received high commendations at the 2023 Performance Marketing Awards (PMAs) for Affiliate Network or SaaS of the Year, Best Programme Launch or Migration alongside Watchfinder & Co., and Best Use of Data and Insights alongside Qatar Airways.
• At CJU23 in September, we recognized CJ advertisers, publishers, and agencies for their achievements in affiliate marketing at the 24^th annual CJ Excellence Awards.

Award-Winning CJ’ers

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

• CEO Mayuresh Kshetramade was included in Hello Partner’s Top 30 US Partnership Marketing Changemakers.
• Senior Publisher Development Manager, Lizzy Mackay, was included in Hello Partner’s 30 Under 30 Future Leaders in Partnership Marketing.
• Senior Client Development Manager, Victoria Pace, was included in Performance Marketing World’s 30 Under 30.
• Director of Influencer Development, Gabrielle Pajer, was included in Hello Partner’s Top 30 Trailblazing Women in Influencer Marketing.
• Client Development Manager, Rachel Lines was included in Hello Partner’s Top 30 Performance Media Pioneers.

CJU23

We were thrilled to welcome clients back to sunny Santa Barbara for CJU23. Our annual client conference brought together over 1,000 marketers for a multi-day event filled with networking, compelling content, learning opportunities, and more. We also couldn’t resist the opportunity to celebrate CJ’s 25th anniversary with all of you!

This year's CJU highlights include:

• Guest Keynote Elizabeth Gilbert - New York Times bestselling author, novelist, and memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert was our CJU23 guest keynote. She made us laugh and cry with her speech about her journey to live a creative life and authentically connect with everyone around her.
• Solutions Showcase – CJ's President and Senior Vice President of Publisher Development took the CJU main stage for the Solution Showcase to unveil CJ's latest solutions—CJ Leads and CJ Influence—that are revolutionizing our platform to empower your success and fuel your growth.
• Decoding Incrementality in Your Affiliate Program – This engaging panel session, moderated by CJ Sr. Client Development Director Steven Coyle, brought together speakers from LG Electronics, Shutterfly, Ibotta, and CJ’s Data Science and Analytics team to dive into how they discuss and leverage the value of the affiliate channel within their own companies.
• Publisher Spotlight Stage – New to CJU, publishers took to a special stage amid all the networking action to share their business models and strategies.
• CJU Awards Dinner – Cheers to 25 years of CJ! We took an opportunity to celebrate CJ’s silver anniversary in style with roller skating butterfly dancers, a special champagne toast, a magic show, live music that illuminated the stage, and of course…cake! It was a night we’ll remember forever.

Looking to relive the CJU23 magic? Check out the CJU23 Highlight Reel, CJU23 Session Playlist, and CJU23 Photo Album.

Thought Leadership

We shared lots of engaging content this year! Here are some of our favorite highlights:

• In April, we took A Look Back at 2022’s Peak Shopping Performance to examine the last three months of 2022 and affiliate performance.
• After the planned migration to Google Analytics 4, we heard from many clients that they were seeing a decline in affiliate performance in the GA4 platform. We published a primer on this issue in our article, Seeing a Drop in Affiliate Revenue in GA4? Here's Why, to help our clients—and the industry—navigate this important change.
• 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.
• 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 2023 with comparative data from 2020, 2021, and 2022.
• We ended the year by launching our joint report with Namogoo, Quantifying the Business Value of Shopping Browser Extensions, to get a data-driven understanding of browser extensions and their significant impact on the affiliate ecosystem.

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Thank you to our incredible associates and clients across the globe—our success this year wouldn’t be possible without you! We can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store! From all of us at CJ, we wish you all health, happiness, success, and growth in the new year.