Partnership marketing firm Affise banks $8m to expand to SEA, US

Partnerships have become a popular way to grow in the past few years, as Marvel has shown us with its Avengers movies. It brought together fan bases of different characters – some of whom would have never intersected otherwise – to flock to singular titles such as the Avengers: Endgame film, which grossed a worldwide box office revenue of US$2.8 billion.

Businesses have a lot to gain from teaming up as well. It can help them reach certain audiences, which as what New York Times’ Snapchat filter partnership did, or expand the partnering enterprises’ similar target markets, as in the case of the limited edition collection by website Bleacher Report and sportswear giant Adidas.

Affise, a startup headquartered in Lithuania, aims to help marketing teams make and manage these kinds of tie-ups through its platform. The company said it has raised US$8 million in a series A round to tap into more markets worldwide.

Affise CEO Stanislau Litvinau (left) and chief technology officer and founder Dmitrii Zotov / Photo credit: Affise

Founded in 2016, Affise offers a partnership marketing platform for brands, advertisers, and agencies to automate and scale their partner relations. Its tech applies to different marketing channels, including traditional affiliates, influencers, networks, and agencies.

Its latest funding round was led by Leta Capital, with the participation of TMT Investments.

The company currently has offices in Lithuania, Israel, India, China, Belarus, and Cyprus, and plans to increase its presence in North America and Asia.

“We’ll start our expansion in two directions: working with performance agencies (the segment we are already well-aware of), and expanding to the adjacent market of ecommerce advertisers,” the company’s chief revenue officer Tanya Grypachevskaya tells Tech in Asia.

According to Affise, the partnership marketing industry has been growing by 10% every year and is on track to reach US$1.2 billion this year.

“The SEA region has been growing fast in the ecommerce sector in recent years, and Affise’s SaaS platform can help brands maximize their returns on investment (ROI) from partner marketing channels,” Grypachevskaya says. She adds that currently, Thailand and Indonesia stand out as the most interesting countries in terms of ecommerce brands and advertisers.

The company said its expansion follows “a period of impressive growth,” claiming that it has been doubling its revenues every year. It declined Tech in Asia’s request for more information, however.

With the new funding, Grypachevskaya says that Affise aims to add up to 30 new people to its global team to lead its regional expansion. Right now, the company employs over 120 professionals across six offices around the world.

The exec also shares that while its offices have been – and still are – in remote-working mode since the onset of Covid-19, the pandemic “has not affected [Affise’s] main performance metrics. Advertisers are still looking to optimize their budgets, thus we see a huge trend of companies switching to a performance-based model and a growing demand for partner marketing.”