AiThority Interview with David Antley, General Manager at Pernix

Tell us about your role at Pernix and the technology that you’ve brought to the market.

As the General Manager at Pernix, I have a unique vantage point that allows me to look across the industry to inform the ongoing development of our technology while also providing thought leadership. Unfortunately, the industry has dealt with the pain of unaligned tracking for so long that many companies have stopped looking for a solution. Part of my role is evangelizing Pernix as a solution to an issue that has long hampered growth and investment.

Prior to joining Pernix, I held multiple positions in which I had oversight of the affiliate channel and budget responsibility for Digital Marketing. Additionally, a few years ago I ran my own affiliate network and agency. It was these experiences that allowed me to witness the problems caused by misaligned attribution and the resulting negative behaviors that brands employ in an attempt to solve the problem.

When l learned about the Pernix technology and how it was giving advertisers back control of their attribution, I jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the solution that could transform and help add more legitimacy and staying power to the affiliate channel.

How was the idea for Pernix conceived?

As industry veterans, we’re very familiar with the issues caused by tracking inconsistencies between affiliate networks and client analytics. After experiencing this ourselves over many years, we wanted to put the control back in the hands of brands and equip them with the resources they needed to make the best decisions for their businesses, in ways not possible without technology like Pernix. We believe that advertisers should only pay for clear, defined results based on accurate attribution data. We saw a critical need in the industry so we built a unique server-side attribution application software to offer a value that no one else in the market was offering.

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What industry pain points does Pernix aim to address?

While Digital Marketing was born out of an expectation of accurate and fully trackable performance data, the industry never quite reached that promise. Pernix was built to meet this need and align the affiliate channel to a brands’ attribution, eliminating the discrepancy and giving advertisers insight into their true ROI. Pernix brings Affiliate Marketing closer to this longstanding promise.

With Pernix, accurate attribution is attainable and easy. Pernix is a true server-side solution that integrates directly into advertisers’ source of truth – whether Google Analytics or another source – and applies attributed conversions back to the networks.

What does Pernix offer the Affiliate Marketing industry that it hasn’t seen before? What sets Pernix apart?

We saw the industry struggle with inaccurate attribution tracking methods and felt the difficulties of relying on those same solutions ourselves, so we sought to change that with a new technology that offers what the industry has never seen before. For starters, attribution alignment with the brand’s source of truth, breaking the reliance on pixel tracking and last-click attribution.

The Pernix difference is a server-side solution that applies conversion back into the affiliate network. The impact that this has on the industry is immense – bringing reliable data, leading to better decisions and ultimately, more productive campaigns.

What are your goals with this technology?

With Pernix, we wanted to make tools that would govern the future of our industry, and catalyze its continued growth. Pernix empowers leaders with real, data-driven insights that help businesses discover the true ROI of their partnership campaigns. Pernix gives marketers and advertisers the ability to truly understand and control their attribution, and ultimately increase ROI and bolster their success. With this technology, the industry becomes understandable, concise and scalable. Technology should make the pursuit of truth simple – not more complicated.  Pernix is here to do just that.

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How many players are there in this technology space?

While there are technologies offering attribution tracking to the industry, there are none that offer the unique value that Pernix does. As a pure server-side solution, Pernix pulls complex data from multiple sources and aligns all performance and costs to the advertiser’s attribution model. With this, Pernix is able to provide advertisers with a definitive look at their Marketing investment and its performance.

What types of businesses can benefit from Pernix?

Any business investing in the Affiliate Marketing space that desires more accurate, truthful data can benefit from Pernix. Our current clients come from various industries such as Omnichannel retail, consumer retail, travel, and e-commerce. Each vertical benefits from a more accurate, transparent dataset that offers insights into their campaign performance.

Pernix is about agility. Digital Marketing demands versatility, and Pernix is here to provide this for clients, no matter the circumstance. In addition to fulfilling the need for truthful, reliable data in the affiliate marketing space, Pernix gives clients the control and transparency they need across a wide variety of use cases. And that’s why Pernix will be moving beyond Performance Marketing channels in the future to equip marketers with the transparency they need across all channels.

What has the early reception and/or results been like for the technology? Can you provide some examples of how the technology has benefited early adopters of it?

Pernix has been in beta testing for almost a year with a handful of clients and was launched publicly in June. We offer a free assessment for companies to determine if the technology is right for them. On average, Pernix is revealing an over attribution of over 30%, savings that clients are then reinvesting in the channel to increase commissions to publishers and grow their market share.

One early adopter is seeing 135% increased return on ad spend and another has been able to separate non-commissionable leads and sales from legitimate conversations and saw a 60% decrease in costs YOY. The reception from early adopters has been positive and the numbers speak for themselves.

One popular manufacturer and retailer of unique socks and underwear – sold in over 90 countries – has leveraged Pernix to remove the discrepancy between what their network was tracking and what Google Analytics was reporting, to align their spend. By excluding Sales that were not truly last click by affiliates, the approximate revenue saved in Q4 was 15%. The brand saw a ROAS increase of nearly 9x during that same period in Q4.

With Pernix, the brand’s Google Analytics has an additional system tracking implementation and stability of the data, making it more meaningful, reliable and actionable for Marketing channels. With the brand’s affiliate platform numbers closely matching Google Analytics, the brand can use their preferred cross-channel reporting mechanism and rest assured that the numbers are accurate and represent their true attribution as they define it.

How are you preparing for a data-centric world and what advice do you have as a Business Leader?

In my opinion, the world has already become data-centric. These days, nearly all of our devices collect data, share data and analyze data to better serve us as consumers. In the Marketing space, data comes in many forms – customer data, platform data, affiliate data, and so on. The data tsunami has come and it has already impacted the way we live our lives.

In Affiliate Marketing (among other industries), data holds the key to a better product and a better business. No matter who your client may be, a keen understanding of how they function will help you serve them better. But numbers do not tell the whole story, and so the advice I share with other Business Leaders is this: data means nothing if you cannot translate it into a strategy. Training your teams to analyze data and ensuring data accuracy with applications like Pernix are great ways to become well-versed in the space – and increase your chances of utilizing your data in ways that will push your business forward.

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Thank you, David! That was fun and hope to see you back on AiThority soon.