2023 Affiliate Buyer’s Guide: Which companies won awards this year?

To create the 2023 Affiliate Platform Buyer’s Guide, we ask hundreds of brand and agency respondents to rate the networks and platforms on a broad range of features and capabilities. We offer “awards” to the solutions providers that garner the highest ratings to acknowledge their investment and hard work in various areas. 

We also provide a separate award that reflects publishers’ choice of best network or platform to better reflect the diversity of needs and perspectives in affiliate. In an industry where all boats rise for the best results, capturing partner perspectives and acknowledging the efforts of platforms that devote resources to meeting publisher needs is critical.

Here are the 2023 Affiliate Platform Buyer’s Guide Awards for 2023:

Highest rating from advertisers: 

Best Tracking & Reporting Technology: impact.com

Best Service: CJ and Awin

Best Publisher Network: impact.com

Best Set-Up and Integration: ShareASale

Highest rating from agencies:

Best Tracking & Reporting Technology: impact.com

Best Service: CJ and Rakuten Advertising

Best Publisher Network: impact.com

Best Set-Up and Integration: ShareASale

Highest ratings from publishers: 

Best platform/ network: CJ

Key Observations

impact.com

impact.com continues to dominate award categories related to technology. The company’s frequent releases of new capabilities and the reliability of the core platform impress our agency and brand respondents. impact.com also led in the quality of its publisher network, which likely reflects both the comprehensiveness of its baseline affiliate publisher set and the company’s continued efforts to expand the platform into other partnership types.

CJ

CJ is a perennial industry favorite for service. This year, agency and brand-side respondents rated them a top performer. The company’s historic strength in providing excellent client service continues to be a valuable component of its appeal. Publishers also chose CJ as the best network – for the third year running. This reflects the significant resources CJ devotes to meeting publisher needs and delivering programs that work well for all stakeholders.

Rakuten

Rakuten was a top ratings-getter for service among agencies, sharing the crown with the CJ team. Meeting the needs of agencies is an area of significant focus for the company.  The company has made sizable investments in agency service in the past year, and those efforts appear to be paying off. 

Awin

Awin garnered top scores for service among brand respondents, matching CJ’s historic strength in this area. Awin is well-regarded for service across its “home base” in EMEA, and these high scores among our more US-centric respondent pool indicate that they are extending its quality service reputation globally. The company also saw the largest year-over-year increases across multiple attributes, earning itself the most improved award. 

ShareaSale

Awin’s sister network ShareaSale led this year in having the industry’s best set-up and integration processes. The company is well-known for delivering a powerful and easy-to-use solution, and its set-up scores reflect this usability leadership. While the company is renowned for being a great provider when launching a program for the first time, many brands continue to rely on ShareaSale long after they launch their efforts, indicating the broad appeal of its streamlined self-service model. 

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Congratulations to the award winners! Download the complete guide to see a more granular analysis of the ratings for each platform. You can also read the verbatim statements of respondents that help reveal the strengths and weaknesses behind their scores. 

Read other coverage of the 2023 Affiliate Guide Results:

2023 Affiliate Buyer’s Guide: impact.com, CJ, Rakuten Lead in Platform Usage

2023 Affiliate Buyer’s Guide: Richer respondent pool provides broad industry perspective

2023 Affiliate Buyer’s Guide: Brands say reporting, tracking, and network quality most important

2023 Affiliate Industry Survey Results: brands and agencies focus investment on targeting and reporting transparency