Problem Statements
For CJ, the size and variety of their network is both their greatest asset and their greatest challenge. An asset because it means that brands have thousands and thousands of content creators to discover and partner with. But a challenge because the size of that network makes it difficult to find just the right fit among all the noise. Existing discovery tools within CJ were so limited that most advertisers didn’t bother to use them, and preferred to use discovery methods completely outside of the CJ platform, such as Google searches or word of mouth.
I spent many months assessing the relationships domain and the relationships discovery tools and processes used by both advertisers and publishers. One of my most important discoveries was the large and increasing concentration risk in the network. Although the total size of the network was growing, we had a small and shrinking number of total publishers who were individually each large and getting larger. CJ’s largest asset is the size and variety of their network, and these numbers indicated that asset was at a significant risk. It was clear we needed more publishers, and more relationships.
In order to reverse that risk, I led two initiatives: first, I introduced a new publisher onboarding workflow (see details of that initiative here), and second, I introduced a completely new publisher discovery platform.
Assessment
The existing publisher discovery tools within CJ were very limited and outdated. The biggest problem with these tools was that they only provided details to advertisers about the publisher’s performance within the CJ network. That meant that even if you were one of the largest and most successful content creators in the world, you might still not be successful as a CJ publisher because your CJ profile simply didn’t highlight your real value to potential partners.
In other words, our recruitment tools created a catch-22 where publishers had to already be successful in CJ in order to be successful in CJ. New publishers getting started had very little chance of going on to be successful without intervention by a CJ employee.
I spent months speaking to advertisers and publishers to deeply understand how they did partner discovery and one thing became very clear: in order to be useful, any discovery tools we built would have to showcase a publisher’s size and value using data sourced outside of their CJ profile.
View the deck I presented to leadership here (some details have been obscured):
It’s interesting for me personally to review this deck again now, a few years after I originally put it together. There are some things I would do very differently if I were presenting this now, such as a greater focus on the proposal and goals.
Actions
As a result of these findings, I led the development of a brand new publisher discovery platform, including the following:
- I developed a completely new publisher discovery platform that replaced the outdated existing platform and built on the enhancements that we started with the publisher onboarding workflow, including enhanced publisher profiles, new more intuitive filtering capabilities, and a brand new keyword search algorithm.
- I spearheaded the partnership with SimilarWeb to display website performance numbers in publisher profiles, so advertisers could see the size of a publisher’s audience even if they were new to the CJ network
- I also spearheaded the partnership with CreatorIQ to display social media engagement statistics about social media-based creators and influencers in order to grow this exciting and new publisher segment, and court the brands who want to work with them.
- I developed and launched the “CJ Spotlight” feature that allowed members of CJ’s Publisher Development team to promote managed publishers and showcase the power of our extensive and specialized staff.
- I developed and executed an A/B test to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of automatic partnership recommendations. My hypothesis was confirmed, and I subsequently led an initiative to build an auto recommender into the CJ platform.
Outcomes
In just the first few months after launching, we saw an immediate increase in the number of advertisers users who were using native CJ tools to find partners.
The new tool saw a near-immediate 35% increase in engagement by advertisers over the previous existing recruitment tools
Most importantly, the new tools drove a 29% increase in advertiser-publisher relationships
This new platform also opened up future development, including more AI-focused discovery features.
Resources
CJ Blog posts announcing new features:
- New Partners Are Only a Step Away with CJ’s Recruit Partners Tool
- See the Full Picture with SimilarWeb Metrics in Recruit Partners
- See & Showcase Social Media Metrics in Platform, Powered by CreatorIQ
View an educational video from CJ highlighting the UX of the Recruit Partners tool below:
Alyson Gagne 