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impact.com Announces Continued Growth in Q1 2025 Driven by Increasing Awareness that Partner-led Marketing is Helping Brands Build Trusting, Authentic Communities That Propel Performance

Martech Outlook | Thursday, May 15, 2025

In the first quarter, impact.com demonstrated its position as the leading partnership management solution globally by welcoming hundreds of leading brands to the platform, announcing the return of its Partnerships Experience event, relentlessly investing in its products, and winning multiple awards across the international industry. 

NEW YORK — impact.com, the world’s leading commerce partnership management platform, announced today its strong performance during the first quarter of 2025, driven by growing recognition across the advertising industry that partner-led marketing has become an essential part of a holistic marketing strategy for brands who want to connect authentically with their audience, and drive revenue as a result. During the quarter, impact.com invested in several core product updates, released industry leading research, and welcomed more than 700 new clients to its customer portfolio, including New Balance, Hydrojug, and Monzo, and now serves more than 4,500 of the world’s leading brands who leverage the company’s platform globally. 

At a time when marketing budgets are tighter than ever, marketers are under significant pressure to prove their value, and deliver campaigns efficiently and effectively. This comes at a time when today’s consumers are not just distrustful of traditional ads, they’re disinterested. Research shows that only 2% of consumers consider traditional ads important. They’re taking matters into their own hands by seeking out reviews and recommendations from other people and doing their research before making a purchase. The global creator market alone is expected to reach over $32 billion this year. As a result, the industry is turning to partner-led marketing.

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“Partner-led marketing is rapidly overtaking traditional advertising as brands shift their focus toward collaborations that deliver authenticity and trust at scale,” said impact.com CEO David A. Yovanno. “Today’s consumers don’t respond to ads—they actively seek out recommendations, reviews, and content from sources they trust. Increasingly, that trusted voice isn’t the brand itself. This shift in behavior is driving brands to invest in partnerships with creators, publishers, and other advocates who can influence purchase decisions more credibly. For brands, partnerships are no longer a nice-to-have—they’re fast becoming a core growth driver and competitive differentiator.”

In April, Best Buy announced the launch of the new Best Buy Storefronts, powered by impact.com, demonstrating how brands are expanding their influencer strategy in innovative ways. These Storefronts offer a curated shopping experience where customers can shop from their favorite creators and influencers. 

impact.com’s products define its success, and in Q1 2025 the company launched a range of new innovations across its Creator, impact.com/advocate, and Performance products, designed to make partnership management more seamless and effective for brands, creators, and affiliates.

Within Creator, product gifting is now faster and more intuitive—brands can select entire products, including all variants, in one step, while creators can easily choose the right fit. Advocate introduced Cash Rewards, giving marketers a powerful new way to motivate referrals with a flexible incentive that’s easy to set up and manage. Performance users gained new tools to optimize and protect their affiliate programs, including automated partner re-engagement workflows and an Event Risk reporting suite to identify and eliminate suspicious traffic in real time.

Additional highlights from the quarter include:

• Announced the return of its now-expanded three-day Partnerships Experience event (iPX), taking place June 9-11 this year in Austin, Texas, which will feature special guest James Clear, author of the #1 New York Times Bestselling book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. 

• Expanded senior leadership team by promoting Justin Morrison to the position of Chief Revenue Officer. Having joined impact.com in May 2024 as Senior Vice President of Sales, as of February this year Justin took global responsibility for sales and revenue, where he is focusing on innovative strategies to drive sales and customer expansion. 

• Launched the sixth season of The Partnership Economy podcast that has now reached over 350,000 downloads and features global leaders discussing their partnership strategies and marketing advice, including Peter Orlowsky from Getty Images. Also wrapped season one of the Publisher’s Playbook podcast covering important topics affecting publishers today including Google’s search updates, and the rise of Reddit and navigating Retail Media.

• Recognized with a number of leading industry awards for significant contribution to the partnership economy, including three gold awards, featuring the industry voted Best Platform for Partnership Success, and two bronze at the US Partnership Awards, for leading technology and work with clients such as TikTok, Hamilton Beach, KaTom, and ILIA Beauty. impact.com was also recognized in G2’s Best Software Awards, The Partnership Economy Podcast received a Gold award at the AVA Digital Awards, and the company also won Best Enterprise Software - Marketing award at the Singapore Business Review Technology Excellence Awards, and Best Enterprise Software at the Malaysia Technology Excellence Awards. 

• Released research including The customer journey: Data-driven insights on the modern path to purchase, which investigates how the consumer path to purchase has evolved from the traditional funnel analogy into a challenging, multi-channel web of touchpoints, and Revealing true partner value: A new framework for affiliate incrementality, which discusses measuring success in the affiliate space, and how outdated, ineffectual measurement metrics can conceal millions of dollars of value created by a partnership. 

More information on the company’s momentum can be found at impact.com. 

 

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