Launching TUNE’s Brand of Partner Marketing

This article was originally published on LinkedIn. Read the press release here.

Today, I get to reveal the next transformation of TUNE.

For the past decade we built a technology platform that some of the greatest ad networks and affiliate programs around the world used to build their businesses. You probably know it as HasOffers. In that time our customer community quietly grew beyond the thousands, measuring more than $8 billion in payouts to affiliate partners per year. By studying our growing segments and listening intently to our customers, we learned that the category of affiliate marketing is now quickly expanding to include new and unique types of partners. It is growing into a larger category we know now as Partner Marketing.   

Yet the technology to support these partnerships is dragging behind in mobile, automation, fraud, payments, and so many of the everyday needs of marketers. Managing partner relationships should be easier. Performance marketers, whether they be direct advertisers or network businesses, need a platform built to support these evolving, next generation forms of partnership. So after shipping a significant number of new product releases these last few quarters, our team is finally ready to publicly announce our commitment to that mission.  

Introducing the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform.

As we reposition under our TUNE company brand, we are retiring the HasOffers product name, which has served our team and customers well for many years. Just as the concepts of affiliate marketing are stretching to new and different types of partners, our platform is growing to help all of our customers handle these diverse relationships better. Tying our TUNE brand directly to the Partner Marketing Platform simplifies our identity, but more importantly, we hope it shows our complete focus and commitment to meet the changing needs of marketing partnerships. From our experience, the most tuned partnerships are built on a foundation of clarity, communication, and trust, and we see every day that the right platform can help with that.

TUNE has two customers.

Over the last three years, more advertisers started building their affiliate and partner programs on our platform. In that time, the number of advertiser customers on our platform actually doubled every year. As we started receiving inbound requests from more and more Fortune 100 brands, the opportunity for the platform became clearer. It turns out, advertisers were searching for affiliate technology that gave them the control and flexibility they needed to forge new partnerships. They were not getting the flexibility they needed from what was available, and they also wanted to expand their reach to more affiliate networks and marketplaces without being confined to a predetermined set of terms or dictated business practices.

Advertisers want a platform that helps them partner the way they want to.

The option for total flexibility, combined with complete off-the-shelf capabilities is just as important to advertisers as it is for the network customers we’ve support for many years. Networks already know we work well with mobile user experiences and measurement partners, have the scale to support incredible volume, and are serious about the compliance and security their businesses require. Advertisers have the same expectations, and we are in the best position to deliver for both.  

With the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform, we are laser-focused on building one technology foundation that serves the needs of both advertisers and networks. Both are vital to the growth of our ecosystem, and by moving fast to bring the best, most flexible technology for each, we believe there is ultimately an opportunity to help them work much better together.

After you’ve finished reading this note, I hope you’ll take a look at our new website.

There you’ll find the core offerings of our platform for each audience. Not surprisingly, the themes are very similar. We are hearing it loud and clear from our customers. Performance marketers want to increase the number of marketing partnerships and do more with their existing partners. They want to eliminate the risk of fraud and compliance issues, and they want to do it their way, with less time and resources required of their people. You will see clearly as the year progresses that these are the areas we’re focused on.

Our Promise Going Forward

We promise to deploy new platform releases at a furious pace. We will prioritize engineering and product investment above everything else, making it our highest goal to ensure the platform your business is depending on is the best it can be. You can expect fast and regular advancements in automation, tech integrations, user experiences, workflows, and of course billing and payments. Our speed-to-market has already increased dramatically over the last few quarters, and we expect for our customers to hold us to this standard and push us further.

At TUNE, we are honored to support this fast-growing, newly defined category. Though it is certainly an exciting “day one” for partner marketing, it doesn’t mean affiliate marketing is dead. No. It is you, the performance marketers who built the affiliate industry that are driving growth into new frontiers. You took the concepts and technologies designed to compensate affiliates, and stretched them to unlock big brand partners, mobile app partners, influencer partners, top publishing partners, ad network partners, and so many more unique partner opportunities that the evolution of the internet exposed. We are here to support your ingenuity, strategy, and imagination for the future of partner marketing. That is what a platform should do.

We are so fortunate to be capitalized, staffed up, well positioned, and ready for this opportunity. I am overwhelmingly grateful to every customer and TUNE team member (both past and present) that brought us to this point. It is because of you we get the shot at a mission I believe our team was made for.

Thank you.

Peter Hamilton, CEO of TUNE

FAQ

How do I learn more about the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform?

Well check out our homepage of course 🙂 We’re also happy to schedule a call with the right member of our team depending on your location and time zone. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] and we’ll be happy to share some materials, hop on a demo, or provide some free advice on launching a partner program or migrating from another set of systems.

Does this mean the HasOffers name and branding are going away?

Yes, in fact that is exactly what it means. We are redirecting the HasOffers.com website to TUNE.com, and when you visit our homepage you will see our partner marketing platform offering for both networks and advertisers under one brand, TUNE. It will take us a bit of time, but you will see the HasOffers name replaced in product, documentation, and everywhere else in the coming weeks.

Does this change my existing HasOffers contract or platform setup?

Nothing changes with your existing contract, platform setup, current traffic, or relationship with us. We are the same people and legal entity that we were before, and you can depend on us to keep everything as smooth as possible as the platform grows.

Does TUNE integrate with other MMPs in addition to Branch?

Of course! This is another question we get sometimes. First, we need to be clear that the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform (formerly HasOffers) was not included with the Branch acquisition last year. Only our mobile “Attribution Analytics” business was acquired. Additionally, our partner platform has always been agnostic to working with third-party measurement providers. In fact, because of our experience as an MMP ourselves, we make certain our mobile integrations are the absolute best in the category. We were the first to provide ad measurement for mobile apps, and you better believe we’re carrying that knowledge and expertise forward with your partner platform.

You talk about advertisers and networks a lot in this post. What about agencies and publishers? Is the Partner Marketing Platform for us too?

Good question! Yes, it can be used by everyone in performance marketing. Typically agencies of record for an advertiser’s parter program will be the primary administrator for the advertiser’s TUNE account. We also have the ability to consolidate accounts for agencies to streamline their businesses. For publishers, the TUNE platform is most used for logging into a partner program or affiliate network that is hosted on TUNE. Though publishers are not typically our customers, we do plan to continue making it easier for publishers to work with their network partners.

Is TUNE doing Postback this year?

We get this question ALL the time. We are so proud of Postback, an event that brings the mobile industry together. We thought it important to let you know that we will not be doing Postback this summer. We are a very different company after the acquisition of one of our businesses, and we need some time to settle our identity for the long term before kicking off another industry event. That said, you probably haven’t heard the last of Postback 😉

Author

A digital marketer by background, Peter is the former CEO of TUNE, the enterprise platform for partner marketing. In 2018, he sold TUNE’s mobile measurement product to Branch, unifying measurement and user experience. He led TUNE’s efforts to bring better management technology and automation to marketing partnerships, across affiliates, influencers, networks, and business development relationships. Follow @peterhamilton