The Rise of Creator-Driven Commerce
As a testament to its effectiveness as a performance-based marketing strategy, affiliate marketing has been around for decades. While the channel’s core value proposition hasn’t changed much over the years, the steady growth of online shopping, the advent of social media, and the development of sophisticated tracking and attribution technologies have made affiliate marketing more data-driven and scalable than ever before.
As e-commerce brands increasingly adopt performance-based partnerships to boost revenue, enhance customer engagement, and target new users, the affiliate marketing industry is primed to reach $12 billion globally by 2025.(1) Buoyed by the rise of social media and its significant impact on consumer shopping decisions, nearly half of all consumers make purchases based on affiliate posts today(2). As brands progressively recognize the shift towards creator-driven commerce, publishers, traditional affiliates, and social media influencers have flooded into the market to meet demand.
Amazon in particular has been dominant in this ecosystem, making up nearly half of all affiliate links to date, though other marketplaces like Walmart, Target, and Wayfair have rolled out affiliate programs in recent years as well.(3)
Marketplace Sellers Face Unique Problems
Brands that sell on marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, or eBay are faced with additional considerations when evaluating new marketing channels, spanning organic search optimization, heightened competitive dynamics, and a general lack of control and transparency in performance data and incentive structures. Compounding this complexity, the rules of engagement around affiliate marketing are often restrictive on marketplaces, forcing brands to sacrifice direct relationship-building with affiliates in order to participate. That said, as marketplaces increasingly recognize the value of optimizing external traffic and revenue to their respective platforms, such dynamics create a ‘win-win’ opportunity for 3rd party vendors to unlock efficiencies for marketplaces, brands, and affiliates alike.
As such, we are thrilled to announce our $20M Series A investment in Levanta, a leading affiliate marketing platform designed to help marketplace sellers unlock growth through creator-driven commerce.
Enter Levanta
When Volition first connected with Levanta’s co-founders Ian Brodie, Rob Schab, and Spencer McKenney, it was immediately evident that these were domain experts and key catalysts of the industry’s evolution. Having meticulously developed a feature set closely tied to the everyday needs of marketplace sellers, the team has taken a user-first approach since Levanta’s inception.
At its core, Levanta is purpose-built for marketplace sellers looking to modernize their affiliate channels. Focused on Amazon today, Levanta offers brands a scalable, performance-based solution to drive sales, expand into new markets, and build long-term partnerships with creators. Its core platform is built around the complexities inherent to marketplace selling, enabling customers to attain benefits such as search algorithm uplift and marketplace-specific economic incentives. By connecting marketplace sellers with a network of vetted affiliates and publishers, Levanta has quickly become a go-to platform for brands seeking to capitalize on the growing power of creators in digital commerce.
In less than two years of operations, Levanta has reached remarkable scale on the back of nominal sales and marketing spend. Benefitting from a powerful flywheel effect across thousands of top-tier affiliates, publishers, and brands, Levanta has proven to deliver significant ROI in a rapidly evolving space.
Building on their prior venture and eventual sale of Grovia, an affiliate marketing software and service provider, Ian, Rob, and Spencer know the power of creator-driven commerce firsthand. Together, their commitment to improving the lives of marketplace sellers has excited us since day one. The Volition team has been impressed with their passion for the category, and as more brands seek to tap into the power of affiliate marketing, Levanta is well-positioned to profitably accelerate growth.
We are thrilled to welcome Levanta to the portfolio and look forward to the journey to come.
Larry, Tiger, Danielle, Ella
1. eMarketer, Affiliate Marketing, September 2024
2. Sprout Social, The Influencer Marketing Report, April 2024
3. Datanyze, Affiliate Networks Market Share, 2024
