Rakuten Advertising has launched Innovation Labs, a dedicated product collaboration hub within its Insights & Analytics portal. This initiative accelerates the development and application of AI to enhance ad spend efficiency, enabling better targeting and engagement across its extensive global affiliate publisher network for advertisers and publishers.
Quick Intel
Advancing AI in Affiliate Marketing Rakuten Advertising, a leading global affiliate marketing network, has unveiled Innovation Labs as a collaborative space focused on harnessing AI to drive greater efficiency in ad spend and customer engagement. Integrated directly into the Insights & Analytics portal, the hub allows advertisers and publishers to explore, test, and co-develop advanced AI tools that align with evolving business needs in performance marketing.
AI Recommendations: Empowering Advertisers At launch, Innovation Labs introduces AI Recommendations tailored for advertisers. This capability holistically evaluates multidimensional attributes—including profiles, products, and campaign characteristics—to recommend new publisher types. It identifies partners with proven success in comparable campaigns while uncovering untapped categories that can accelerate growth and optimize reach within Rakuten's world-leading affiliate network.
AI-Driven Tools for Publishers Publishers benefit from AI-driven Product Recommendations designed to streamline discovery and enhance revenue potential. The feature instantly surfaces emerging trends from both partnered and non-partnered advertisers, curates relevant opportunities for targeted audiences, and applies filters for brands and categories. This reduces manual research efforts and enables faster, more effective monetization strategies.
Ongoing Innovation and Collaboration Rakuten Advertising's Data Science team will run continuous experiments within Innovation Labs, incorporating direct feedback from clients and partners. This always-on R&D environment ensures rapid iteration, with new AI features added and refined regularly to shorten the build–measure–learn cycle and deliver measurable improvements in outcomes.
"Innovation Labs is the culmination of years of work growing our Affiliate Intelligence suite of AI-powered tools, bringing together data, AI, premium partnerships, and expert strategies," said Nick Stamos, CEO at Rakuten Advertising. "This initiative is a critical step in how Rakuten Advertising contributes to the broader Rakuten Group's 'Triple 20' commitment to using AI to drive 20% greater efficiency for our employees, our internal teams, and most importantly, our clients. Innovation Labs will shorten the build–measure–learn cycle of AI transformation, helping us fast-track future investment in capabilities that improve outcomes for our advertisers and publisher partners."
"Innovation Labs delivers on our promise to continually innovate our products in a way that benefits every participant in the affiliate marketing universe, from brands, to publishers, and ultimately, consumers," said Adam Rostan, Chief Product Officer. "This will be a space where advertisers and publishers can experiment, collaborate, and scale new use cases with AI to deliver greater efficiency for everyone and accelerate the industry's growth."
Innovation Labs positions Rakuten Advertising at the forefront of AI integration in affiliate marketing, supporting scalable, data-driven growth for all ecosystem participants.
About Rakuten Advertising
Rakuten Advertising delivers performance-driven, brand-driven, and people-driven ad solutions that help the world's top brands connect with unique, highly engaged audiences – from first impression to final sale. Backed by industry-leading technology, global media properties, and the largest, high-quality partner network, Rakuten Advertising taps into data and experience to develop the strategies and ad experiences that will drive engagement, sales, loyalty, and beyond. A leader in the industry since its beginnings, Rakuten Advertising is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world's leading internet service companies. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices throughout EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and North America.
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