Rakuten Advertising Launches Industry-First Solutions for Greater Affiliate Transparency and Creator Growth

Rhea-AI Summary

Rakuten Advertising (RKUNY) has unveiled several groundbreaking solutions at Rakuten Optimism 2025 to enhance affiliate marketing transparency and creator growth. The key innovations include: (1) Affiliate Conversion Journey with a new transparency API providing publishers next-day visibility into customer purchase journeys, (2) Rakuten Advertising Detect, an all-in-one monitoring suite for program safety and fraud detection, (3) Storefronts, a solution connecting advertisers with creators for shoppable experiences, and (4) Insights and Analytics Prompt, an AI-driven tool for real-time custom reporting. These solutions aim to address industry challenges by improving data transparency, ensuring brand safety, and bridging the gap between creator and affiliate marketing.

Positive

• Launch of new transparency API providing publishers with next-day visibility into customer purchase journeys
• Introduction of comprehensive fraud detection and program monitoring capabilities
• New Storefronts solution enabling seamless collaboration between advertisers and creators
• Implementation of AI-driven custom reporting tool for real-time analytics

Negative

• None.

Publishers and brands alike will receive greater visibility into publisher value, elevated brand safety, stronger connections with creators, and AI-driven custom reporting

NEW YORK, May 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Rakuten Advertising, the leading global affiliate marketing network, revealed several new solutions helping advertisers and publishers navigate affiliate marketing industry challenges and demands. Announced at Rakuten Optimism 2025, these new solutions provide publishers with enhanced data transparency, help advertisers remain brand-safe and compliant, and bridge the gap between creator and affiliate marketing. These new solutions include:

Affiliate Conversion Journey – Transparency API

This enhanced version of Affiliate Conversion Journey, Rakuten Advertising's contribution insights solution for publishers, adds a new transparency API that provides publishers with next-day visibility into their role in a customer's purchase journey – right down to the order.

"The affiliate industry is facing a critical challenge where publishers are often reliant on the last click for commissions while advertisers often use multi-touch attribution technologies," said Nick Stamos, CEO at Rakuten Advertising. "This new API will give publishers the data transparency to better understand and attribute the value they deliver for their advertiser partners. With this new, higher level of transparency in the conversion funnel, publishers will be better equipped to advocate for their value in the shopping journey, even beyond the last click."

Rakuten Advertising Detect

The Rakuten Advertising Detect monitoring suite is an always-on solution for affiliate program safety and compliance, providing advertisers with:

• Fraud detection – Powered by Rakuten Advertising's own data science technology and partnerships with Marcode, AdPolice and Search Monitor, programs are actively monitored for cases of ad hijacking and keyword bidding.
• Anomaly Detection – Advertisers will be automatically alerted to deviations from normal affiliate performance patterns, supporting the detection and remediation of potential fraud and other suspicious program activity. 
• Program Monitoring – Financial product monitoring, content tracking, competitive rankings and cashback logging capabilities all provide advertisers with valuable insights into program and competitor performance. 

"Rakuten Advertising Detect is an all-in-one solution that combines the strength of our partnerships with our own proprietary technologies to deliver advertisers the oversight they need to ensure their affiliate programs are protected and optimized," said Stamos. "By partnering with multiple third parties and leaning into our Affiliate Intelligence innovations, our clients will remain one step ahead of fraudsters and bad actors – even as AI makes them increasingly difficult to detect." 

Storefronts

The Storefronts influencer marketing solution helps advertisers collaborate seamlessly with hand-selected creators to craft and promote brand-exclusive shoppable experiences.

With easy-to-use linking tools, creators can use Storefronts to curate and promote shoppable product recommendations with link-in-bio access that provide advertisers with access to a creator's engaged and loyal audience. Advertisers can easily scale new and existing creator marketing investments, ensure creator programs align with specific business objectives, and foster loyalty and long-term partnerships with creators and their audiences. 

Storefronts also simplifies launching and scaling influencer marketing programs on the Rakuten Advertising network by bringing together creator reporting, shopping behavior data, and in-house experts and strategists.

"The value of the creator economy continues to grow, and so we are continuing to invest in providing advertisers with access to tools and technologies that make their creator investments smarter and more seamless," says Stamos. "This is our latest step towards bringing influencer marketing and affiliate closer together, which we ultimately expect to create a more efficient, holistic approach to influencer marketing investments, insights and reporting."

Insights and Analytics Prompt

Prompt is a new AI-driven tool built for generating custom reports for publishers and advertisers in real time, unlocking new efficiencies and enhancing operations. Fueled by generative AI, Prompt will help advertisers and publishers understand program drivers and will enable nimble decision making for global businesses through ad-hoc reports.

Additionally, custom reports can be visualized in easy-to-read charts for quick review and download.

"Our Insights and Analytics Prompt capabilities are a continuation of our ongoing investment in Affiliate Intelligence," says Stamos. "Affiliate Intelligence helps brands and publishers realize the full potential of an affiliate program, using technology and data to remain flexible and malleable to ever-evolving objectives, economic variability, and many other factors. Custom-reports in Prompt will provide a unique understanding of program performance that helps our partners fine-tune their strategies for changes in their competitive environment." 

To learn more about Rakuten Advertising, visit www.RakutenAdvertising.com.

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. Learn more at RakutenAdvertising.com.

Media Contact:
Steven Shaw
steven.shaw@rakuten.com

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SOURCE Rakuten Advertising

FAQ

What new features did Rakuten Advertising (RKUNY) announce in May 2025?

Rakuten Advertising announced four major solutions: Affiliate Conversion Journey with transparency API, Rakuten Advertising Detect for program safety, Storefronts for creator collaboration, and Insights and Analytics Prompt for AI-driven reporting.

How does Rakuten's new Affiliate Conversion Journey API benefit publishers?

The new API provides publishers with next-day visibility into their role in customer purchase journeys, helping them better understand and attribute their value in the shopping journey beyond last-click attribution.

What is Rakuten Advertising Detect and how does it protect advertisers?

Rakuten Advertising Detect is a monitoring suite that provides fraud detection, anomaly detection, and program monitoring to protect affiliate programs from fraud and suspicious activities.

How does Rakuten's new Storefronts solution enhance creator marketing?

Storefronts enables advertisers to collaborate with creators to create shoppable experiences, offering linking tools, reporting capabilities, and shopping behavior data to scale influencer marketing programs effectively.

What capabilities does Rakuten's new AI-driven Prompt tool offer?

Prompt is an AI-powered tool that generates custom reports in real-time, helping advertisers and publishers understand program drivers and make quick decisions through visualized data and downloadable charts.