Awin vs. Impact vs. Pepperjam Ascend (discontinued)

It’s difficult to say if I would recommend it or not from the point of view of the publisher as opposed to the merchant wishing to use it to connect to publishers. It is certainly one of the more intuitive and cleaner affiliate network platforms, though, that’s easier to navigate and build out reports.

Incentivized

Any publisher looking to monetize their blogs would be a great fit. The size of the publisher probably doesn't matter. They have a wide selection of advertisers and publishers can sign up for free. Advertisers that are looking for great partners for their affiliate programs would be good fits. One of the benefits is that Impact really focuses on recruiting high-quality publishers.

Incentivized

For our business, affiliate marketing is by far the lowest ROI marketing channel. If you're looking to get products, brands, and offers listed on coupon sites, Pepperjam Ascend is a great tool. If you're looking to engage with influencers or drive sales without giving away margin, Pepperjam Ascend is likely not for you.

Incentivized

• Clean interface.
• Different reporting options.
• Easy to use link builder.

Incentivized

• There are no hidden charges and tracking is instant and automated.
• As an affiliate, Finding relevant offers and managing the programs is quite easy.
• It has a great user interface which is quite easy to use and manage.
• There is nearly zero downtime, which makes it much more efficient and reliable.

Incentivized

• Lots of coupon sites.
• Enables different tiers of commissions.
• Can blast out newsletters to your network.

Incentivized

• Making it easier to grow your affiliate program.

Incentivized

• User interface could be improved a little, as it is a quite difficult task to find the content or links
• Approval from the advertisers sometimes takes a huge amount of time. If they can somehow reduce the response time, it will be great
• New affiliates might find the onboarding process a little difficult

Incentivized

• The dashboard/platform is the furthest thing from user-friendly. It looks like a high school student with zero experience designed it in excel and hoped for the best with the results.
• Reports are hit and miss. They may load, they may not! It's ridiculous, in my opinion.
• No mobile options whatsoever, everything has to be desktop. It's 2022, they need to catch up!

Impact has had a major impact on our business. It is pretty easy to use if you don't have multiple accounts with them, so be sure you keep things streamlined. Otherwise, it can be confusing if you have to bounce between different accounts you've applied to. While they are managed under a single login, they can be difficult to distinguish between when trying to see how successful your campaigns are.

Incentivized

We've been reaching out requesting support for two months and no one has responded. They completely ghosted us. We've emailed the original sales rep, our account manager, our sales rep and account manager's bosses, and others. Still no response, though I can see the emails have been opened multiple times. I've never experienced worse support.

It’s the far more clean and intuitive one in terms of interface, easy to navigate your way through to find what you need, whether that’s new affiliate programs to join, contact details, its link builder, or pulling reports. As soon as you sign in, too, you get an immediate indication of how many transactions you’ve converted and Month on monthly performance.

Incentivized

First promoter has been a phenomenal affiliate platform to use. It has everything I need from a reporting perspective. It has everything I need from a payout perspective. It has all the links, tips, and tools I need for promoting products. Overall it is a far better tool to use

Incentivized

Pepperjam Ascend's user interface is way behind these other platforms. It's not intuitive nor is it easy to create custom reports and engage with your publishers. We have been stuck with Pepperjam and many other affiliate networks have a very similar layout without much upside.

Incentivized

• Can better address the success of an article in terms of conversion.
• A way to build relationships between merchant and publisher.

Incentivized

• By using Impact we were able to increase the number of advertisers on our platform.
• Delayed payments on the part of advertisers or Impact creates so many execution issues.
• Multi regional campaigns helped us to increase our presens in the market.

• I was hitting anywhere from $130 - $450 per month in commission payout before Pepperjam Ascend. Now with Pepperjam Ascend, I maybe get $40! I am still waiting on payouts from January.