Currently, Expandeo is a top Marketer in Corporations. Their main goal, as Martin, describes it below, is long-term: to promote as many shops as possible (that support CSS) in BusinessLeague. Which is pretty cool, because lots of Merchants have joined the platform recently.

Let's talk Black Friday and more.

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Your progress in BusinessLeague. How would you describe the competition?

We joined the Romanian network 2Performant in the fall of 2023, and our growth has been steady since then. We have been impressed by the number of stores in your network and the speed at which new stores are added.

Additionally, we appreciate the openness of both advertisers and publishers; not every network publicly shares the identities of its top publishers. Our next goal is to break into the top 10. We are currently in 12th place, but I firmly believe that we will reach our goal soon.

Despite affiliate marketing being a great way to boost sales, many shops are still reluctant to try it. Why is that?

I acknowledge that my actions influence my beliefs. I truly believe that affiliate marketing is the most effective form of performance marketing for an e-shop. With affiliate marketing, you don’t pay for hours worked, clicks, impressions, or the publication of articles or links to your e-shop.

Instead, you only pay for completed orders, based on a fixed Cost of Sales relative to your revenue cap. This commission amount is set by the advertiser and should be calculated to ensure they don’t incur losses on the orders they bring in.

What’s your favorite Challenge in BusinessLeague ?

We occasionally take part in BusinessLeague Challenges, but our main focus is always long-term performance. Rather than chasing one-time bonuses, we invest our energy in building strong, sustainable promotion for your advertisers.

That said, the concept of challenges is really nice - they’re a great way to gamify the affiliate space, keep things dynamic, and motivate publishers to push a bit further.

What we did appreciate, however, was the vote for a better commission in a certain segment. We voted for the pharmacy category.

Tech that's important

We primarily work with XML feeds from advertisers, which are essential for effective advertising. These feeds provide us with important details about each product. The EAN (European Article Number) or GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) serves as a unique identifier for products.

When we have this information in our database, it streamlines the advertising process and enables us to maximize the product's visibility. Recently, we have begun creating price comparison pages for our products. If an advertiser's feed does not include the EAN/GTIN, their products will not be featured on any of our product pages. As a result, they could miss out on a significant portion of our promotional opportunities. So, for us, GTINs aren’t just technical details. They’re a key to unlocking performance.

Your work with the Merchants in BusinsessLeague 

We have several advertisers with whom we have achieved success. While Tudor encourages us to pursue as many high-turnover advertisers as possible, we also work with advertisers where we serve as the publisher, generating 100% of the orders for their entire affiliate program.

We can present two advertisers for whom we have already prepared case studies. We believe these will assist other advertisers in launching their programs or securing better terms for publishers.

• Greeno.ro promotion renewed: Fast return to performance thanks to CSS 
• Long-Term Performance Growth for Aronia Charlottenburg

There are three key conditions we prioritize: a high-quality feed, CSS permission, and promotion within Microsoft Bing, in addition to motivational commissions. We value it when advertisers can increase their commissions, as this often leads to improved promotion.

You guys have had success with Bing. Pretty cool! Tell me about that

We started promoting advertisers on MS Bing with the rise of artificial intelligence and the increasing popularity of this search engine. This provided us with a technological advantage.

Interestingly, even today, some advertisers still choose not to pay for advertising on Bing, which allows us to serve as a valuable publisher in this segment as well. For us, that’s an opportunity: we fill that gap and help advertisers reach audiences they’d otherwise miss.

 Let’s talk Black Friday

Last year’s Black Friday was our best one yet, and we’re aiming to beat that this year. We’re ramping up our budget and getting an early start, especially since Black Friday kicks off earlier in Romania, we will have more time to focus on your advertisers.

For 2025, we’ll use the insights from this year to refine our approach and continue growing.

Speaking of plans: are you shooting for Unicorn level in BusinessLague? What is your aim for 2026, and how do you intend to make it happen?

Our plans remain the same: we aim to promote your advertisers effectively over the long term. We want to engage as many advertisers as possible, consider recommendations from Tudor and other affiliate managers, and encourage as many advertisers as we can to support CSS and improve their terms. We are more than willing to call any interested parties and demonstrate how we operate