Affiliate Manager
About the role
We're hiring an Affiliate Manager to own a portfolio of client affiliate programs and grow them into reliable, profitable revenue channels. You'll be the day-to-day lead for your clients, the strategist behind their affiliate programmes, and a hands-on manager supporting a small, distributed team. You'll combine strong relationship management with commercial thinking, data analysis and hands-on programme execution.
Key responsibilities
- Act as the main day-to-day point of contact for a portfolio of affiliate clients, leading regular client calls, performance reviews and business reviews.
- Build trusted relationships with clients and understand their commercial objectives, challenges and growth priorities.
- Translate client goals into clear affiliate strategies, plans and measurable KPIs.
- Own program performance and proactively identify opportunities, risks and areas for improvement.
- Confidently present performance, insights, recommendations and strategy to clients and senior stakeholders.
- Manage multiple client programmes effectively, balancing competing priorities and deadlines while maintaining a high standard of delivery.
Strategy & growth
- Own and execute affiliate growth strategies across publisher recruitment, partner mix, commission structures, placements and seasonal trading periods.
- Recruit, activate and develop new partners across the full affiliate funnel.
- Build strong publisher relationships and negotiate placements, tenancies, commissions and other commercial opportunities to deliver revenue, ROI and profitability targets.
- Identify and develop opportunities to increase programme revenue, efficiency and incremental value.
- Support new business activity, including affiliate audits, pitches, proposals and growth strategies.
- Identify opportunities for upselling and expanding client relationships based on programme performance and client needs.
Performance, data & reporting
- Own weekly and monthly programme reporting, ensuring clients have clear visibility of performance and progress against targets.
- Build forecasts and trading plans, track performance against them and provide clear, data-backed explanations for variances.
- Turn programme data into actionable insights and recommendations rather than simply reporting numbers.
- Monitor key commercial metrics including revenue, orders, commission, CPA, ROI, EPC, conversion rate, publisher contribution and programme profitability.
- Use data to identify opportunities for optimisation, partner development, incremental growth and improved programme efficiency.
- Evaluate publisher and campaign performance to ensure investment is aligned with client objectives and commercial return.
- Own day-to-day programme governance, including programme validation, tracking, compliance and fraud monitoring.
- Ensure commission structures, publisher terms and programme policies are implemented accurately and consistently.
- Work with networks, SaaS platforms, clients and internal teams to resolve tracking, attribution and payment issues.
- Maintain high standards of programme hygiene, documentation and operational delivery.
- Monitor publisher activity and ensure partners operate within agreed programme terms and brand guidelines.
What you'll bring
- 3+ years' experience in affiliate, partnership or performance marketing, ideally within an agency environment.
- Hands-on experience managing affiliate programmes through at least one major network or SaaS platform, such as Awin, impact.com, CJ, Rakuten Advertising.
- A proven track record of growing affiliate programmes through publisher recruitment, partner development and commercial negotiation.
- Strong client management skills, with confidence presenting performance, strategy and recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Strong commercial and analytical skills, with the ability to build forecasts, interpret performance data and turn insights into action.
- Excellent Excel or Google Sheets skills, including the ability to work comfortably with large datasets, reporting and forecasting.
- Experience managing, mentoring or supporting junior team members, ideally within a distributed or multi-location team.
- Excellent organisation and communication skills, with the ability to manage multiple clients, priorities and deadlines simultaneously.
- Experience managing affiliate programmes across both UK and US markets.
- Experience or exposure to creator/influencer affiliate partnerships, performance PR or other emerging publisher models.
- Understanding of incrementality, attribution models and multi-touch or performance-based commission structures.
- Experience across relevant verticals such as retail, ecommerce, marketplaces, health & wellness or quick commerce.
WHY REALTIME
WHY REALTIME
Realtime is a global challenger agency that uses tech, innovation, and agility to out-punch the incumbents and bring real, effective change to the brands with which we work. Our motto is simple; “build cool s*** that wows”. To accomplish that, we lead the way with full-funnel strategic thinking, AI-backed advertising technology, and award-winning measurement strategies that take our brand partners to the next level.Realtime is built for the AI era, and is backed by Pixis – the industry leader in AI advertising and creative tech that is trusted by thousands of brands and agencies globally. As part of the Pixis team, Realtime is the first-mover on the latest and greatest in
AI adtech products and testing – and we take those advancements directly to our clients.As part of the Realtime and Pixis team, candidates exploring opportunities with Realtime should expect to find a dynamic, uniquely positioned, and future-oriented organization that loves our people just as much as our clients.