Rakuten And impact.com Announce Alliance to Scale the Global Partnership Economy

New York and London: April 28, 2026 – Rakuten International and impact.com today announced a strategic alliance to modernize the affiliate and performance marketing ecosystem.

The collaboration unites Rakuten Advertising’s global partner relationships, managed services, and performance intelligence; Rakuten Rewards’ Cash Back shopping platform and consumer reach; and impact.com’s leading technology platform and global marketplace to create the industry’s most comprehensive and scalable performance marketing ecosystem.

Under this initiative, Rakuten Advertising and impact.com will deliver an integrated technology and services model, combining Rakuten Advertising’s strategic expertise, program management, and global execution with impact.com’s platform infrastructure for contracting, tracking, and payments across commerce partnerships.

Advertisers working with Rakuten Advertising will benefit from expanded platform capabilities and a broader ecosystem, while impact.com customers will gain access to Rakuten Advertising performance intelligence and managed services. Through Rakuten Rewards’ direct consumer signals, advertisers can better understand incrementality, improve attribution, and optimize performance, while driving both customer acquisition and long-term loyalty.

Rakuten Advertising will continue to develop AI, analytics, automation and monitoring capabilities, while Rakuten Rewards and impact.com will collaborate to advance the next generation of performance-based marketing, including advancements in real-time tracking and attribution and the ability to offer enhanced shopper incentives throughout the shopping journey.

“As a global network, publisher, and strategic operator for more than two decades, Rakuten has developed an unparalleled perspective on what drives performance,” said Amit Patel, CEO of Rakuten International. “This alliance brings together infrastructure, service excellence, global reach, and consumer intelligence to offer a fundamentally stronger approach to performance marketing. By pairing with impact.com’s industry-leading platform, advertisers will have access to a unified technology and services solution that combines performance intelligence, managed execution, and consumer insight to deliver programmatic, data-driven programs with smarter insights, stronger execution, and measurable results at global scale.”

“Partnership marketing has become one of the most important growth channels for modern businesses, but the systems supporting it have remained fragmented,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO of impact.com. “Bringing our platform, Rakuten Advertising’s global scale, and Rakuten Rewards’ consumer platform into a unified value proposition will make it easier for advertisers to achieve their goals with better economics, greater transparency, and measurable outcomes. This is a significant step toward a more scalable and powerful alternative to traditional performance marketing channels.”

The alliance will make performance-based growth more accessible and efficient for a significantly larger universe of advertisers and partners:

• Advertisers will have greater control over how they plan, manage, and scale performance campaigns with stronger visibility, measurement, and performance for their growth programs. They will be able to reach and incentivize consumers at key moments in the shopping journey alongside deeper insight into incrementality, attribution, and return on investment.
• Publishers and creators will gain access to a unified platform and one of the industry’s largest portfolios of advertisers, offers, and monetization models, with expanded opportunities across affiliate, creator, and commerce channels.

Also published in: Adtech Today