AdPurp Employee Spotlight: CFO Jon M talks about innovation, growth and his passion for learning

As a key member of Advertise Purple’s leadership team, CFO Jon M has helped to oversee a period of explosive growth within the company. When Jon started at AdPurp, he was one of just four employees. Today, he helps to oversee a team that’s reached triple digits. 

We spoke with Jon to learn about key trends in the affiliate marketing space, our company’s most important innovations, and his passion for learning about pretty much everything. 

Q: You recently came back from Affiliate Summit West. What do you see as some of the essential trends in affiliate marketing as we close out 2021?

JM: It’s been amazing to see the changes in affiliate marketing over the last couple of years. Now, every big publication like BuzzFeed or New York magazine is monetizing and becoming a part of the affiliate space. It is tough to stay in business now as a traditional print publication that is not adapting to the times and monetizing through an affiliate model by doing reviews and/or content pieces.

And also the ability for all the different channels of marketing that we can now use within the affiliate space on a CPA model. So, I’m thinking about tech affiliates, email marketing, on-site cart abandonment, etc. It’s no longer about the traditional coupon type of marketing that we had ten years ago. Now it’s transformed into something that allows an advertiser to really go through and take advantage of all of these different types of opportunities that are available through the affiliate channel and target customers at each stage of the consumer journey.

Q: Even in the short time I’ve been with this company, I’ve noticed a rapid increase in headcount. What’s driving our growth right now?

JM: Everything that we do at this company goes back to how can we serve the client better? So we’ve increased the level of service through technology, through automation, through training modules, and through increasing our headcount. All those things have allowed us to provide a higher level of service to our clients, which in turn has allowed us to increase our client count, keep clients longer and keep them happier.

Q: What are the biggest changes you’ve observed in the company in your years here?

JM: Definitely the investment we’ve made in technology. That has allowed us to distinguish ourselves and create a unique competitive advantage. No one else in our space is using AI and automation to serve clients and to generate strategic recommendations based on years of marketing data. It’s been a very exciting development that has really allowed us to service our clients better. We essentially created something that didn’t exist in the affiliate space and no one else has been able to recreate anything similar. 

Q: What are you passionate about outside of work?

JM:  I consider myself a nerd or a student, however you want to think about it. I’m constantly trying to learn, whether it’s about economics or the stock market or a crime show I watched on Netflix. I will find myself going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole or spending all night researching and learning about some new technology. I will read about it ad nauseam until I’m an expert at it. I just enjoy learning. I’d love to be a professor eventually.

Q: What do you like to do on a weekend?

JM: I got married recently and we love to be out in nature. So I go on a ton of hikes with my wife and my dog. We love to just get a change of scenery. We’ll go down to San Diego or visit different local areas and stay a night at a hotel just to just get a change of scenery and to explore all of these different natural areas around California. 

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As Jon mentioned above, the most important reason for our company’s success is the attention we pay to our clients and our constant innovation. As the digital marketing space changes, so do we and as our client’s needs grow, we grow with them. 

And when it’s late at night and the rest of the world is sleeping, Jon’s probably deep into a 100 page PDF about an obscure economic theory developed by a monk in the 18th century. 

Thanks for your time Jon!