Celebrating Five Wins At The Rakuten Golden Link 2023 Awards

What an event! What a day! What a win! We’re still basking in the afterglow of the Rakuten Advertising 2023 Golden Link Awards. Making the most of the vibrant atmosphere at Sydney’s iconic Luna Park, the Golden Link Awards—part of Rakuten’s fantastic DealMaker event—celebrates the teams, companies and campaigns making waves across the affiliate marketing industry in the Asia-Pacific region and recognises the most innovative and outstanding among them.

Across 12 award categories, spanning all areas of affiliate marketing, Cashrewards was nominated for five. With two categories, highlighting the publisher going above and beyond in the eyes of the Rakuten network, merchants, clients and publishers, voted on by peers, and the rest decided upon by a team of judges from Power Retail, Click Frenzy, IAB Australia, Hello Partner and Rakuten Advertising themselves.

The night kicked off as we won Publisher of the Year. This award celebrates the broad achievements stemming from our brand strategy, 'Yay to Cashback,' which revamped our brand image, and the happiness members feel when they receive cashback. This strategy also inspired us to enhance our member's experience through correspondence that not only shares brand partner deals and cashback offerings but also sparks moments of joy.

Celebrating the win, Head of Client Services, Sophie Stickland, said ‘I’m thrilled to see Simone win Affiliate Manager of the Year! I’ve worked alongside her for my entire Cashrewards journey, I can wholeheartedly say she is an incredible operator, a lovely human and all-round superstar who is very deserving of this award. Congrats Simone!

The next award to be announced was a big one—Advertisers Choice Publisher of the Year. As they read out our name, try as we might, we couldn’t contain our excitement.

Chief Executive Officer of Cashrewards, Anthony Seymour-Walsh, had this to say, “These awards recognise the effort of everyone across the whole Cashrewards team and their contributions to making Cashrewards the market leader it is and helping us to win the cashback category.”

Year after year, we strive to exceed our brand partners business objectives so, to receive this award, which is voted on by our networks, merchants and agencies, means a lot. We want to extend a massive thank you to those who voted for us.

Our accomplishments continued with taking out Partnership of the Year alongside Microsoft, with this victory being the result of pioneering a premium commission program. We then won the prestigious Campaign of the Year award with H&M for our strong partnership in their members' day campaign.

The evening was a huge success, and not just because of all the award wins. We had the chance to connect with our brand partners and the wider affiliate industry during Rakuten’s DealMaker event, an event bringing together nearly 300 top-performing professionals from Rakuten's community of advertisers and publishers, in an event jam-packed with content, conversations and celebrations. We had many conversations in the Lapooza Room at the Cashrewards table, discussing future partnership opportunities ahead of Q4. We promise to make it our mission to exceed brands’ expectations on service, business results and partnerships.