In-Depth SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate – An Online Advertising Company Operating In The Affiliate Marketing Industry

Updated on: Feb 22, 2022
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My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India.

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Previously we looked at the elaborated SWOT analysis of Rakuten, the world’s largest e-commerce & online retailing company. Now, let us hop over and look at the elaborated SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate.

CJ Affiliate is an industry leader in affiliate marketing and was founded in 1998. CJ Affiliate has the power to reach millions of consumers who shop online through affiliate marketing networks by enabling fair and transparent partnerships between advertisers and publishers.

One thing that made CJ Affiliate grow so huge today, is its marketing strategy. Looking at the new normal of today’s generation, marketing is the key point and if you are looking forward to learning about the latest – check out IIDE’s Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing 101 by the CEO and Founder of IIDE, Karan Shah.

In this blog, you will learn more about the SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate and decipher the answer. Before we start, let’s learn more about CJ Affiliate, the company, its founding, products, financial position, and competitors.

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About CJ Affiliate

SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate - CJ Affiliate

Founded over 20 years ago in Santa Barbara, California, CJ Affiliate is one of the largest and oldest affiliate networks in the world. Specializing in pay for performance programs, it is part of a Fortune 500 company called Alliance Data Systems. 

Yeah! You heard it right, that’s how big CJ Affiliate is. CJ – Commission Junction, one of the most popular affiliate marketplaces, has been connecting merchants and affiliate marketers since 1998 to help everyone increase their profits. Now also known as Conversant’s CJ Affiliate. There are thousands of products on the market to advertise. And affiliates like us can easily make money from these products.

Since day one, they’ve focused on creating innovative tech that meets client needs. They are the perfect platform to drive the profitable growth of over 3,800 global brands worldwide across all industries including retail, travel, finance, networking and home services. Their technology enhances the collaboration ecosystem where more than 167,000 publishers and brands serve billions of consumers around the world. With an amazing track record since 1998, this large affiliate marketing network has 15 offices and over 3,000 merchants worldwide.

Quick Stats on CJ Affiliate
Founder Lex Sisney, Todd Crawford & Per Pettersen
Year Founded 1998
Origin Santa Barbara, California
No. of Employees 501 to 1000
Company Type Subsidiary
Market Cap N/A
Annual Revenue $188.8 Million (2021)
Net Income/ Profit N/A

 

SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate - CJ Affiliate Links


Products & Services by CJ Affiliate

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Online & Offline Marketing
  • CPA
  • Performance Marketing, Data-Driven Marketing
  • Tracking Services


Competitors of CJ Affiliate

The top 5 competitors of CJ Affiliate are:

  • Amazon Associates
  • ClickBank
  • ShareASale 
  • eBay Partner Network


As now we have a better understanding of CJ Affiliate, let’s look into the SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate.


SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate

A SWOT analysis identifies a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A proven and true management paradigm that allows CJ Affiliate to compare its business and performance with competitors and the industry as a whole.

SWOT Analysis of CJ Affiliate - SWOT Infographics of CJ Affiliate

So let us go ahead and first have a glance at the strengths of CJ Affiliate from the SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate.

Strengths of CJ Affiliate

Strengths help a firm to efficiently accomplish its successful attempts to reach its aims, goals and objectives. Let’s dive right into CJ Affiliate’s strengths.

  • Real-Time Reporting: CJ Affiliate is renowned for its always up-to-the-minute analytics. This means you never have to refresh the page because you can monitor your activity as it happens. This helps in having real-time reports.
  • Bigger Network, Higher Leads: CJ Affiliate has been growing its customer base for 20 years, there are plenty of options for you to choose from. The options available to customers makes their network stronger and bigger. The bigger network helps CJ Affiliate to gain the lead in the industry. 
  • Generate Revenue Faster: CJ Affiliates have more than 15,000 websites today. This means that the network maintains a healthy publisher-affiliate ratio and keeps that relationship financially synergistic. The process of planning, marketing and selling products helps them gain revenue faster.
  • Huge Numbers of Products: if you’re the type of person who likes to have options,  you may like CJ Affiliate because CJ Affiliate has thousands of products to choose from. It has more than 300 brands, including many of the world’s top brands.
  • Worldwide Offices: The corporate headquarters is in Santa Barbara, California, and there are offices in Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, New York, NY San Francisco, CA Westlake Village, CA and Westborough, MA in the US, and in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, India, and South Africa.

Bonus Read: Quick Guide on Affiliate Marketing Strategies & Examples


Weakness of CJ Affiliate

The essential elements of each company have a strict influence. Weaknesses can also hinder the progress of the company. However, identifying them helps to recommend changes to modify the course higher.

  • A Bad Rep for Being Classified as a Scam, Pyramid Scheme: With that being said, CJ Affiliate is the best affiliate marketing but because of a few firms which scam people, others are also categorised as the same.
  • Harder to Convince the Target Audience to Join an Affiliate Program: Sometimes it gets quite difficult for the firms to convince their audience. It basically works on convincing the audience to trust the brand that they are marketing for. So this sometimes is a weakness for the firm to convince them. 
  • Not Many Understand The Concept: Beginners find it quite difficult at the start to understand the concepts and strategies which could be considered as a weakness.
  • Long Term Investment: In general, affiliate marketing is not a quick way to increase your income. It requires an audience or network and expertise about the product you are promoting. This is a long-term strategy that helps diversify your revenue streams. This requires a lot of patience along with the brain to work.


Opportunities for CJ Affiliate

The next in line for SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate are opportunities. So, let’s look into endless opportunities

  • Effective Marketing: For a more effective approach, companies will need to invest more in marketing and lead to faster development, so they need to find new and innovative strategies to attract more customers. The basic goal is to maximize the spending to achieve positive results in both the short- and long-term.
  • Expansion of Services: This can lead to the attraction of more customers, which will anyhow increase companies revenue. Getting new lines of services to the business is necessary to create new opportunities for business as well as customers. 
  • E-Commerce on Rising: The exponential growth of the internet and e-commerce is making affiliate marketing even more lively. The e-commerce sector is rapidly evolving as the internet has become more accessible in many parts of the world.

Check This Out: You can start your own affiliate business like Amazon & create e-commerce websites with this Online E-Commerce Training Course which will give you a greater depth of knowledge about the e-commerce world.

  • Millions of Products: There are millions of products available that an affiliate can promote. Having an ample amount of options to choose from for marketers creates more opportunities for the firm as well. 


Threats to CJ Affiliate

The last but most important section of the SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate is threats. I think every company should know this. Let’s take a look at the threat of the CJ Affiliate.

  • Strong Competitors: The increased competitors like Amazon Affiliates have evolved around the world so much that CJ Affiliate might start lagging. Since the globalization pressure is strong, companies have to face bigger challenges.
  • Scams: There are a lot of scams happening which is a great threat to the firms. There is a general prejudice against affiliate marketing saying that it is mostly a scam, but this is not the truth.
  • A Lot Can Change Overnight: One of the biggest threats to affiliate marketing is you can be making thousands per month and one email can make it zero the next morning. So the company needs to be ready to face everything and also be ready with future plans. 


This ends our in-depth SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate. Let us conclude our learning below.

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To Conclude

CJ Affiliate is a well-known affiliate company with significant global positions. During the SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate, we found that the company is highly dependent and enjoys strong brand awareness and trust from its customers. It has a solid logistic base and covers all markets it serves, but suffers from more active research and development from an increasing number of manufacturers and competitors in the same space.

But being such a huge brand across multiple countries, CJ Affiliate should continue to innovate and develop more products and launch them in the market with the best possible marketing strategies.

Especially digital marketing which is vital in today’s growing and expanding world, to get better results and to remain competitive in the market. If you don’t have any idea of what digital marketing is or want to learn more about it and upgrade yourself, here is IIDE’s 3 Month Advanced Online Digital Marketing Course to know more.

We hope this blog on the SWOT analysis of CJ Affiliate has given you a good insight into the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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