TikTok Shop as new customer access – seize opportunities, preserve data sovereignty

TikTok has long been more than just an entertainment platform – with the TikTok Shop, direct checkout is coming to the fore and changing the way customers are reached and purchasing decisions are made. Already commonplace in Asia, social commerce also offers the DACH market an opportunity to establish new, scalable customer access beyond traditional platform gatekeepers.

But the fast track to checkout comes at a price: brands risk losing valuable customer data to the platform and thus weakening their direct customer relationship. The presentation shows how advertisers can combine social commerce with affiliate strategies to leverage reach and creator power without giving up data sovereignty.

Participants will gain concrete insights from international best practices, practical recommendations for getting started and a clear classification of how social commerce, in combination with affiliate marketing, becomes a lever for data-driven, scalable and independent customer access.

When Google turns off the tap: Why brand ambassadors are now the bridge to customers

Google is changing the rules of the game – checkout is being cut, data flows are being restricted and dependencies are increasing. For brands, this means that those who rely solely on platforms will lose their direct line to the customer. In this presentation, David Odenthal shows why brand ambassadors & platform economies are the new bridge to building trust, creating reach and developing stable customer relationships. He combines psychology, behavioral economics and practical examples from affiliate and referral marketing. The result: a strategy with which brands can grow independently of Google and generate genuine loyalty.  

Benefit from recommendations: How brands use test portals strategically

Brands today find it difficult to become visible in search engines purely organically. Tests and recommendations on renowned test portals offer a strong lever here: those who impress in a test gain visibility, including in SEO snippets and AI overviews, and thus also strengthen trust in the brand, even without their own strong rankings. At the same time, a recommendation or a test win benefits from an above-average conversion rate. The presentation will use concrete figures and examples to show the impact test reports can have on reach, sales and visibility. It will also discuss how pricing and the choice of stores for a product influence traffic share – for example, when dominant players such as Amazon are involved.